[78-L] It's a Wonderful Life

[Harold Aherne]

"The Public Enemy" premiered in April 1931, about a year after WB acquired
Brunswick's record-making division, and a number of 1930-32 Warner-First National
films state "Brunswick Radios Used Exclusively" (or words to that effect) in the
opening credits.
 
A close-up of a true record label occurs in Mary Pickford's "My Best Girl" (1927)
near the end when Mary is trying to convince Buddy Rogers that she's just a 
money-hungry golddigger after his family's dough. She smears lipstick on her face and 
dances to a Brunswick record that whose title and artist can be made out in the
half-second before it starts to spin; I'm pretty sure that it's "Red Hot Mama" by 
Ray Miller and his band, which would correspond to catalogue number 2681. 
 
There's a close-up of Johnny Marvin's "There's Everything Nice About You" on 
Victor 20612 in "The Crowd" from 1928; James Murray uses it to convince 
Eleanor Boardman not to leave him.
 
Close-ups of record labels in movies were used at least by 1918 (the earliest I can
definitely recall is in Cecil B. DeMille's "Old Wives for New"), to provide an idea for the 
musical accompaniment, to complement the plot (as in the above instances), or even
for a bit of visual humour in some cases.
 
-Harold
 

--- On Sat, 1/17/09, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:
From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: [78-L] It's a Wonderful Life
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Date: Saturday, January 17, 2009, 11:51 PM

Public Enemy..thank you! And it plays a cracked rendition (acoustical sounding) 
of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles".

dl