Page 28 - CinemaRecord Cover Section # 45

A Waltz

Around Melbourne

Which film holds the
record for the number of re-
issues, each time into a
different city theatre? – and
it’s not Gone With The Wind.
That distinction belongs
to Viennese Nights, a screen
original for Warner Bros. by
Sigmund Romberg and Oscar
Hammerstein. A late entry in the first
cycle of sound musicals, it was
considered ‘lost in the glut’ by the time
it reached Melbourne.
Opening at the Capitol in 1931 it
ran for two weeks then moved to the
suburbs, where word-of-mouth caught
up with it.
The film was ambitious; a bitter-
sweet story within a story, designed to
show that the composer and librettist of
Broadway shows could be equally
original on film. Coming from the studio
that was making a specialty of urban grit
and snappy dialogue, the schmaltz was
kept to a minimum. It was the sort of
fare that audiences were seeking.
For Viennese Nights, suburban
theatres that did not usually run
newspaper block ads began to do so.
Management at the Merri North
Fitzroy used the occasion to include a
picture of their refurbished stage, to
show how nice it was. Business
boomed at the Regent South Yarra, but
the manager was unlucky enough to
receive a visit by the Health
Department Inspector during a Full
House when he had a spill-over crowd
sitting in the aisles.
Viennese Nights was re-issued
simultaneously at the Majestic,
Flinders Street and the Britannia,
Bourke Street in September 1931. The
next week it moved to the Paramount.
At this stage the film was also making
its second trip around the suburbs.
The film was back in the city at the
Plaza in 1934, then surprisingly, at the
State in August 1939. This time, one
reviewer pointed out that it was a nice
film, but motion picture techniques had
moved on a bit. A Vitaphone
production, the original release was
sound-on-disc and the colour was the
early two-strip process.
But that wasn’t the film’s last
hurrah, - it turned up at the Australia
in August 1941 – a life in the city

28 2004 CINEMARECORD