Everybody Sing! Community Singing in the American Picture Palace by Esther M. Morgan-Ellis (review)

Community singing as part of the program at a typical movie palace in the silent era was so common that film historians have never examined it in detail. Professor Morgan-Ellis has now provided the definitive study of a phenomenon similar to Emerson's "Over-Soul," a collective spirit arising out of a shared experience that unites an audience and turns an auditorium of individuals into a vibrant organism. But the community sing-along is only part of her extraordinary study. She has also researched exhibition practices in Chicago in the late 1920s, and by an exhaustive study of the trades has been able to reconstruct a typical program at a 1927 movie palace, a boon to anyone who has wondered what movie going was like at a time when audiences did not just see a film, as they do today, but a film which came at the end of a program that began with an organ solo followed by a stage show. The film was almost an afterthought. Sometimes it was a matter of serving the best wine first, which was not the case at Chicago's Oriental Theatre on October 18, 1927. The program that day consisted of an organ solo, community singing, a stage presentation with song and dance, and finally the movie, MGM's Spring Fever with William Haines and Joan Crawford. While one can only read about the musical part of the program, which the author describes in vivid detail, the Spring Fever DVD is available in the Warner Archive Collection.

It may seem odd to some, but movie palace organists were often cult figures, so popular that exhibitors tried to keep them from defecting to other theatres, realizing that their loyal fans would follow them. The best organists like Henri A. Keates could put patrons in the mood, often suiting the music to the movie. The music would be audience favorites, but at the more prestigious theatres, the organist might play classical selections. Although the author does not offer an example from the sound era of a charismatic organist, anyone who saw Ethel Smith play the organ in MGM musicals like Bathing Beauty (1944) would understand how Chicagoans could be attracted to Keates. Smith had a disarming smile, moving her fingers delicately across the keys and making everything seem so effortless. Bandleaders like Paul Ash with his distinctive red hair were also local celebrities. Ash would have the musicians move from the pit to the stage for a variety show, with the organist providing the transition music.

The author spends much time on community singing from pictorial lantern slides on which were inscribed the lyrics and an exhortation to sing along. The practice originated in vaudeville and then became part of the program at nickelodeons. Before he was a movie mogul and head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn teamed up with songwriter Harry Ruby in an nickelodeon act called "Ruby and Edwards," in which Ruby played the piano and "Edwards/Cohn" would sing from illustrated slides, encouraging the audience to join in.

Although the heyday of community singing in movie theatres was the silent era, the practice declined but did not end with the coming of sound. Max Fleischer's Screen Songs (1929-38) were popular sing-along shorts. Today, the tradition continues in the singing of hymns at religious services and at certain concerts when a performer might invite the audience to sing along.

Everybody Sing! should be in the library of everyone interested in film exhibition during the silent era. It is doubly valuable for its reproduction of actual slides, some in color, that were used to accompany songs and of the ads from trade publications that evoke the era the author so lovingly recreates.