Customer Reviews

Glorifying the American Girl

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Glorifying The American Girl turned out to be much better than I expected. The acting and dialogue at times weren't the best although the last 30 minutes of the film provides us with a superb idea of what Flo Ziegfeld's stage show must have been like before he was financially ruined in the stock market crash of 1929. Look for some great performances throughout the film from Mary Eaton as Gloria Hughes, Dan Healy as Danny Miller and Edward Crandall as Buddy Moore.

When the action begins, Buddy, Gloria and Barbara (Gloria Shea) work in Heimer's Department store as clerks in the music department. Gloria sings the songs for the sheet music that the store sells; and she's got a crush on Buddy who is very much in love with her. Barbara has hidden feelings for Buddy; but Buddy is too distracted with Gloria to even notice Barbara very much.

At a company picnic, Gloria is noticed by a sleazy unappealing guy named Danny Miller; and they eventually go on the road touring together as a dance duo. This pleases Gloria's pushy stage mother (Sarah Edwards) but Buddy Moore, stuck back at the department store, feels sad that Gloria left him for a show business career. Eventually Gloria gets noticed by one of Ziegfeld's talent scouts and Danny Miller claws his way into Gloria's profits when he signs her to a five year contract--before she finds out that Ziegfeld wants her and not him. Danny's now wealthy for doing nothing but keeping his eye on Gloria to make sure he gets his share of her earnings.

Of course, there's the unfinished business with Barbara and Buddy essentially living the same lives they always did before Gloria left. Barbara is critically injured when a car hits her; and that also creates even more of a mess for all involved.

But this is life, so the plot can still go anywhere from here. Will Gloria make it with Ziegfeld--he has pretty high standards? What happens once Barbara is injured--how does it affect their lives? Will Gloria ever come back to Buddy or will she stay in show business? No plot spoilers here, folks--you'll just have to watch the film to find out! One thing I will say, though--you do get the firm message from this film that fame comes at a price.

They note that this is an early "talkie" musical; and wow, are they right! The sound quality isn't always so good; and the quality of the print could still use more restoration. However, the camera plays some good tricks; the cinematography is especially outstanding. There are very brief cameos by then New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, Billie Burke and others as they enter the theater the night of Gloria's opening with the show. Eddie Cantor also does an excellent skit as part of the show.

The DVD has next to nothing in the extras department. You can pick scenes and look at the catalogue of the other movies sold by Alpha Home Entertainment but that's about it.

In short, Glorifying The American Girl is, despite its flaws, a strong example of an early musical filmed just after sound was truly introduced into film. I highly recommend this for film buffs; and classic movie aficionados will appreciate this one, too.

Just because I gave this movie four stars doesn't mean it will be entertaining to everyone or even most people. Its main value today is to get a rare glimpse at one of the earliest talkie musicals, and also see and hear what a Ziegfeld show might have been like right before the famous showman went broke in the stock market crash of 1929. Florenz Ziegfeld himself actually produced this film, which features his Ziegfeld Follies girls. The movie actually does have a plot of sorts, although its purpose in this film, as in many of the early talkie musicals, is mainly to set up the singing and dancing numbers. This film, though, is unusual in that the plot does actually teach a little unexpected lesson on the price of fame.

The film opens with Gloria, Barbara, and Buddy selling sheet music in a New York City department store. Gloria and Buddy have been sweethearts since childhood, but Gloria wants a career before she settles down. To complicate matters, Barbara is secretly in love with Buddy. A vaudeville hoofer sees Gloria dancing at a store picnic and wants to take her on as a dance partner. They take their act on the road and are spotted by one of Ziegfeld's talent scouts. Back in New York at the audition, the Follies want Gloria but not her partner. Unfortunately for Gloria, though, she signed a five year contract splitting all her earnings with her partner. Gloria becomes the star of Ziegfeld's new show, and this sets up the lavish production numbers of the last third of the film.

The movie contains very brief shots of Irving Berlin, Billie Burke, and NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker, supposedly as they are entering the theatre to see the show. Particularly entertaining in the Ziegfeld production part of the film are performances by Helen Morgan, Rudy Valee, and Eddie Cantor. If you look closely you can spot Johnny Weissmuller wearing nothing but a fig leaf. You have to remember that this film was made before there was any effective production code, so you'll likely be shocked at the revealing nature of some of the costumes in the production numbers. Also, at one point of the film, Gloria's mother actually utters the D-word quite clearly and without any implied effrontery when she is trying to open up her reading glasses. This is a full ten years before such a big deal was made of Rhett Butler using the same word in "Gone with the Wind". Unfortunately, although the last third of the film was shot in Technicolor, the DVD version is in black and white. Also, because of the limitations of technology and the age of this film, there are many long shots of the production numbers with the Ziegfeld Follies girls that make it impossible to see the details of the lavish costumes and sets. However, in spite of its flaws, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in this period of history and these very early talkie gems of which so few are remaining in any form.

We should encourage each other to smile indulgently at the antics and musical tastes of our great-grandparents. After all, our own great-grandchildren will soon enough be doing the same to us. In Glorifying the American Girl, the story of Gloria Hughes' ambition to be a musical star is appliqued onto the Broadway extravaganza of a Florenz Ziegfeld show. We get songs, dances, fabulous costumes, show girls, ukulele plucking, comedy skits, a near-fatal accident, lechery, tearful farewells, love lost and love found and, of course, a big finale where Gloria's success is tempered only by the sadness of a love too long delayed, yet still made satisfying by the happiness of her two best friends. In other words, there's much to snicker about...just don't take your own all-too-soon-to-be-dated enthusiasms too seriously.

Briefly, Gloria (Mary Eaton) works with Buddy (Edward Crandall) and Barbara (Gloria Shea) at Heiman's Department store. Buddy plays piano while Gloria sings the latest songs so that customers will buy the sheet music. Barbara is a clerk. Buddy loves Gloria. Barbara loves Buddy. Gloria thinks she loves Buddy. When Danny Miller (Dan Healy), part of the song and dance team, Miller and Mooney, fires his latest Mooney at the company picnic, he spots Gloria dancing. Before long Gloria has left Heiman's and become the replacement Mooney. While Buddy pines for Gloria and Barbara pines for Buddy, Miller and Gloria travel the country with their act. They're spotted by a scout working for Florenz Ziegfeld and arrive in New York with big hopes and big dreams. It doesn't work out. But Gloria fights for a chance to show her stuff and lands a spot in the show. Danny, who is something of a lech as well as a good dancer, hangs around because of a contract he had Gloria sign. Now opening night approaches. But wait. Barbara has been hit by a taxi and is in critical condition. Buddy realizes he loves Barbara. Gloria goes on with the show. In a miracle of careless editing, Buddy and Barbara are in their seats, part of the happy, applauding audience as Gloria, learning at the last minute that Buddy and Barbara are wed, achieves fame.

What makes all this dated nonsense watchable is the innocence of the acting, the songs and dances, and, during the last third of the movie, the Ziegfeld Follies on stage. The Follies were lush, fabulous variety shows. We have an odd tableau that features nuns, a bishop, scantily clad girls and half naked chorus boys probably doing something religiously questionable; there's Helen Morgan sitting on a piano telling us another sad story in song about her man; here's Rudy Vallee singing to us that he's just a vagabond lover looking for the girl in his vagabond dreams; front and center are high-kicking chorines with none of the self-conscious angst of A Chorus Line; they just keep slapping the leather to the floor. And just before Gloria's big starring number, here's Eddie Cantor with an associate and a stooge doing a long comedy bit about a customer unfortunate enough to enter the tailor shop where Cantor works. While Vallee looks much like the self-satisfied, dirty old man he turned into, Helen Morgan is great. She could deliver a torch song like few before or since. And Eddie Cantor gives all us aging youngsters a chance to see what made him such a big star in vaudeville and on Broadway. The humor is ethnic (e.g., broad and Jewish), the timing is perfect and the routine keeps building. I don't know who his stooge was or the fellow who played Cantor's boss, but they were first-rate second bananas.

This movie was supposed to have had the Ziegfeld Follies sequences shot in Technicolor. Perhaps somewhere there is a VHS or DVD version that reflects this. Most copies I've heard of have just been slapped together as cheaply as possible with no color and, often, with a lot of chopping. In the version I have, Barbara's auto accident, Buddy's promise of love, their marriage and then their being seated in the audience while Gloria triumphs is cut and edited incomprehensibly. The movie is in the public domain and looks every bit of it. Perhaps not much of a loss, but it would have been good to have seen Morgan and Cantor under better circumstances.

Two factors drew me into purchasing this product: that this film is an early talkie and Flo Ziegfeld. The film, like the curate's egg, is good in parts but has problems with long and boring dialogue, especially the speech made by the boss at the firm's outing. That said, it is a very interesting period piece showing life as it was for ordinary people in the late 20s. There are set pieces towards the end of the film of the Ziegfeld Girls arranged by Flo Ziegfeld himself (which are less spectacular than legend would have one believe) plus a rather over-long sketch by Eddie Cantor, probably hilarious in its day, but which is now very dated. The biggest disappointment of all is that the film is black and white throughout, whereas the opening credits promise the staged scenes in Technicolour. I think that had these colour scenes been restored, the DVD company could have charged that little bit extra and we would have been given a superb window on our cinematic heritage and I, for one,would not have been so stingy on the star rating!

I just watched it and the picture/sound are terrible, even making the obvious allowances. Another company's DVD is said by a reviewer on this site to be superior to this one, so you should take a chance...it certainly can't be worse than this one.

Gloria Hughes (played by Mary Easton), our glorified girl herein, perseveres through this film, going from a gal singing sheet music in a department store to a leading dancer on the stage. Just before she goes on at her biggest venue thus far she runs into Eddie Cantor backstage. Cantor tells her, "Don't be scared now. You'll make good. I was frightened a little too when I first came with Ziegfeld , but I'm over it now. Besides, they're a great audience. I've got all my relatives out there, and a few gentiles, too. Now, go after it kid. You'll make good." Then she goes and dances, but, as a viewer, one is more interested as to when Cantor himself is going to perform in this film, than in paying much attention to Gloria's dancing. There frankly isn't much in this "film" to hold one's interest. I used the quotes just now because this "film" is less a story than a vaudeville show of various performances. Helen Morgan and Rudy Vallee, who both have nothing to do with anything herein, do songs, for instance. A lot of what we see, actually, has the look, moreover, of "Movietone News," as if we are watching snippets of various doings that aren't really connected to one another---a Ziegfeld show, you could say, but then I'd argue that the "story" herein just gets in the way.

Finally, just before the last scene, we get Eddie Cantor. A portly guy and Eddie Cantor are working a suit store. A sap walks in and they go into their routine.
Cantor to the sap: "Don't listen to him, he's a damn fool."
Cantor's partner: "Don't you tell anyone I'm a damn fool."
Cantor: "I didn't know it was a secret."

This goes on for almost 12 minutes
Partner: "This is what I call a hunting suit, the finest hunting suit I've ever seen."
Sap: "A hunting suit? Why do you call it a hunting suit?"
Cantor: "We've been hunting for the pants for two years."

The scene is funny, but has absolutely no relevance to anything preceding, yet when it's over one is tempted to wish nothing will follow it either since it's the highlight of "Glorifying the American Girl." Gloria had a beau at the department store, but neither her nor him had any money. When she went on the road her guy began to feel he was being left behind and began seeing another gal. The two of them are in the audience during the final scene. The guy says to his new wife, speaking of the show, also called "Glorifying the American Girl": "You're glorified." To which she answers, "Not glorified, but happy." A final shot of our star makes it evident that such is a position Gloria would have preferred to be in herself. PS:Glorifying the American Girl (1929) is a much better version of this film.

This nearly l00-year-old film antique from 1929 simply fascinates me on several levels.
My five-star rating isn't really for the production that was filmed under the supervision of legendary stage musical master, Florenz Zeigfeld.
My rating is for the time capsule frozen forever on film when movies were still trying to learn how to cope with the new "talking" feature now added to a movie entertainment.
We see the long forgotten Mary Eaton as the big name star, a name unknown today by only the most serious film enthusiast. In reality, she really was Zeigfeld's most celebrated star and beauty in 1929 and is rumored to have been his mistress. She was hired as a threat to the mythical Marilyn Miller, one of the most celebrated musical stars of that era. Off-stage, Miller was found by many to be hard, tough and enjoyed using profanity, although her magical stage charisma appeared to make up for her dark side. Ironically, like Eaton, Miller's stage magic didn' translate into movie sucess. The camera recorded a flat, shrill performer who made a few musical bombs before giving up.
Watching Mary Eaton today and from the distance of over 80 yea rs, it's difficult to understand her celebrity. Her piercing and wavering soprano, her dancing which consists mostly of endless whirls induces yawn from a modern viewer.
She also diplays--as she did in her first movie, 1929's The Coconuts with the Marx Brothers--the distracting penchant of having her eye brows dancing relentlessly whenever she talks. She can barely utter two words without her brows dancing up and down.Various internet sources agree that this movie was such a disastrous bomb that it literally killed Eaton's movie career.
Movie-goers found the glorification of this particular American girl so sordid and grim, that they stayed away by the thousands.
Indeed, the movie is surprisingly dark, cruel and downbeat.
The heroine has a stage mother from hell. We first meet her when she visits her daughter in a music department of a large store and demands spending money. Throughout the movie she snarls at her daughter for not making enough money to support them both "in style."
When Eaton is tricked into signing a five-year contract with her unscrupulous dance partner who is aware Mary is wanted by a big name producer, the poor child merely shrugs. She shows no fight at all againt either her mother or skulking partner.
Her dressing rooms are nearly almost shabby and cramped and dimly lit. All the stage scenes have a sweaty, crowded feel. You can almost smell the old perspiration drenched costumes.
As to the production numbers themselve, we watch performers unmoving in tableus, all attired in bizarre costumes--from nuns and Roman gods to party girls.
We're treated to hideous performances by some of the golden entertainers of that era--a languid, nasal Rudy Vallee singing "Vagabond Lover" as if he wants to hit the sack. A tremulous, tear-filled Helen Morgan who sobs out her lyrics and suggests that she will soon collapse in a puddle of convulive hyteria. And probably the worst comedy routine ever filmed in those days: a l5-minute comedy routine with Eddie Cantor that stops the show dead in its track and which which would destroy an evening of entertainment for any hapless audience member. The routine goes on minute after long minute and confirms again what a disastrous hand Zeigfeld had in indulging his personal favorites over the interests of movie audiences..
Then there's the weird insertion of a fake radio host greeting 1920s celebrties, who are actually inserted from news reels. We even see Florenz Zeigfield with a woman who isn't his wife, Billie Burke. She probably wouldn't want to sit throughn entertainment that stars his possible mistress.
The much ballyhooed Technicolor sequences do not exist on any of the numerous versions I've seen.
I saw a revival of this movie several years ago in Broadway's wonderful old Regency Theatre and the packed theater was furious that the color sequencs was missing.
My public domain version has a ghostly parade of girls hurrying across the screen in the introduction, as if suggesting that at this time in American history no greater glory could befall a girl than to be picked as one of Zeigfeld's magical beauties.
But as the story points out, if you are selected for the glorification process, expect a dismal payoff.
This is spotighted in the very last shot. When Mary Eaton--who died unknown and forgotten in l948--approaches the edge of the stage, she magically manages to balance the biggest feathered head dress in movie musicals. It cascades high in the sky and foams to her slippers.
Mary Eaton looks out at the applauding crowd--where her former boyfried sits happily with his new little wife, both who had been co-workers of Mary in her music department position.
A strange expression crosses Mary Eaton's face--one of confusion and hurt, or perhaps its a foreboding of what this movie disaster would do to her own life.
For after this megabomb, Mary Eaton vanished forever.

To those devoted to the memory of Florenz Ziegfeld, this movie is probably a must have. To film buffs devoted to early talkies, this movie is probably a must have. To everyone else, it's tough sledding. I consider myself reasonably interested in Ziegfeld and his "Follies", and early talking pictures, but this was a tough one to sit through. I almost never fast-forward through films, but the endless and unfunny "comedy" sketch by Eddie Cantor was painful. Many of the stars/celebrities listed as being in the film only appear for seconds in some newsreel footage from the opening of the 1927 Follies that the filmmakers awkwardly worked into the plot. Speaking of plot, what begins as a mildly interesting backstage melodrama, derails about two-thirds of the way through, the rest of the movie suffering from a serious plot shortage. All the production numbers that were originally in the early two-color Technicolor, appear in black and white, and since they were shot for color, are badly lit. For fashion historians there is a lot to absorb, the clothes an endless array of very 1928 styles. The costumes of the "Follies" girls would also be of interest to such viewers. If there are any Rudy Vallee fans out there, you can watch him sing one of his biggest hits, "Vagabond Lover", in a manner even more anemic and stiff than I recalled. He looked as though he was badly constipated and trying to pass something enormous and hard. The sound quality of the film is poor - to be expected from an early talkie - and left me suffering from "ear-strain" after the 93 minute run. Watch it if you must, but be warned, and whatever you do, do not make someone who is not into old films watch this one! They'll never forgive you!