My thanks to Nick Markovich and the Yip Harburg Foundation for enabling me to view a print of this rare film.
'The Devil Sea' is an above-average example of the thousands of short films from the early talkie era which made a trip to the movies similar to a trip to the vaudeville house. These movies, often featuring a major stage entertainer, offered ten minutes of music or comedy as one of several short subjects in a full evening's entertainment. Bring back the good old days!
The musical shorts made by Paramount tended to be better than the comparable fare by other studios, as the Paramounts were filmed in that company's studio in Astoria, Long Island, and had the benefit of access to performers from Broadway and the top New York vaude houses. This particular musical short stars Ethel Merman singing two songs: one downbeat, one upbeat. As was often the case with these shorts, there's some vague attempt at a plot. SPOILERS COMING, but the plot is merely a negligible excuse for Merman's two songs.
The most remarkable thing about 'The Devil Sea' is the opening shot, which looks like something right out of 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'. Ethel Merman is seen framed in a stark backdrop of Expressionist black and white tones. A cut to a different angle reveals that this is actually a piece of a ship -- a bulkhead, a hatchway and a couple of transverses -- which for some reason is propped up on land.
Merman is in conversation with Leslie Stowe, a histrionic ack-torr with one of the fruitiest cod accents I've ever heard. (Appropriately, Stowe died in the Actors' Home in Englewood, New Jersey.) Merman is mourning the loss of some man who went to sea in his skiff and never came back. We never learn his precise relationship to Merman (is he her brother? her father? her bootlegger?), but Stowe smugly assures her that the guy is gone forever. He leaves, and Merman does her first song, 'Devil Sea' (lyric by E.Y. Harburg, music by Vernon Duke): a torch song that seems to want to be 'Old Man River'. The most interesting thing about this song is that it anticipates a later and better Harburg song -- 'Old Devil Moon' -- in casting a force of nature as the Devil.
Just as Merman finishes the song on her knees, Stowe bellows (from abaft the bulkhead) that the missing man has been found alive. This is the cue for Merman's second ditty, the very upbeat 'Glory, Glory' (lyric by Harburg, tune by Johnny Green). This song really calls for some dance steps, but Merman doesn't seem up to any hoofing. Lyricist Harburg had a happy knack for extremely contrived rhymes: here, the strangest one is when he rhymes 'glory' with 'sorry'.
Ethel Merman did not age well, which may be why her greatest triumphs remained on the stage rather than in the harsh close-up of a movie camera. Here, in one of her earliest films, she's quite pretty, although she wears an outfit that seems too elaborate for the character she's playing. A year later, in the Paramount short 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart', Merman was already beginning to lose her looks. I'll rate 'Devil Sea' 9 out of 10 as a fine showcase for Merman's talents ... and that weird opening shot has got to be director Mort Blumenstock's attempt to call attention to himself.
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