Maxine Sullivan sings the Sophie Tucker signature song in this soundie.
Soundies were short films, about three minutes in length. The were meant to be played on a machine called a Mills Panoram, a video jukebox that was typically to be found in bars, lounges, and similar venues. You put a dime in and got a performance from the ten on the machine. The movies would be changed weekly, and from 1940 through 1946, Mills and other companies produced more than two thousand soundies.
Miss Sullivan sings the song well in a musical sense, but puts no emotion into it, and neither do the smiling girls behind her. My reaction is based on having heard the song performed by Sophie Tucker, the last of the red-hot mamas. She first recorded it in 1910, had a milion-copy-selling recording with the Ted Lewis Band in 1926, and performed it many times on stage, radio, in films and on television as a raucous, angry, vengeful blues number. Miss Sullivan lacks all that.
Soundies were short films, about three minutes in length. The were meant to be played on a machine called a Mills Panoram, a video jukebox that was typically to be found in bars, lounges, and similar venues. You put a dime in and got a performance from the ten on the machine. The movies would be changed weekly, and from 1940 through 1946, Mills and other companies produced more than two thousand soundies.
Miss Sullivan sings the song well in a musical sense, but puts no emotion into it, and neither do the smiling girls behind her. My reaction is based on having heard the song performed by Sophie Tucker, the last of the red-hot mamas. She first recorded it in 1910, had a milion-copy-selling recording with the Ted Lewis Band in 1926, and performed it many times on stage, radio, in films and on television as a raucous, angry, vengeful blues number. Miss Sullivan lacks all that.