Harry Warren: America's Foremost Composer (1933)

Please don't spend money on this.

Good concept, poorly executed.

best movie i've ever seen.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This pleasant short subject has Harry Warren playing some of his musical hits. As hits were coming to him for over 30 years and he started getting big time royalties in the middle 20s, a short subject here only covers a small portion of his career. The setting is a swank party where the guests ask Warren to perform some of his hits. After that we get medley of songs, sung and danced to by the various guests. The Shadow Waltz from Goldiggers of 1933 was nicely staged with couples dancing in silhouette.The finale starts with Warren playing the title song from 42nd Street and then it dissolves to the famous Busby Berkeley dance number from the film. As both 42nd Street and Goldiggers of 1933 were still playing this film was quite a plug for both.Warren won three Oscars for Best Song in his career and not one of them had been composed yet. He's overlooked many times because he eschewed Broadway for Hollywood. But I daresay his melodies will live on and on longer than some of his contemporaries precisely because we can see the performances over and over.Salvatore Anthony Guaragna from Brooklyn, aka Harry Warren you were one of the greatest.

Harry Warren: America's Foremost Composer (1933) *** (out of 4) Warner promotional short for their 42ND STREET has composer Harry Warren being asked to say a speech but he informs everyone that he's too shy so instead he does a few songs. You and Healthy, I Found a Million Dollar Baby, Would You Like to Take a Walk?, Have a Little Faith in Me and Forty-Second Street are just a few of the songs performed here. Yes, this is just a promotional piece but it's actually a very entertaining one and it thankfully doesn't just show clips from the motion picture. I really enjoyed how much life these songs were given not only by Warren but those dancing everything out. The film runs a brief 8-minutes but it's packed with great music, some nice visuals and enough action for two movies. I think most music experts would say Warren wasn't the "foremost composer" but it seems time has remembered him a lot better and he's been given a lot more credit than he was when this was originally released.

This short was shown on Turner Classic Film Network at 7:40 P.M. today, and I watched it. It is not so unusual from other shorts from other studios. MASTER OF MELODY was a short from Paramount in 1930 starring Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. But Harry Warren is intriguing. He is now recognized as the equal (as a master song writer) to Herbert, Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart (and Hammerstein), Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Youmans, Weill, Styne, Bernstein, Sondheim, Lerner and Loewe , and a handful of others. Was he America's foremost composer? Not really - Gershwin had made a mark in serious music that Warren never did. In fact, Gershwin, Ives, Coplan, Hanson, and a few other composers of serious music have better claim to the title "America's Foremost Composer.Still it is a nice little film, with Warren playing his popular films (from the Warner Brothers musicals - like WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE A WALK or I FOUND A MILLION DOLLAR BABY (IN A FIVE AND TEN CENT STORE). Frequently new words are added to make the song fit the party atmosphere of the film (Warren is seated at a piano playing for his guests). The film ends with part of the FORTY SECOND STREET finale as a coming attraction. It was a good film short, and a glimpse of things to come in the next big film musical hit.

This was one of the weapons in WB's promotional arsenal for their big budget production of "Forty Second Street." Harry Warren was undoubtedly ONE of America's foremost composers--- demonstrated by the fact that many of the 75+ year old songs in his catalog are still known (and used in modern soundtracks) today. That said, I have to grumble when this implies he reigned supreme over the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin or even Cole Porter in 1933--- Warner's puffery to be sure. This Vitaphone 'Pepper pot' short (weren't these shot in NYC?) is essentially Harry at the piano playing a menage of his well known songs, culminating with a short cut to the finale of Lloyd Bacon's 42nd Street. Somewhere in that shot are Ginger Rogers, Toby Wing and Una Merkel tapping away like mad. Interesting curio!