Gus Arnheim and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra (1928) Online

Gus Arnhein and His Cocoanut Grove Orchestra (1928)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Early Vitaphone/Warner short has, as the title suggests, Gus Arnheim and his orchestra doing four numbers including Irving Berlin's I Can't Do Without You. As with many of these early musical shorts, this one here really doesn't feature too much "direction" or style as the camera is pretty much set up in front of the stage where the musicians are and they play. That's pretty much it with the exception of a handful of edits where the filmmaker gives us a close-up of one of the instrument playing. As you'd expect, this type of film is going to have a very limited appeal so it's mainly for those who enjoy this era of music or film buffs you want to check out all the early talking pictures. I was a little surprised to see how good the music sounded as many of these early sound films suffer from poor audio. Everything was quite crisp sounding and just by listening you'd never expect this to have come out so early in the game. The four numbers are certainly above average with I Can't Do Without You really stealing the picture.

Like a lot of the Big Band film shorts I recently DVR'd off of the Turner Classics film channel, this one has a lot of snappy music that will appeal to fans of the jazz and swing era. Most of these bands had an indentifiable front man; some of the ones I've seen featured Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, Johnny Green and Louie Prima. But since I don't know who Gus Arnheim was, I was at a loss as to which band member he actually was. So in that respect he wasn't your typical front man. Besides that, this short appeared to be filmed with no audience, which again put it a bit out of the mainstream of what I've already seen. Nevertheless, the music was lively, and the crooning trio at the start of the show had some nice harmony going for them. So this was another welcome offering from TCM with it's insight into the musical sound of the era.

Back in the 20s and 30s, Vitaphone experimented with sound films through their musical shorts. Though, as few theaters in 1928 were equipped for sound, I did wonder as I watched this just how many folks saw it when it was first released. I do agree with another review I just read for this short in particular--it's probably got very limited appeal today. I personally love the old Vitaphone shorts and could watch them all--but realize that early talkies don't necessarily work well today as they are a bit dated. However, the Turner restoration is virtually perfect--with great sound and a very nice picture--allowing lovers of old-time music to enjoy as well as to preserve a copy for posterity. And, despite limited appeal, this took a lot of work--cleaning up the copies as well as matching up sound discs with the films--as they were recorded separately.

As for "Gus Arnhein and His Coconut Grove Orchestra", this is an agreeable short--and one of the earlier Vitaphone released. While the band is just about totally forgotten today, they had a nice sound and are a nice representative of the era. And, like most Vitaphone films of the day, the camera is mostly stationary and there are no fancy effects--just a straight recording of the act--which included several nice songs. Worth seeing.