The Show of Shows

The Show of Shows is a lavish all talking Vitaphone musical revue film that cost $850,000 to make. The Show of Shows was Warner Bros.' fifth color movie; the first four were The Desert Song , On With the Show , Gold Diggers of Broadway and Paris . This movie featured most of the contemporary Warner Bros. film stars. The movie was styled in the same format as the earlier MGM film The Hollywood Revue of 1929. The Show of Shows was photographed almost entirely in Technicolor; the cost of the film meant that although it performed well at the box office, it did not return as much profit as the... MGM film. The Show of Shows was originally meant and advertised as being in all color-talking movie, however, twenty-one minutes was in black and white, the first part, seventeen minutes and the first four minutes of part two. Seen today in incomplete black-and-white duplicate prints, it remains of historical interest, showing the talent working at Warner Bros. in the early talkie period. The film features all the stars then working at Warner Bros. except for Dorothy Mackaill and Al Jolson.
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