SYNCOPATION

Looking at us, as we look at her --- Sophie Tucker --- on the set of the 1929 Warner Bros. & Vitaphone production "Honky Tonk," a film considered to be lost. Not misplaced, but left to slowly decay and fall away into the same abyss of nothingness that ultimately claims all that is not tended to --- looked after --- preserved.Tucker is seen here with her personal pianist Teddy Shapiro, and the pair gamely plays along with the Warner Bros. publicity machine ---

hoping to make the best of what Tucker deemed a bad situation, a bad script and what she expected to be a bad film.As she gazes at the lens, she couldn't have known we'd be returning her glance some seventy-eight years in the future --- but that knowledge would have, doubtless, pleased the entertainer immensely. And, when you come right down to it, the fact that picture elements for her film "Honky Tonk" have apparently vanished would have also likely pleased her too, cruel though that may seem to us from our vantage point.How ironic that the small clutch of early talking films and musicals that would likely have the greatest and widest appeal today are not only those that were --- by and large --- either panned or politely ignored by the public they were created for, but also featured persons or production elements that we'd so readily embrace, study and applaud today were it only possible. While much of what we're left with today is good --- and some of it exceptional --- the list is far eclipsed by titles not necessarily of historical importance, but rather films that (had they survived intact) serve to illustrate pivotal moments in early-sound cinema history as well as likely cause us to reevaluate our perceptions and notions of the period.Not many months after the halting uncertainty of the stilted dialogue contained in something like "The Lights of New York" (WB-1928,) cinema strengthened and gathered itself together swiftly enough to evolve into the smooth, swift, dazzling kaleidoscopic Technicolor hued "On With the Show!"(Picture right - Note the portrait of Paramount star Mary Eaton on one cosmetic case!) and "Gold Diggers of Broadway," (both 1929) but because these latter two films are either largely lost or exist only in murky black and white step-down prints, we're unable to see the pay-off --- the evolution --- the natural progression --- and instead we're left with the oft trotted out painful footage from "Lights of New York" to illustrate and wrongfully represent the entire period.For "personality" pictures of the period, Mr. Jolson's work is certainly with us today --- but he comes packaged with heavy and uncomfortable baggage that will cloud his name forever, or for as long as we feel the need to call special attention to that fact and indulge in far too much hand wringing and fretting while his films remain largely kept from view.

We have legendary Ziegfeld performer Marilyn Miller's "Sally" (WB-1929) and "Sunny" (WB-1930) both with us, but as films which exist only as muddy, imperfect shadows of how they originally looked and sounded. Because of this, viewers today are left to struggle to locate, beneath the grain and muck, the same unique spark of vitality that Miller so effortlessly radiated and which 1929/30 audiences found so easily when these films once glistened and shimmered upon theater screens instead of appearing as gray smears on television monitors.Indeed, some of the most yearned-for "lost" films of the Vitaphone period are those which featured "name" performers or were screen translations of popular stage productions. There's 1930's all-Technicolor "Hold Everything!" and "No, No Nanette," the 1929 starring vehicle for jazz legend Ted Lewis: "Is Everybody Happy?," Fannie Brice's "My Man" of 1928, the 1929 re-working of the 1904 George M. Cohan stage musical "Little Johnny Jones," the glittering Technicolor screen debuts of Irene Bordoni and Jack Buchanan in "Paris" (1930) and Otis Skinner's performance in "Kismet" (WB-1930) which captured the equally grandiose production and star in wide-screen and multi-hues --- but it, like all these others , are all gone.Likewise, gone from this earth, is Sophie Tucker's 1929 talking picture debut, "Honky Tonk" --- a film that's long been on archive and personal lists of "most wanted" lost film titles, and as we'll learn, a troubling and unhappy experience for the lead actress. Despite that, "Honky Tonk" is ultimately a title I cautiously deem to be one of the most perfect, compact and endearing of all the early "personality" musicals.A news wire item of September 23, 1928 announced:"

Another acquisition to Warner Bros. round-up of talent in the entertainment world was announced this week by J. L. Warner, production chief, when he made public that his company has signed Sophie Tucker to make her screen debut in an all-talking and singing Vitaphone picture. Sophie Tucker has what is probably the largest international following of any stage star in America. As a headline vaudeville artiste and the star of many revues, she has been acclaimed not only through the United States but throughout Europe."Indeed, Tucker had been offered the Warner Bros. contract while in the midst of a hugely successful London booking in the summer of 1928, and by October of that year, Jack L. Warner had --- as columnist Louella Parsons would correctly understate, "his hands full."Los Angeles, Oct. 20 1928: "Atlas holding the world on his shoulders, Hercules doing his mythological stunt and the Augean stables being cleaned are pikers' jobs compared with the one Jack Warner has confronting him. To Jack, the youngest of the Warner brothers, has been given the complex task of directing the destinies of Warner Brothers and First National Studios. As producer-manager for both, he sits in his office directing the line of attack for each individual studio, for they are to be individual. Each studio will be run in its own way."Interestingly, the article details a contract signed only days before with prizefighter Jack Dempsey. Said Warner, "He's going to make an original talkie for us. The contract was signed last Monday and we are already busy on an original prize fight story."

When Parsons questioned the acquisition, rightfully pointing out that Dempsey was far from a Barrymore, Warner countered with: "He is what I want. I wouldn't give a nickel for one of the old emotional actors with tremors in their voices. That stuff went out with Noah's ark," quickly reminding Parsons he wasn't referring to the Warners picture of the same name.Ultimately, time would reveal that First National wouldn't remain anywhere as "individual" an entity as originally proclaimed, and the talking picture debut of Jack Dempsey would never materialize --- although Warners did end up featuring Dempsey's ring opponent George Carpentier in two important early musicals ("Show of Shows" and "Hold Everything!") suggesting the souring of the Dempsey contract left Warner seeking and ultimately obtaining just the right sort of subtle revenge sure to serve as the last laugh and final word on the matter.Jack Warner described the period during which both his namesake studio and First National were being re-tooled and re-organized thus: "I don't expect we will have First National fully equipped for sound until the first of the year and until that time naturally, all the sound pictures will be made at our own studios." When queried by Parsons, "Are you sure you are not going to treat First National like a stepchild? Aren't they both your own?," Jack Warner clumsily replied, "Well, you know what I mean.

Warners studio is our first born and naturally the new baby has to wait for a few days before we get used to accepting it in the family circle."In her 1945 autobiography, "Some of These Days" (Doubleday, co-authored with Dorothy Giles) Tucker recalls having returned from London to the States with her Warner Brothers contract in tow, and that she "had gone out to the Coast with trunks full of new Paris clothes and the feeling I was riding on air."The trip to the Coast wouldn't occur quite so immediately as Tucker stated however, for there would be a stop-over in Chicago first. While there, she'd visit old friend and "Kismet" star Otis Skinner (Skinner and Tucker pictured right atop a Chicago skyscraper, early 1929) announce her third marriage (this one to Mr. Al Lackey) and undergo a series of visits with a plastic surgeon who would perform some early 1929 nip & tuck variety of work to remove excess fat and and smooth and refine the 45 year old performing dynamo's somewhat blowzy countenance. Indeed, it's difficult to equate the figure seen below left (circa 1923) with that of a 39 or 40 year old woman but, as they say, she had done a whole heck of a lot of living in those forty years.

Understandably, Warners wouldn't touch upon the performer's facial work in their eventual publicity for "Honky Tonk," and of course neither would the actress in her autobiography, but some late January 1929 newspapers mentioned the fact in that year's form of "Celebrity Sightings" column:"Sophie Tucker in the hotel elevator with a nice comfy pair of felt slippers and a plaid steamer coat thrust about her shoulders. Her broad genial face showing no signs of scars from the recent beautifying operation which made her eligible for the talkies. This girl, with Al Jolson, will break the records on talkie pictures. Hers is as vivid a personality as his. Fannie Brice, priceless on the stage, gets over in her talkie picture in isolated spots only." Those isolated spots being, presumably, the talking and singing sequences of "My Man," which --- in retrospect --- weren't quite as isolated as the writer suggests. No matter --- it was time for Sophie Tucker -- the new Sophie Tucker --- to head West."The welcome Warner Brothers gave me at the station, with flowers and a crowd of friends and a brass band, didn't deflate me.

I was still elated after my first day in Hollywood when I climbed into bed, along toward morning, got myself comfortable, and started to read the script of 'Honky Tonk.'""I read it through from cover to cover, and my jaw dropped down on my chest. I couldn't see Sophie Tucker anywhere in the picture. I went over the script a second time, fighting my way through the flowery language. Could anybody picture me saying, 'I shall be waiting, my dear, overlooking exquisite gardens from the French windows, watching the golden horizon?' Derlebn! I reached out my arm and grabbed the phone. 'Hurry, operator, and get Mr. William Morris in New York. And get him quick!""Derlebn!," a Yiddish term which translates roughly to "I should only live to see that day!" was accurate in this context, for surely no such dialogue nor remotely close situation that would call for such lines existed in the original script.

To be fair, there are some stretches and wording in the final product that remains at odds with Tucker's character and personality --- and which she clearly stumbles upon, but as a whole, the film's character and lines she is given to speak is very much in keeping with Tucker's carefully formed persona, suggesting that the phone call she made to Mr. William Morris brought about some of the changes she desired --- but not without a nearly constant locking of horns between the formidable Tucker and practically all of the executive and creative personnel involved with the production of "Honky Tonk."Directed by Lloyd Bacon, the man who helmed Jolson's mega hit "The Singing Fool," Sophie's picture was based upon a story by Leslie S. Barrows, and the screen adaptation was also by Barrows, but (curiously) billed here under his real name of C. Graham Baker.

Photography was by Ben Reynolds, the limited inter-titles by DeLeon Anthony, the music by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen (Yellen would also contribute dialogue of the more naturalistic sort preferred by Tucker) and choreography for the night-club sequences was by Larry Ceballos.Judging by the final product, Tucker's requests for script revisions were met as much as the Warner execs deemed appropriate for "a temperamental vaudeville dame who was trying to teach the motion picture industry how to run its own business," as Tucker herself imagined how the Warner Bros. suits perceived her. And, scripting wasn't the only issue that vexed Miss Tucker. As she reported --- somewhat naively --- in her 1945 autobiography:"Getting up at 6AM was a tough job for me, who was used to going to bed about that time. And the work was hard -- harder because I was unhappy.

Trained as I had been in show business, I couldn't believe a picture could be good with no rehearsals. In vaudeville, you'd rehearse an act or a new song for weeks. Break them in. Take out bad spots. Add new ones. That was how I was used to working. In the studio, I discovered a new technique: one scene taken at a time, not more than four or five lines to a person. ""While they were setting the scene and the cameras were being arranged for shooting, the director and actors would be off at one side, studying and rehearsing their lines.

When the cameraman (Ben Reynolds) said "Ready," the scene was shot. One man, the director (Lloyd Bacon,) looked on, and approved. And that was that! If he didn't approve, the scene might be taken over a few times. But he was the only critic to be pleased. No one else had any idea what it was like, and you didn't have a chance to improve a look or a gesture. And while this was going on and the picture was being made in pieces, the publicity department was starting its propaganda to sell the picture, featuring the great ability of the star and cast, the warm, human, dramatic story, the cleverness of the writers and the directors.

When I got an earful of this, I asked myself, can the studio fool the public? Can a smart publicity department make the public like something just because they are clever at selling it?"Yes indeed, Miss Tucker! As resounding a "Yes!" in 2007 as it was in 1929.It's unclear at what point during the film's production the cast was gathered together on the night-club set for the filming of the trailer for "Honky Tonk," but when listened to with our knowledge of the existing production difficulties, it becomes all the more fascinating --- if only to prove that Tucker didn't allow her misgivings about the whole ordeal to interfere with her desire to sell the film and to play along with the "one big happy family" motif that the studio so carefully cultivated.Here, actor John Davidson ("Skin Deep," "Queen of the Night Clubs")

performs duties as host for the trailer, and introduces us to Tucker and the much of the supporting cast of "Honky Tonk" which included Lila Lee, George Duryea (who'd eventually morph into cowboy star Tom Keene after a notable appearance in King Vidor's "Our Daily Bread") Audrey Ferris (just off "The Glad Rag Doll") and Mahlon Hamilton, recently featured in Metro's "The Single Standard." (No film elements for the trailer are known to exist --- only the synchronized sound disc which originally accompanied it --- a copy of which is presented here via the kind generosity of friend and UK blog reader Gary Scott, who reports having discovered the 12" platter among a pile of 16" standard Vitaphone discs inside a Netherlands cinema some years ago.)