''Delicious'' (1931) is an American
pre-Code
Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929LaSalle (2002), p. 1. and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorship guidelines, popularly known ...
Gershwin musical romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
film starring
Janet Gaynor and
Charles Farrell
Charles David Farrell (August 9, 1900 – May 6, 1990) was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor. Farrell is probably best recalled for his onscreen romances with actress Janet Gaynor ...
, directed by
David Butler, with color sequences in
Multicolor
Multicolor is a subtractive two-color motion picture process. Multicolor, introduced to the motion picture industry in 1929, was based on the earlier Prizma Color process, and was the forerunner of Cinecolor.
For a Multicolor film, a sc ...
(now lost).
Production background
![Janet Gaynor Argentinean Magazine AD](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Janet_Gaynor_Argentinean_Magazine_AD.jpg)
The film features music by
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ' ...
, including the introduction of ''Rhapsody in Rivets'', which was expanded by the composer even before the film soundtrack was recorded into the concert work for piano and orchestra ''
Second Rhapsody'', regarded today as one of Gershwin's neglected masterpieces.
Gershwin also contributed other sequences for the score, but only a five-minute
dream sequence
A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other ...
called ''The Melting Pot'' and the six-minute ''Rhapsody in Rivets'' made the final cut.
Fox Film Corporation
The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American Independent film production studio formed by William Fox (1879–1952) in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attractions Film C ...
rejected the rest of the score.
Gaynor plays a
Scottish girl emigrating by ship to
America who runs afoul of the authorities and has to go on the run, falling in with a ragtag group of immigrant musicians in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. Gaynor and Farrell made almost a dozen films together, including
Frank Borzage's classics ''
Seventh Heaven'' (1927), ''
Street Angel'' (1928), and ''
Lucky Star'' (1929). Gaynor won the first
Academy Award for Best Actress
The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year ...
for the first two and F. W. Murnau's ''
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans''.
Cast
*
Janet Gaynor as Heather Gordon
*
Charles Farrell
Charles David Farrell (August 9, 1900 – May 6, 1990) was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor. Farrell is probably best recalled for his onscreen romances with actress Janet Gaynor ...
as Larry Beaumont
*
El Brendel
Elmer Goodfellow "El" Brendel (March 25, 1890 – April 9, 1964) was an American vaudeville comedian turned movie star, best remembered for his dialect routine as a Swedish immigrant. His biggest role was as "Single-0" in the sci-fi musical ' ...
as Chris Jansen
*
Raul Roulien
Raul Roulien (born Raul Salvador Intini Pepe; October 8, 1905 – October 8, 2000) was a Brazilian actor, singer, screenwriter and film director.Solomon p.331 He is widely considered the first male Brazilian star in Hollywood.
He worked briefly ...
as Sascha
*Lawrence O'Sullivan as Detective O'Flynn
*Manya Roberti as Olga
*
Olive Tell
Olive Tell (September 27, 1894 – June 8, 1951) was a stage and screen actress from New York City.
Biography
Tell was educated in several cities in Europe. She and her younger actress sister Alma graduated from the American Academy of Drama ...
as Mrs. Van Bergh
*
Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill (April 12, 1908 – November 14, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's ''City Lights'' (1931).
Early life
Virginia Cherrill was born on a farm in rural Carthag ...
as Diana Van Bergh
*
Mischa Auer as Mischa
*Marvine Maazel as Toscha
Preservation status
On December 14, 2011,
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of At ...
aired a print of the film restored by
George Eastman House
The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...
.
On September 22, 2013, it was announced that a musicological critical edition of the full orchestral score will be eventually released. The Gershwin family, working in conjunction with the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...
and the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, are working to make scores available to the public that represent Gershwin's true intent. The entire Gershwin project may take 30 to 40 years to complete, and it is unclear when the score to ''Delicious'' will be released. It will be the first time this score has ever been published.
See also
*
List of early color feature films
This is a list of early feature-length color films (including primarily black-and-white films that have one or more color sequences) made up to about 1936, when the Technicolor three-strip process firmly established itself as the major-studio f ...
References
External links
*
*
''Delicious'' at TCM Movie Database*
{{David Butler
1931 films
1931 musical comedy films
1931 romantic comedy films
1930s color films
American musical comedy films
American romantic comedy films
American romantic musical films
American black-and-white films
1930s English-language films
Films about immigration to the United States
Films directed by David Butler
Films set in New York City
Fox Film films
George Gershwin in film
Films with screenplays by Sonya Levien
1930s American films
Silent romantic comedy films