Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Shorts MIA again

After this morning's showing of The Letter, I got up to get myself a drink and to go to the bathroom. By the time I got back, TCM was running a short that looked like Efrem Zimbalist Sr. playing the violin. That's one of half a dozen or so shorts that were released in 1926 in conjunction with Don Juan, the first feature film to have a synchronized score. (Although they didn't use talking in Don Juan, some of the shorts had talking or singing.)

The thing is, I can't be certain whether it was Zimbalist. When I looked at TCM's schedule page, it doesn't have any of the shorts listed for today. In this case it's particularly irritating because a very early Vitaphone short like this is exactly the sort of thing I would love to post about, even if the short itself is nothing spectacular. Zimbalist simply stands there playing a couple of violin pieces, with accompaniment on the piano from an unseen pianist. Well, I suppose the pianist may have been seen at the beginning, in the portion that I missed.

No comments: