Mack Sennett Featurettes with Bing Crosby

Customer Reviews:

Early Bing delivers..........2001-07-23

Here is a fun-filled disc of "short subjects" featuring Bing Crosby.

Designed as filler for matinees, between the newsreel, cartoon, serial chapter, and two main features, these wonderful shorts are fine examples of light, romantic comedy with Bing and his music leading the charge.

Bing made several of these shorts for Mack Sennett, while dueling with the owners of the Coconut Grove nightclub over his contract. Blacklisted by the Club's owners because of the dispute, no musician in the Hollywood union could work with Bing, and he had to relocate to New York.

Unfortunately, not all of the Sennett shorts with Bing are on the disc. Three or four appear to be missing, and I can only hope for a second volume to be released.

There are four shorts on the DVD, all from 1931. Each is about 20 minutes in length, and the prints K-tel used are pretty fair. They also include some songs from a 1932 short Bing made for Paramount (which is annoying, because this short is particularly rare, so why not just include the whole thing as a bonus?).

In any case, the disc is worth the price, and offers us a look at a young Bing Crosby in 1931, just before his breakthrough to stardom the next year. Between his radio show in New York, his hit records, and these film shorts, his success was assured, and Bing was able to return to Hollywood as a success.

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