Opening Night

Today, April 18, happens to be the opening day of the latest TCM Classic Film Festival, something I am happy to see survived the David Zaslav-related upheaval of last year. I of course will not be there, not being able to afford it and being on the east coast with my elderly father anyway. Dad's not particularly interested in classic films, and besides, if I thought he were up for a cross-country trip, we would have gone to Dallas to see my sister in conjunction with the recent eclipse.

Personal information out of the way, I'm really bringing up the opening day of the festival because I recently came across one of the old Vitaphone Varieties, Opening Night.

The opening night in question is the first night of a new stage play that is supposed to be the big event of the season. Lots of people are trying to get in to see it, cajoling the woman at the box office in an attempt to get tickets. One woman, Mrs. Pendleton, claims that her husband was supposed to have left a ticket for her at the box office, but the cashier cannot find it, leaving Mrs. Pendleton to stand out in the lobby until her husband comes.

When he finally does come, he's unable to produce the right tickets, which causes quite a bit more bickering between the two, until.... Well, I'm not going to give away how the short ends, even though it's a brief seven minutes.

Opening Night is the sort of material where I can see why the audiences of 1931 might have enjoyed it as a short before the feature presentation. Hollywood was making shorts out of various forms of vaudeville entertainment, both musical and sketch comedy like this. I can also see, however, why audiences of today would have a fair bit more difficulty getting into the material. It really feels old-fashioned, and technically, the movie is miles away from what we'd get just a few years later. Those technical deficiencies are easier to forgive in a feature film, especially if the film has a fun plot.

On the other hand, it's nice to have all these routines preserved for posterity, so future generations can see what audiences of the day might have found funny. Many of them have been released by the Warner Archive in various box sets of Vitaphone shorts. I haven't been able to find Opening Night on one yet, but I also haven't looked as closely as perhaps I ought to.