User Reviews

This is a short from Vitaphone and it can be found on the "Warner Brothers Big Band, Jazz & Swing" DVD collection. This set consists of six DVDs and almost 11 hours of shorts! Bobby Hackett and his orchestra are the stars of this short. They play some fast swing music that would have appealed to young adults back in the day. Even now, I think some teens might like this because it's amazingly fast and great music to jitterbug to--if anyone does this any more! Then, Les Lieber plays a penny whistle as Hackett's band accompanies--and once again, it's fast-paced and quite enjoyable. Following this is Nan Wynne singing "They Say"--which is much slower but very, very smooth. Then, Hackett and his group play a dixieland jazz sort of song--which is quite nice but a bit slower than usual for such music. Finally, Leith Stevens and his band play a peppy version of "Tea For Two". And, in the end, all of the singers and bands join in for the song. Overall, quite enjoyable.

By the way, I hope I spelled Lieber and Wynne's names correctly--they were not listed in the credits for this film on IMDb.

Leith Stevens leads his orchestra in a nice assortment of standards in a variety of musical styles, including Dixieland and swing. Mr. Stevens was a popular orchestra leader of the era who later became a musical director for an assortment of television shows and his facility with more than one style of music, so important for his later career, is much in evidence here.

Director Lloyd French is probably best remembered these days from his period at the Hal Roach studio, where he directed several Laurel and Hardy movies. He varies the standard composition of these musical shorts with some short cuts during the final number.

Saturday Night Swing Club (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Warner/Vitaphone short is a pretty good one as it features a live version of the show, which was usually heard on the radio. Of course the biggest difference is that people actually get to see the acts that they usually hear performing on the show. Paul Douglas introduces all of the events as we get a wide range of numbers including 'Panamania' from Sam Coslow and Al Siegel, 'The Jazzband Ball', which should be a familiar number for those who watch these shorts as we even get a bit of Larry Clinton doing 'The Dipsy Doodle', which would eventually get made into its own short in 1940. For the most part this is a pretty entertaining little film even if none of the songs rich a "terrific" level. At just 9-minutes it's hard to get bored with anything going on and for the most part this short is going to interest those fans of music from this period. Edith Dick gets to sing a couple decent numbers and while she has a good voice it's certainly not going to make you rush out and look for more of her songs.