The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

That's "À Nous la Liberté".

Bill

The phonograph factory itself becomes a sort of prison for the workers.


I recently saw "Hold That Ghost!" with Abbott & Costello, and a VV-XVII gets a few shots

estott wrote:The phonograph factory itself becomes a sort of prison for the workers.


I recently saw "Hold That Ghost!" with Abbott & Costello, and a VV-XVII gets a few shots

That was the scene when Bud Abbott said something like ".....that's a Victrola".

I always thought even in 1943, it was like a antique.

Lucius1958 wrote:That's "À Nous la Liberté".

Bill

Thanks for suggesting this title! I like Renè Clair but I didn't know of this movie. I'm looking forward to see it, now.

A Nous La Liberte, or Freedom for Us is a leftist 1931 French film by Rene Clair, a famous director. Clair was a Dadaist film maker in the 1920s. If you look at this clip from A Nous La Liberte, you will see a marked similarity to Charlie Chaplin's 1936 film, Modern Times. Clair was trying to show the increased mechanization of modern factory life where workers are treated more like prisoners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQG6gVxq6-c

In Canned Harmony (1912), a central prop is an Edison Standard Model B (equipped with Amberol Attachment) sporting a Fireside/Gem horn supported by a Hawthorne & Sheble No.5 crane missing its extension rod.

The film can be seen on Youtube from a fuzzy, unrestored print and no musical accompaniment. On Oct. 1, 2015 TCM aired a nicely restored version with accompaniment, and from this the details of the machine can easily be discerned.

Here's the Youtube version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLztVRPi5lg

George P.

Wifey and I saw "Crimson Peak" the other night, the new Guillermo del Toro horror-ish flick. Cylinder machines play pretty heavily into the plot of the movie. I'm not a cylinder guy (currently, anyway) so I don't know what the machines were. But at one point there was a machine on screen and I leaned forward a little in my chair ... prompted wifey to whisper "Don't even think about it ..."

Victrolacollector wrote:

estott wrote:The phonograph factory itself becomes a sort of prison for the workers.


I recently saw "Hold That Ghost!" with Abbott & Costello, and a VV-XVII gets a few shots

That was the scene when Bud Abbott said something like ".....that's a Victrola".

I always thought even in 1943, it was like a antique.

Bud doesn't actually say "Victrola", He says "wait" - pulls off a sheet over the machine and says "just as I thought! and Look at all the records!" And one of the records in this abandoned prohibition era road house was the 1941 contemporary recording of "The Blue Danube Waltz"

The Victor Victrola decal had been removed from the inside of the lid as well. No Victor (RCA) advertising in this Universal Film! It was more of a 20-25 year old machine than an antique.
Hold that Ghost was made in 1941 just after "Buck Privates" Audiences liked the Andrews Sisters in Buck Privates so well - scenes were tacked on to the beginning and ending of "Hold That Ghost" where they performed musical numbers with an aging Ted Lewis.

One of my favorite Abbot & Costello films - second only to "The Time of Their Lives"

How About "Penny Serenade" with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne from 1941
The whole story revolves around memories noted by an album of records representing the relationship of a young couple. They are played on their Electrola 9-16 or 9-18. There are camera views through the machine and from overhead (where an unfortunate modified set up that I assume was for filming has the pick up landing terribly out of tangent to the recording).

Memories begin with a chance meeting from a record with a hung groove (You Were Meant for Me from Broadway Melody) - being played on a Counter Demonstrator and broadcast outside at a music shop full of VTM Co. wares and a few oddly placed left over acoustic machines including a VV- 240 or 280 that makes an appearance later in the film in the couples apartment (before being replaced by the Electrola) (Both would have been "used" machines as they were both made before they met in 1929!) The music store scene ends with Grant's character carrying a large stack of records into a glassed listening booth where Dunne's Character will play them on a Credenza.

This movie made me really appreciate "Just a Memory" and McDowell's "To a Wild Rose"
I can't seem to stop buying both of them as a result.