. . . MOVIELAND MAGIC, because only a madman could have written what we see on the screen here. Back in the 1900s, movie studios turned out several one- or two-reel live-action shorts annually which tried to make out that there was something appealing about working in the movie industry. Many of these made about as much sense as the meat-packing industry filming a montage of their rendering operations as a way to encourage people to eat meat and work in packing plants. MOVIELAND MAGIC is the most egregious example of such idiocy that I've seen so far, as it tries to blend snippets from OTHER similar Warner Bros. shorts (of which 1940s theater goers already were sick and tired) into a "seamless" whole with the over-used (and here, poorly executed) "studio tour" framing device gimmick. The first recycled bit is the "Springtime in Vienna" period costume waltz, no doubt Mel Brooks' original inspiration for the 2000% better "Springtime for Hitler" piece from THE PRODUCERS. It's all downhill from there. Whether it's jitterbug mayhem, Jane Wyman proving exactly why she was a First Lady reject, Mexican hat dancers, or crooning cowboys, NOTHING hangs together. By the last segment featuring a "boy king" presiding over HIS grand finale tune, "The Good Old American Way," MOVIELAND MAGIC has given up any pretense at continuity, proving that the Warner Bros. hacks behind this two-reeler were total Muggles at "magic" of any sort!
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horn-513 June 2006is that Vitaphone Corporation/Warner Bros got the services of all these cast/crew people and didn't have to pay them anything.
Released as part of a series of WB shorts under the collective title of "Technicolor Specials" (WB production number 2003) this short most likely holds the WB house record for a 20-minute film containing footage from the most different titles in their inventory. It's theme of a singing guided tour of the lot (and some of the footage) is from 1944's "Musical Movieland", the former title holder, and it contains clips from 1939's "Quiet, Please" and "Royal Rodeo"; "Sunday Roundup" from 1936 and 1940's "The Singing Dude." Pieces from "Out Where the Stars Begin" and "Swingtime in the Movies" may also be used, but it's hard to tell since they all tend to run together and show up in a lot of places during the 1940's Warner shorts. Its title of "Movieland Magic" is most apt considering the sleight-of-hand performed by the WB Shorts and Sales departments in once again selling the same film clips for the 3rd, 4th or more times.
The Warners' people made a fine art out of compilation archive-footage (except they called it stock footage)and re-selling the same footage to the theatre exhibitors over and over. When movie attendees left the theatre in the 1940s and 50s with the feeling they had seen it before, they were correct. They had. Especially if it carried a WB logo.
Yogi Berra was right...it's de javu all over again. -
tterrace7 December 2010Thank you to Leslie Howard Adams' who, in his 2006 review, usefully identifies much of the recycled footage from previous Technicolor Warner studio tour shorts. Just having watched it (it's a bonus feature on the Bette Davis "Deception" DVD), I can say that there actually is some newly- shot material. At about the halfway point (5:18 to be precise), the narrator turns us over to "our musical messengers" led by a tour guide who's none other than a very young Mel Tormé. At the time, he was a Warner Bros. contract player, having signed in 1944. In this short, most of his lines are in rhyming dialog, but he does sing briefly before the final (recycled) segment. A very brief (don't blink) bit: when he's pointing out a scene with Dennis Morgan and Fuzzy Knight, he momentarily scrunches up his face into a perfect Fuzzy Knight impression.