Summary
Gay and Carter’s title song is pure joy; the sense of absolute enjoyment suffuses the picture
Cheer Up!Stars on Parade
Ball at Savoy
Limelight
Sunshine Ahead
Cheer Up!
Queen of Hearts
When Knights Were Bold
Soft Lights and Sweet Music
Jack of All Trades
Public Nuisance No. 1
Beloved Impostor
Faithful
King of Hearts
Happy Days Are Here Again
Forget-Me-Not
Melody of My Heart
It’s Love Again
Shipmates o’ Mine
Men of Yesterday
Everything Is Rhythm
She Knew What She Wanted
A Star Fell from Heaven
The Robber Symphony
Dodging the Dole
Annie Laurie
Calling the Tune
Guilty Melody
Keep Your Seats, Please
Rhythm in the Air
Song of Freedom
Gypsy Melody
The Beloved Vagabond
Southern Roses
Land Without Music
Everybody Dance
Live Again
The Last Waltz
Dreams Come True
This’ll Make You Whistle
Everything in Life
Variety Parade
Sporting Love
Pagliacci
Murder at the Cabaret
January
It is unlikely that Oswald Mitchell is much mentioned in scholarly discussions of British film directors, but we owe him a debt. Mitchell’s interest in the slightly tatty world of music hall and variety is a cornerstone of his work. It could not be more obvious than in his third picture, Butcher’s Film Services’ Stars on Parade, following on from his 1934 Danny Boy and the 1935 Cock o’ the North. What makes Stars on Parade so appealing is that Mitchell and his co-director and editor Challis Sanderson make no attempt at a credible threading story. The turns that turned up to be filmed at Cricklewood are a fascinating collection that includes performers whose reputations have endured, and lesser immortals for whom Mitchell’s little film provides a resting place. Some, indeed, qualify as ‘wines and spirits’, the theatrical term reserved for those performers whose names (like the details of available alcoholic beverages) were printed in the smallest type at the bottom of a variety bill.
Among the less remembered are ‘Radio’s Schoolgirl Sweetheart Pat Hyde’, accompanying herself on the accordion in ‘Only A Shanty In Old Shanty Town’; laid-back brothers Syd and Max Harrison with their acrobatic dancing; and the soprano street singer Pat O’Brien singing the Irish favourite ‘Old Fashioned Mother Of Mine’. ‘Go on, Pat O’Brien’, urges music-hall veteran Albert Whelan (he of the signature music for ‘The Three Bears’) to ‘make us cry’, and – decades later – he still may.
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- Cheer Up!British Musical Films, 1929-1945, pp. 148 - 186Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020