MartinHafer In an intimate but swank looking room, Harry Warren plays the piano and sings a bit with his rather thin voice. Most of the time, he's joined by singers like Gladys Britten, The Leaders (a male quartet) and Margie Hines. Hines is easy to pick out because she was one of several women who provided the voice for Betty Boop. She also was one of three women who voiced Olive Oyl in the Fleischer Brothers' "Popeye" cartoons. She sings pretty much like Betty Boop (poor lady). The dance team of Marguerite and Le Roy also dance about the piano. In addition, several vignettes are featured, such as Warren's famous tunes "42nd Street". While I might not consider Warren the greatest composer...nor would many others (such as Irving Berlin), his tunes are very nicely presented in this short. And, he certainly was VERY prolific--with over 1700 entries on IMDb!!! Enjoyable.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . but I assume that Warner Bros. is making every effort to insure that such a thing is as unpleasant as it sounds. The "pepper pot" in question is formally titled HARRY WARREN: AMERICA'S FOREMOST COMPOSER. Hopefully, this is meant to be as tongue-in-cheek as it sounds, as the slicked-back greaser geezer presented here as Warren can scarcely be taken seriously. Ditto for the mixed company warbling his ditties. I can picture this dinner party as occupying the Fifth or Sixth Circle of Warren's Personal Hell, as a sad-sack crew of mealy-mouthed losers mangle, mumble, and otherwise masticate the lyrics to Warren's tunes. The infantile-voiced blonde is particularly grating, guaranteed to jangle a composer's last nerve. But this just HAS to be some sort of Warner's Roast (perhaps taken ten steps too far), as the camera pans in on a Mixologist loudly shaking a drink in the middle of a soft and now unintelligible love ode. As another soloist delivers one of Harry's hallmark hymns slumped over in her easy chair, cigarette smoke and booze fumes wafting everywhere, it's pretty clear that Mr. Warren's goose is pretty thoroughly cooked.

kidboots A short subject featuring Harry Warren at the piano and other performers singing and dancing to a medley of his songs. A word of warning - the short I saw was obviously cut and Hal LeRoy (even though he was listed in the credits as "LeRoy") was not featured in the "Young and Healthy" number. There was also some dancing featured in "Shadow Waltz" but again he was not among the dancers.Okay, Harry Warren may not have been "America's Foremost Composer" but he was certainly among them and oh those songs. "The Shadow Waltz", "Young and Healthy", "Ooh That Kiss", "42nd Street", "Have a Little Faith in Me", "Crying for the Carolines", "Would You Like To Take a Walk" and "Cheerful Little Earful" are his songs featured in the short.

wmorrow59 Although he isn't as well remembered as contemporaries Irving Berlin or Cole Porter, songwriter Harry Warren has many great standards to his credit: "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," "Jeepers Creepers," "We're in the Money," "I Only Have Eyes for You," and numerous others. Fans of Busby Berkeley's musicals made for Warner Brothers in the '30s will certainly remember Warren's songs, and so will baby boomers who grew up watching the Warner Studio's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, for it was those cartoons that really kept the songs alive and passed them along to the next generation and beyond.This little musical short presents Harry Warren himself, a rather modest-looking gentleman in a tux seated at a piano in a swanky Art Deco apartment, surrounded by elegantly dressed folk sipping cocktails. When someone praises Harry and calls for a speech, he demurs bashfully and insists [with genuine, non-actorly awkwardness] that he's no good at making speeches, and proceeds to play his songs instead. And that's what we're here for: one great song after another, a couple of which have been given comic, altered lyrics for the occasion, usually harping on how much money Harry has made from his hits (which suggests a touch of envy and anxiety in the depths of the Depression). A couple of numbers are performed by Margie Hines, a Betty Boop sound-alike who later supplied the voice for Olive Oyl when Mae Questel was otherwise engaged.These Vitaphone shorts provided exposure for studio contract artists and performers, and also gave the technicians extra work and a chance to experiment: during the rendition of "Shadow Waltz" there's artsy lighting with silhouettes and such. This film is a pleasant little treat for fans of '30s musicals, but it's also an interesting example of the way the studios promoted their wares at the time, for the short ends with an excerpt from their current big release, 42ND STREET, which of course featured several of Warren's best known songs. In a sense this short film (intriguingly identified as a "Vitaphone Pepper Pot" in the closing credits) served as a trailer for the main event.