[78-L] YouTube Mini-Festival of Reginald Le Borg Music Shorts

[David Lewis]

[This was created as a post for another format. A little OT, but some of these numbers were issued as 78s -- a Soundie is a little like a 78 except that it's a movie. Apologies for cross-posting.]

Reginald Le Borg (1902-1989) was a film director and a renaissance man. By the age of 32 he had studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, had taken Arnold Schoenberg's music composition seminar in Vienna, had worked as a high-level financier in the family business and had become an assistant to eminent theater director Max Reinhardt. This last capacity proved his ticket to Hollywood, and he worked as a director of musical sequences, usually in operatic films. MGM moved him up to directing shorts in 1936. In 1940, Le Borg was the first director hired by Soundies Distributing Corp. to head their Hollywood-based unit (they had another in New York City.) Although shortly after Le Borg was named to make musical shorts for Universal, ultimately he did both -- directing on the Universal City lot during the day, having a meal, and then packing off to the shabby, tiny Soundies soundstage at night.

There are handful of these subjects on YouTube, probably more than are listed here. imdb doesn't even come close to listing Le Borg's Soundies output, and I added The Lamp of Memory (1942) to their database myself. The Universal-made music shorts are scarcer than the Soundies, but both were distributed to the home market through Castle Films, often in versions that were cut down, retitled or scrambled in some way. Although he denied any interest in modern art in his only interview, given shortly before his death, Le Borg's films are full of surrealist imagery, rapid cutting and expert camera direction. Performers are not permitted to face the camera directly and shots are often taken at weird angles to discourage eye contact, but also to heighten the sense of relating the visuals to music. Le Borg's music films are true music films -- they do not document performances so much as the music and film elements work in a sort of partnership.

Hold That Tiger (1940) Victor Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWSnT62X8uA

Jingle Belles (1941; as "Snowtime Serenade") Gloria Jean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcrsEBTC-qY

The Lamp of Memory (1942) Yvonne DeCarlo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni7OaZ84s1M

A Knife a Fork and a Spoon (1942) The Fashionaires
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCVOXhWXAl4

Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy (1942) Spike Jones City Slickers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgn_aNCBXKw

Trumpet Serenade (1942) Harry James
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlJUpDWjvaY

Hit Tune Jamboree (1943; fragment) The Mills Brothers, George Olsen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhYfZJo_-ig

Russian Revels (1943; combined with "Sombrerita Mia") The Lucky Girls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPbY3E2Bxk

After a stint in the military, Le Borg moved into features. His best known ones are The Mummy's Ghost (1944), Voodoo Island (1957) and his one Bowery Boys feature Fighting Fools (1949). The Black Sleep (1956) is like an Ed Wood film, only Ed didn't make it, and Voodoo Island is unbelievably cheap and bad, but is immensely entertaining and in that one Le Borg lets his surrealist freak flag fly. He also directed series television. Le Borg's career as a feature director was disappointing -- his only "A" picture, I Love You, San Diego (1945) was a failure and forever after he seemed consigned to "B"s, narrowly avoiding exploitation. In his music shorts you can see some of the promise that Le Borg was capable of; he may have been a great director lurking in the shadow of a good one who made cheap pictures. -- Uncle Dave Lewis

Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis at hotmail.com