Tag: 1930s

Happy 113th Birthday, Annette Hanshaw!

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Today marks the 113th anniversary of the birth of Cladrite Sweetheart Annette Hanshaw, so we thought we’d celebrate by revisiting this post, which originally appeared on January 14, 2010.

Annette Hanshaw, one of the most revered performers in the Cladrite Radio pantheon, was a very busy gal for a few years in the late 1920s and early ’30s. She recorded dozens of memorably jazzy pop sides (or were they poppy jazz?) between 1926 and 1934, under a variety of names and for several record labels (as was so often the norm in those days), and made innumerable radio appearances between 1932 and 1935. In fact, the readers of Radioland magazine voted Hanshaw, known in those days as “The Personality Girl,” their favorite singer of 1935.

Tommy Dorsey himself once called Hanshaw “a musician’s singer.”

So it was a huge loss to the world of pop and jazz music when Hanshaw retired from show business after marrying Pathé Records executive Herman “Wally” Rose. She made her last record in 1934 and appeared on the radio for the final time in 1937.

In recent years, much of Hanshaw’s recorded output has made its way to CD, boosting her current popularity and keeping her in the public eye. Her songs are even featured prominently in director Nina Paley’s 2009 animated film Sita Sings the Blues.

Though a rumored pair of mysterious demo records, cut many years after her retirement when Hanshaw was said to be considering a comeback, have never been released to the public, some “homemade” recordings Hanshaw did surface on YouTube.

The person who posted the recordings offered the following background:

These two selections are the best sounding of a batch of homemade recordings that Annette Hanshaw did. Her husband copied them onto a tape for a friend of mine. I don’t know when they were made but on one of the records she refers to “Steve Cochran’s looks”. He was a big movie star for a couple of years around 1950. So that’s a hint. Unfortunately the sound on the others is pretty bad.

For Hanshaw fans, these recordings, even lacking as they admittedly are in fidelity and clarity, are an unexpected and delightful gift. They make us wish our Annette had mustered her courage and taken the plunge on that 1950s comeback. And for those who have somehow not been yet exposed to Hanshaw’s delightful stylings of the 1920s and ’30s, just keep listening to Cladrite Radio. You’ll quickly become very familiar with her work.

A New Deal in Video Games

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We’re not what might be termed avid gamers. We kill a few idle minutes now and then playing Bejeweled on our smartphone, and we’ll play Mahjong on our laptop and then. We even own a first-generation Wii and have flirted with bowling a perfect game on it more than once.

But we own no XBox, no PS4, no … em, Gameboy? (Are those still a thing?) And we certainly don’t pretend to have our fingers on the pulse of what’s the latest and greatest thing coming down the gaming pike at any given time.

But there’s a game currently garnering a good deal of buzz that we’re quite excited about (and we think you will be, too). It’s called Cuphead, and it’s the first effort from a Canadian developer called Studio MDHR. Its animation is hand-drawn, as was the norm long ago, and best of all, it very faithfully reproduces the look of 1930s cartoons (particularly, to our eyes, the work of the Fleischer Brothers, best known for their Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor cartoons).

The soundtrack will feature original jazz tunes, composed by Kristofer Maddigan, that will, according to the company’s website, “be recorded live with a group of musicians in the vein of 1930′s music.” We do hope, however, that the final product will feature music that is more authentically 1930s in flavor than is heard in the trailers below; that’s our only hesitation about the project at this point in time.

Cuphead won’t be available for purchase until 2015, but we trust it’ll be well worth the wait. Hec, we’ll likely come to consider Cuphead the Official Video Game of Cladrite Radio!

Time to Celebrate!

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Big news! We reached our goal—thanks to a very generous donation from a kind Cladrite Radio listener that came just before the deadline—so we can all celebrate the fact that the pleas for donations have now come to an end and Cladrite Radio will remain “on the air” for at least another 12 months.

But there are surely a few of you who meant to show your support but just didn’t get around to it. And here’s the thing: As pleased (and grateful) as we are to have reached our goal of $500, another $200 in donations would have allowed us to double our server capacity with Live365, our streaming provider.

Think of all the additional music that would allow us to add to our playlist!

So, in this final (we promise) fundraising announcement, we encourage you to scurry on over to http://www.tinyurl.com/cladrite and give what you can. If we take in another $200, it’ll mean that many more toe-tapping tunes of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s for you to enjoy over the next year.

And if we don’t quite make it to $200, we’ll put the additional money aside toward next year’s contract renewal.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got some celebrating to do, and our four best gals (see below) are growing impatient.

Keep the Music Alive and Streaming!

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We’re about ten or twelve days into our fundraising drive to keep Cladrite Radio alive and streaming; the renewal of our annual contract with Live365, our streaming provider, comes due in mid-April. If we’ve not reached our goal of $500 by the 15th of next month, the best-case scenario is that the number of recordings that we’re able to offer, the range of performance styles and genres of music, the variety of orchestras and vocalists will become much narrower than what you’ve grown accustomed to.

Worst-case scenario? The music will stop altogether.

We recognize that sounds a bit dramatic, but we’re giving it to you straight. Ou budget is very tight this year, and unless you, our listeners, come through for us, a belt-tightening (or worse) will be unavoidable, and there will be less of the music we all love to be enjoyed.

The good news is, a few loyal listeners have come through with contributions—we’re just under 20% of the way to our target of $500—and there’s still time for you, too, to play a role in keeping alive the stream of toe-tapping tunes. Every dollar helps, of course, but we’ve got some enticing premiums to for those who chip in at various levels.

$10 — A ten-spot will bring you a Cladrite Radio magnet for your refrigerator, your office cube, any metallic surface that could do with some decorating.

$25 — Send us twenty-five dollars and we’ll let you assist us in creating an hour of programming on Cladrite Radio: We’ll devote sixty minutes to playing your favorite songs from the Cladrite Era, your favorite artists, and when possible, your favorite songs performed by your favorite artists. And we’ll do our best to schedule that hour of programming in a time slot that suits you, so that you can invite friends, colleagues and family to listen in.

$50 — Slip us fifty bucks, and we’ll send you a Cladrite Radio t-shirt in your size of choice, plus you’ll get to help us create an hour of programming (and what the heck, we’ll throw in a magnet, too).

Don’t wait. Show your support for Cladrite Radio today.





Happy birthday, Kay Fwancis!

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This post is a revised version of one that appeared on January 10, 2012:

For decades, actress Kay Francis, a big star in the 1930s, was all but forgotten by contemporary critics and audiences, but not so today. The good folks at Turner Classic Movies, bless their hearts, have worked hard to place her pictures back into the spotlight.

Francis, born Katherine Edwina Gibbs on January 13, 1905, in Oklahoma City, starred primarily in what are sometimes dismissively dubbed “women’s pictures,” but her work usually rises above even the most trite and sentimental of plots and premises.

On Monday, TCM again honors Francis with what has become an annual birthday tribute, airing ten of her pictures between the hours of 6am and 8pm. Though TCM has omitted some of Francis’s best work from the tribute this time around — she’s wonderful in the Ernst Lubitsch classic Trouble in Paradise, and she excelled when paired with William Powell in several pictures in the early Thirties, especially the romantic comedy Jewel Robbery and the tear-jerker romance One Way Passage, both released in 1932 — you should, if you’ve never been exposed to the glamor and grit that is Kay Francis, be readying your DVR, even as you read this, to capture all fourteen hours of the tribute. (Those who are already Francis fans won’t need the above nudge.)

Here’s the full line-up (all times eastern):

6:00 A.M. — STREET OF WOMEN (1932)
A property developer is torn between his wife and his mistress.
Cast: Kay Francis, Roland Young, Alan Dinehart. Dir: Archie Mayo

7:15 A.M. — ANOTHER DAWN (1937)
An officer’s wife at a British outpost in Africa falls for another man.
Cast: Kay Francis, Errol Flynn, Ian Hunter. Dir: William Dieterle

8:30 A.M. — STOLEN HOLIDAY (1937)
A Paris fashion model marries a fortune hunter to protect him from the law.
Cast: Kay Francis, Claude Rains, Ian Hunter. Dir: Michael Curtiz

10:00 A.M. — SECRETS OF AN ACTRESS (1938)
A leading lady falls for a married architect who’s invested in her play.
Cast: Kay Francis, George Brent, Ian Hunter. Dir: William Keighley

11:15 A.M. — WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT (1938)
Years after their break-up, a couple finds each other all over again.
Cast: Kay Francis, Pat O’Brien, Ralph Forbes. Dir: Stanley Logan

12:45 P.M. — WOMEN IN THE WIND (1939)
Personal conflicts flare between competitors in a women’s air race.
Cast: Kay Francis, William Gargan, Victor Jory. Dir: John Farrow

2:00 P.M. — IT’S A DATE (1940)
Mother-and-daughter singers vie for the same man and the same stage part.
Cast: Deanna Durbin, Kay Francis, Walter Pidgeon. Dir: William A. Seiter

3:45 P.M. — PLAY GIRL (1940)
An aging gold digger takes a young woman under her wing.
Cast: Kay Francis, James Ellison, Mildred Coles. Dir: Frank Woodruff

5:15 P.M. — ALLOTMENT WIVES (1945)
Unscrupulous women marry servicemen for their pay.
Cast: Kay Francis, Paul Kelly, Otto Kruger. Dir: William Nigh

6:45 P.M. — DIVORCE (1945)
A frequently divorced woman sets her sights on a happily married man.
Cast: Kay Francis, Bruce Cabot, Helen Mack. Dir: William Nigh

For more on Kay Francis, check out Scott O’Brien’s well-received biography of the star, Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to be Forgotten–Her Life on Film and Stage, published by BearManor Media and out now in a revised and updated second edition.

P.S. The title of this post refers to the widely known fact that Francis had a rather noticeable speech impediment. Listen carefully when she pronounces her Rs, and you’ll hear it.