Paramount on Parade (1930) DVD-R

Starring Richard Arlen, Jean Arthur, Mischa Auer, Clara Bow, Mary Brian, Clive Brook,
Virginia Bruce, Nancy Carroll, Ruth Chatterton, Maurice Chevalier, Gary Cooper, Cecil
Cunningham, Leon Errol, Stuart Erwin, Kay Francis, Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher, Phillips
Holmes, Fredric March, Jack Oakie, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette, William Powell, Charles
'Buddy' Rogers, Fay Wray
Directed by Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H. Knopf,
Rowland V. Lee, Ernst Lubitsch, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, A. Edward Sutherland,
Frank Tuttle

Print: black/white & color
Runtime: 77 min.
Genre: musical

Considered the best of the all-star 'studio' musicals of 1929 and 1930, Paramount on
Parade utilized the talents of practically everyone on the Paramount Pictures payroll. Under
the supervision of British musical-comedy favorite Elsie Janis, 11 top directors contributed
to the project: Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H.
Knopf, Rowland V. Lee, Ernst Lubitsch, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, Edward
Sutherland and Frank Tuttle. Introduced by masters of ceremonies Jack Oakie, Skeets
Gallegher and Leon Errol, the film is a vaudeville-like maelstrom of musical duets, comedy
sketches, occasional dramatic interludes, and spectacular production numbers. To
mention all the highlights would take a book in itself but among them are Nancy Carroll's
rendition of 'Dancing to Save Your Sole' (performed inside a giant shoe!); Maurice Chevalier
(and chorus) soaring heavenward in 'Sweeping the Clouds Away' ; child actress Mitzi
Green's dead-on impersonations of Chevalier, George Arliss, Moran &sMack and Helen
'Boop-a-doop' Kane; Ernst Lubitsch's witty staging of an Apache dance in the style of a
polite boudoir farce, with Chevalier (again) and Evelyn Brent; Clara Bow's saucy 'I'm True to
the Navy Now' ; the wish-fulfillment sketch 'Impulses,' in which George Bancroft and Kay
Francis delightedly upset a dinner party by saying what's really on their minds; and best of
all, 'Murder Will Out,' a murder-mystery parody wherein Fu Manchu (Warner Oland) bumps
off Sherlock Holmes (Clive Brook) and Philo Vance (William Powell) when they refuse to give
him proper credit for his killing of Jack Oakie. Only the dramatic sketch with Frederic March
and Ruth Chatterton truly creaks when seen today.