Babes on Swing Street

Event Date as Display String:

Sunday, October 6, 2019, 5:00pm - 6:10pm

Location:

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

URL:

https://harvardfilmarchive.org/calendar/babes-on-swing-street-2019-10

Event Description:

A spirited example of the B-musical, Universal's "Babes on Swing
Street" was an early vehicle for star-in-training Ann Blyth — as Carol
Curtis — then only fifteen and at the very start of her career, just
before her breakthrough role as Mildred Pierce's venomous daughter.
Babes on Swing Street takes delight in its threadbare musical numbers,
staged as the bricolage inventions of a youth social club raising
money for music conservatory scholarships by putting on a fundraising
extravaganza in a convention hall surreptitiously borrowed from
Carol's wealthy but parsimonious aunt. Among the highlights are the
film's hilarious opening number by an aspiring hoofer simultaneously
tap-dancing and shaving a customer at her father's
music-school-adjacent barber shop. With its college sweaters, trendy
dances and proto-jive talk, the rarely screened film offers
fascinating glimpses into WWII-era youth culture that anticipate
Fifties Hollywood's programmatic and often painful appeal to younger
audiences.

UID:

http://uid.trumba.com/event/138586662

Event Start Date as Date Type:

Sunday, October 6, 2019 - 17:00 to 18:10

Thumbnail:

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Detail Image:

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Feature Image:

Featured:

No

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