Watch On With the Show! For Free

the audience applauded

Admirable film.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

"On With The Show!" is a very typical musical of its period. It features lots of stage-bound singing and dancing--like you'd see in films like "The Broadway Melody", "42nd Street" and "Footlight Parade"--but even more stagy in style. And, as for the plot, again it's pretty familiar. The show is in financial trouble and it always seems on the verge of being shut down. And then, out of the blue, someone robs the box office! Can these troopers manage to find the crook and become big stars?! Well, I assume the odds are DEFINITELY in their favor! Historically speaking, "On With The Show!" was a pretty important film. It was the first sound film made entirely in color. BUT, there are two important caveats. First, the color was Two-Color Technicolor and even when restored to its original look, it isn't true color but tends to have red-orange and blue-green tints. Colors like yellow and tertiary colors simply aren't possible with this early process. Second, and most importantly, the only surviving print is black & white (though a minute of color was recently discovered)! How I would love to have a time machine to go back and see it in its original form (and so I could invest a few bucks in Microsoft around 1980).The film features Arthur Lake (who gained fame in the Blondie and Dagwood films), Joe E. Brown and Betty Compson. And, although it's a small role, you get to see and hear Ethel Waters as well (and, not surprisingly, she sings her standard "Am I Blue"). Some other highlights would include Brown's really athletic and exciting dancing (I never knew he could do that!), the costumes beginning at the minute marks (and I felt sorry for the guys dressed as guards), Interesting film techniques such as rack of clothes at about 9 minutes into the film, 3/4 angles of performers (and it looks like you are in the audience watching a revue) and lots of backstage shots make it seem like you are there at the show instead of just watching a film. As for sound, it GENERALLY is very good for an early talkie. When the actors speak, they are easy to understand and clear--and not as stiff and obviously standing very near microphones like in many early sound films. But, the singing is seriously tinny and poor. It's a shame the film doesn't have captions--it would help to understand what they are singing, as I was clueless.As for the film's watchability today, I would agree with most of the other reviewers who feel that most would probably be turned off by the film's antiquated style. Compared to musicals made just a few years later, it's VERY dated and I'd never show this film to someone who isn't familiar with the genre and who isn't open-minded. However, if like me and most of these other reviewers you DO like transitional films (early talkies), then by all means watch it. Just understand the technical problems with the film and put them in a historical context. In other words, don't blame "On With The Show!" for not being more than it is because it's among the film musicals and so much we later came to expect just hadn't been developed yet. The only thing I can't forgive is the INCREDIBLY talky ending. Wow...she just won't shut up and I couldn't wait for the film to end! It's a shame, as up until then I was rather impressed by the movie.By the way, get a load of Calvinnme's review and his comments about Sally O'Neill! I couldn't agree more--and I'll buy the arrows! Lake wasn't great either and I am glad he found his niche as Dagwood--he certainly hadn't found it here in "On With The Show!"!

Early Warner Bros. musical, stagy, slow, and mostly of historical interest. The poor quality film available for viewing doesn't help. It's interesting to see how much the movie musical improved between this movie and, for instance, "42nd Street" (also a Warner Bros production) just a few years later. The dialog portions are very static, presumably due to the requirements of early sound pick up systems. However, the result is to bring the action to a halt. The overacting is almost unintentionally laughable. Betty Compson finally has a decent scene near the end of the movie. Arthur Lake is just plain irritating, and I couldn't even warm up to Joe E. Brown. Some of the singers seems to be recorded live, and others poorly dubbed. By far, the most interesting scenes are Ethel Waters singing "Am I Blue", and the quartet of black tap dancers who are unidentified.

This one will probably be of interest only to fans of the early talkies. Because it is made so early in the talking picture era, it suffers from dialogue overload, which results in an over-long run time of 103 minutes that could have easily shed 30 minutes without anyone objecting or even noticing. The main thing that harms this film is that it was originally shot completely in two-strip Technicolor, but only the black and white prints made for television remain. As a result you have lots of chorus girls parading around in elaborate gowns, pausing for the audience to get an eyeful, and then moving on. In black and white these scenes are just dull and stagnant, but if you've ever seen the same thing in the remaining color reels of "Gold Diggers of Broadway" from the same year, you realize how truly spectacular this must have looked to 1929 audiences. Also, Alan Crosland's sharp visual style includes lots of cross-cutting so that you don't have the claustrophobic static effect that you normally get from Vitaphoned films whose camera booths could not move an inch.It is a show within a show, the film being the story of one make-or-break night in the life of "The Phantom Sweetheart" and its cast, as it lumbers towards Broadway. You get to see "The Phantom Sweetheart" play out in its long-winded entirety, which actually contains the high-points of the film. These include two numbers by Ethel Waters as herself performing "Birmingham Bertha" and "Am I Blue" as well as the eccentric dancing and acrobatics of Joe E. Brown. Ms. Waters has no dialogue in the film, and for that matter her excellent numbers have absolutely nothing to do with the plot of "The Phantom Sweetheart", which is an inane tale of a young man who comes home from a long trip to marry his girl, but falls for a mysterious nymph of the woods and has to decide whether to go with this surreal and beckoning creature, or stay with the girl to whom he is betrothed. Harold (Arthur Lake), the double-minded young star of the Phantom Sweetheart, is as annoying and whiny on stage as he is backstage.Backstage, the center of attention is Kitty (Sally O'Neill), an usher with the show who is in love with the other usher and whose father has invested everything he has in the world with the show. Betty Compson, the most overworked actress of 1929, is the "phantom sweetheart" and star of the show who threatens not to go on if she isn't paid her back wages. This film is full of performers who are either the victims of the transition to sound or the product of failed Warner Brothers experiments with stage performers. Thus, you'll likely not recognize 80% of the cast. For example, Sally O'Neill had been making a good career in films in the late silent era. Unfortunately, in reality she was saddled with a heavy New Jersey accent that is compensated for in this film by making her overly-sweet. A little bit of cute sweetness would be a good thing, but since she is basically the female lead here, I was ready to shoot an arrow through her forehead at the film's half-way point just to put an end to her bubbly babble.So watch it for the wonderful Ethel Waters as herself, for Joe E. Brown and his well delivered smart comments and acrobatics, and for the infancy of the urban working-class banter that will become Warner Brothers stock and trade during the early 30's.

When I saw "On With the Show" on Turner Classic Movies, I was very disappointed in the poor quality of the picture and the sound, but was very pleased by some clever dialog, although realizing some of it was not so clever, and I was absolutely in awe of the performance of Betty Compson.She was not only lovely just to look at, in her big scene near the end, she stole the show.She was more than charming -- she was adorable.Joe E. Brown's presence in a movie is usually enough to make me skip it but here he is toned down considerably, is not so silly, and he performs an eccentric dance with a surprising athleticism. I actually liked him in "On With the Show." Sally O'Neil was surprising. She sounded at first like some precocious child, with little-girlish voice, but when this caterpillar bursts out of her cocoon, she is a star.One other aspect of this film is almost unique for its time: The cast is integrated. Right there on stage are black dancers with white dancers, although to be accurate there is not interaction between white and black. Still, it was a start.Ethel Waters made what was apparently her film debut, and surely was an immediate hit since she was already a star in other media.A 21st century viewer of "On With the Show" must consider context, remember the times in which it was made, during the changeover from silents to talkies, to be able to appreciate it fully.There were lots of great individual talents involved, and a viewer should try to ignore the poor framing of the scenes and the poor quality of the sound, at least some of which might be because of the age or even generation of the print.But appreciate the historicity as well as the talent, and you will enjoy "On With the Show" as much as I did.