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It's a Great Life

IT'S A GREAT LIFE

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CREDITS

1929, 87 minutes, B&W with Technicolor Sequences.
Producer, Sam Wood; Director, Sam Wood; Screenplay, Al Boasberg and Willard Mack; Story, Byron Morgan and Alfred Block; Cinematography, J. Peverell Marley; Dance Direction, Sammy Lee.

CAST

Casey Hogan, Rosetta Duncan; Babe Hogan, Vivian Duncan; Jimmy Dean, Lawrence Gray; David Parker, Jed Prouty; Benny Friedman, Benny Rubin.

SONGS

Smile, Smile, Smile; Lady Love; I'm the Son-of-A- ;I'm Following You; It Must Be An Old Spanish Custom; Hoosier Hop; I'm Sailing On a Sunbeam by Dave Dryer and Ballard MacDonald; Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella (On a Rainy Day) by Irving Kahal, Francis Wheeler and Sammy Fain.

PLOT SYNOPSIS

". . .the Duncan Sisters. . .played a couple of sisters working in the sheet-music section of a large department store. They're fired, enter vaudeville, split up when one of them falls in love with a piano player (Lawrence Gray), become re-united and, finally, return to the stage."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

NOTES

"Comedy and songs featured in more-or-less equal proportions, but the [Duncan] girls unfortunately couldn't quite pull off either to the patrons' satisfaction, and the film bombed."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

"Here we can see and hear how audiences grew weary of backstage movies. For reels and reels it goes on, Rosetta Duncan and Lawrence Gray yelling and trading insults until finally poor Vivian Duncan collapses into a coma. Only at MGM would delrium be an excuse to put a big Technicolor sequence into a small-time story, and here it is. . ."
- Richard Barrios, A Song In The Dark

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