Soft Drinks and Sweet Music

One of the movies I DVRed was put into a spot a half hour longer than the movie, which meant tht there was more than enough time left for TCM to run a two-reeler in the remaining time. That short was one of Warner Bros.' "Broadway Brevities", called Soft Drinks and Sweet Musci.

Georgie Price (more on him later) plays George Harris, a soda jerk at a drug store in the days back when you could get a soda and ice cream and other good stuff at the drug store counter; think Dana Andrews' character in The Best Years of Our Lives before he went off to fight in the war. George is also an aspiring song writer, and has a girlfriend in one of the waitresses, Sally Ray (Sylvia Froos).

Up to the counter comes one Mr. Hayburn, who George has reason to think is a big Broadway producer. So George pitches his ideas in a series of ever more bizarre musical numbers. Does George get his big break?

I know it's just a two-reeler, but even at that, there's not enough of a plot or framing device tying the musical numbers together. The first number is still set in the drugstore and works, but the following ones not so much. Contrast this with another 1934 Warner Bros. two reeler (with the same director), Service With a Smile, which also has beautiful Technicolor, and a service-station theme that is smartly used.

As for Georgie Price, I'd never heard of him. It turns out he was a vaudeville star who for whatever reason was not able to make the move to movies once talking pictures came along. I wasn't able to find a copy of Soft Drinks and Sweet Music on the web, but did find some recordings of Price from the 1920s, such as this one singing Al Jolson's "California Here I Come":