Marion Harris "Afraid of You," Metro Movietone 1928

Marion Harris started out as a jazz singer, but in the latter part of the 20s she turned more to vaudeville. She made many records for Columbia and other labels as a "jazz" singer, and is considered by some to be the first White female jazz vocalist.
MGM Metro Movietone, Copyrighted Sept 29, 1928, Released October 20, 1928.
"Afraid of You" "We Love It.:"

[@UncleDavesKitchen]

lovely voice, amazing to have a talking picture so well done from 1928

[@angeedesierra]

It chills me to the bone like I have lived this era. Oh man. Time Machine, anyone?

[@alanoneill3065]

just what I was thinking

[@keithbearden1119]

Man, she's great.

[@thecottage4493]

Nice to hear a clear recording of her singing, she has a wonderful voice. The unfortunate issue with listening to those old 78's is that they sound like they're singing through a coffee can!

[@theodorebiele5201]

a talkie. Thank God she was recorded on sound film. absolutely needed to SEE her perform. Fantastic singer. Can't stop watching and listening. the "torch songs" are absolutely great.

[@elijaharnold3346]

@@Billy219 Are their any video recording of Billy Murray?

[@elijaharnold3346]

@@Billy219 Can you post the link?

[@grezek]

How can it sound and be a breath of fresh air 95 years later, but it is.

[@scotnick59]

She really had a lovely voice

[@fran_1978]

A brilliant singer, one of the best ever. Full of heart, soul, emotion and intensity. Love her amazing, unique and very expressive voice so much. It intrigued and relaxed me since the very first time I listened to her. She could convey either sadness and melancholy, or other more cheerful, happy feelings, depending on what each song required. Truly versatile and impressive. Now it's a great pleasure to also see her perform. Priceless! Thanks a lot for sharing!

[@muffs55mercury61]

Fortunately sound came to film just in time to catch the last part of the Roaring 20s in 1928 & 1929. Marion sadly died in 1944, age 48 (hotel fire) I have a few of her 78 rpm records.

[@dalenichols9211]

I loved her, but also enjoyed that piano player and his nice light touch.

[@Lee_Morse]

Marion Harris is one of the greats.

[@Lee_Morse]

@@Billy219 Yes.

[@Billy219]

Marion Harris is very sweet in this video.

[@Babylon2060]

So classy, I love the 20's!

[@garymattscheck9066]

The 20s are my favorite decade.

[@jupiteravatar]

@@garymattscheck9066 the 1920's or 2020's?

[@roybo1930]

I have so many of Her AWESOME Records! So Great to watch Her sing! I LOVE THIS!

[@LordDaymoon]

Such great quality

[@silv-eee]

She's adorable!

[@MrRichiekaye]

Sensational!

[@abirdthatflew]

A wonderful piece of history.

[@Babylon2060]

I love her dress and hair!

[@Lee_Morse]

Glad this was saved from the 1965 MGM fires.

[@luvbach1]

Beautiful, charming, talented!

[@321abcable]

I second that opinion-nobody quite like her.

[@user-zu8ox5jg7t]

Oh, her's vocal is very very beautiful ! l'm impressed.

[@TheBRAGE]

Nice to see.I come from Sweden plus 45 year soon . Rip in heaven Marion Harris.

[@degregrio]

This was long before my time but I love it.

[@ruthieannwhiteapple349]

Oh, she is so beautiful. I've heard her sing "After You're Gone" and "I'm Nobody's Baby" and absolutely fell in love with her. Thank you so much for sharing this video! It's a lovely gem.

[@brennocalderan2201]

Those rhymes are the best.

[@Tadfafty]

Marion Harris is the best of the best. Ruth Etting said Marion Harris was her favorite singer.

[@ArtigasMillan-tx3nc]

Gracias por compartir esta maravilla,me imagino como quedaría en colores

[@codymakuyi5220]

I really love Marian Harris.

[@brentg3707]

delightful

[@sabrinasjourney]

So cute and nice voice ;)

[@SMIHEARTSTARZZ]

I literally adore her voice it's just ,mkjbhdfjksjnf it literally has so much emotion to it and it always makes me like feel this sorta happy feeling like my god I really wish she was still here because like I I stg she needs more appreciation

[@mariacaskinha]

I love her voice😍❤

[@KawhackitaRag]

For what it's worth, on the Bixography Forum is this data: "I found Jack Russin in the SSDI, born Feb 27, 1909, died in Los Angeles CA on Oct 15, 1993". That would make Mr. Russin about 19 years old in this film, if it is indeed him. Well, this guy DOES look young enough to be 19, and he's not using any sheet music (according to a brief anecdote given by Mr. Al Duffy in his interview with, I think, Mr. Warren Vaché in the "Mississippi Rag", he remembered Jack Russin as being unable to read music, at least in the 1920s, but possessing perfect pitch and being a really great ear-playing pianist).

[@alanoneill3065]

I'm mesmerised by Ms Marion

[@pax41]

+a oneiill I actually saw this video before but not the second song before. I love it!

[@alanoneill3065]

she is like a swan

[@djnodj]

Gorgeous and Brilliant. Might be more red than yellow.

[@alanoneill3065]

such beauty

[@michaeloleary1867]

Awesome!

[@all-world-all-time]

I’m Afraid Of You: Words: Eddie Davis and Archie Gottler. Music: Lew Daly. We Love It: Words: Mort Dixon and Billy Rose. Music: Harry Warren. Two 1928 songs PUBLISHED by Irving Berlin Inc..That’s where he comes in.

[@alanoneill3065]

she is like a swan

[@mainaccount131]

Great with very good video

[@michaelwatkins1702]

This short clip was made when sound was still a novelty and thought (or maybe hoped) by some to be a passing fad. In 1928 silent pictures were still the dominant product from Hollywood studios while the format war between Fox sound-on-film versus the Warner Brothers Vitaphone sound-on-disc system played out until 1931 when Vitaphone was discarded .

[@williamsnyder5616]

Warners' Vitaphone was the most famous with "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, but Fox's Movietone had a strong following. In this case, MGM adapted Movietone in the same way MGM adapted 20th Cenury-Fox's CinemaScope technology 26 years later.

[@truthhitman7473]

​@@williamsnyder5616 Knowledge 😁

[@ritchelseruela7962]

i was reborn and i see her again

[@castilloaldo3590]

I used to listen to heavy metal, but now the music of the 20s has conquered me, I love it

[@rshnrvrrbrt]

great!

[@andrewbarrett1537]

Absolutely wonderful! If some of her expressions, gestures seem a bit exaggerated as to be comical, remember, she had decades of stage-performance experience prior to making this sound film, and such exaggerations were standard practice with all stage performers, so that 'the folks in the back row' could still see and understand the emotions that were being put across, as well as the folks in the front row. Silent movie actors/actresses took a while to adjust to this when the movies first came in, and vaudevillians making their first sound films took longer still... it was a sort of similar adjustment to singers singing into a horn for acoustical recordings (and/or projecting their voice on stage before amplification), vs when the newfangled microphone recording came in, about 1925... singing styles had to change. Being such a fixture in the RECORDING studios, Ms. Harris has changed her singing style here from her earlier 'shouting' (really, projecting) style, to a more modern 'crooning' style. However, she's still exaggerating the visual aspect a bit here. Once you realize this is what is going on, everything makes perfect sense and is very nice.

[@roderickfernandez5382]

Right on thank you for explaining it because some people don't understand it's a style so removed from what we do today but she had to play to the gallery into the cheap seats no microphone no Reverb no double-track only her only her on the stage with her voice and the piano I'd like to see some of our singers today put their self on the line like that sorry I talk into the phone so you put the periods in

[@alanoneill3065]

Very good...thank you

[@jacintoguevara2692]

The first song she sings isn't credited. It's "I Just Roll Along" (Having My Ups and Downs) lyrics by Jo' Trent, music by Peter De Rose, I. Berlin, Inc, 1927.

[@dennis3065]

Lee Morse was the first recorded jazz singer. She was a wonderful singer who first recorded in 1916. She is credited with being the first woman to record a song that included “jazz” in Page 11 Miss Lee Morse: The First Recorded Jazz Singer

[@KawhackitaRag]

I can think of three Jacks who were well-known popular pianists in the late 1920s: Jack Wehrlen, Jack Russin, and Jack Shilkret. I should find photos of them to compare...

[@HazardNash70]

I strongly suspect the uncredited pianist is Jack Pepper. I've no way of proving this; however, "Jack" seems very young, and Pepper would have been 25-26 years old at the time this was filmed, and he married Ginger Rogers a few years later. He worked in Broadway revues and in vaudeville throughout the 1920s - and it's quite possible Marion Harris knew him or worked with him during her time on Broadway in the late 1920s. I have a feeling this was filmed when Marion arrived in Hollywood, and Jack Pepper was featured in one of the Movietone Revues in 1929 or 1930 as a performer (Marion herself was featured in a 1929 M-G-M talking picture, too). If this was filmed in NYC, however (as other studios - Paramount, Warner Bros. - were filming shorts during this period tended to do to capitalize on the stage talent they thought was required for talking pictures), this teaming makes even more sense. Again - no proof, just a theory.

[@oneil317]

Newspapers from September 1928, when this short was produced, advertise Marion Harris accompanied on the piano by "Jack Golden." He also wrote the music for Harris' 1931 hit, “My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes.” From the Washington D.C. 'Evening Star' of September 17, 1928: "The Washington vaudeville house opened its program with . . . a stage program featuring Marion Harris, known as 'the queen of song,' with Jack Golden, formerly with Le Paradis, at the piano. If the hearty laughter and frequent applause of the audience and curtain calls demanded of the stage headliner, Miss Harris, are accepted as the criterion of success, Sunday evening's audience was well satisfied." Since she was in D.C. on September 16, and I've found that this particular review was running until at least the 22nd with Marion Harris headlining, I think you might be right that this short was filmed in New York, unless she really booked it to Hollywood to be there by the 29th.

[@HazardNash70]

@@oneil317 Mystery solved! Fantastic!

[@oneil317]

@@HazardNash70 The next mystery to solve will be hunting down the three other MovieTone shorts she is said to have made: singing "I wonder" and "I'm More Than Satisfied" (released October 20, 1928), singing "Rain" and "Down by the Old Front Gate" (released November 17, 1928), and singing "He's All Mine" and "Ten little Miles from Town" (released January 26, 1929). The director of all these seems to have been Nick Grinde, with Lawrence Weingarten as General Supervisor. In 1956, MGM renewed copyrights for three of them ("Afraid of You," "I Wonder," and "Rain").

[@andrewbarrett1537]

Thank you very much for this fantastic info! I'd heard of Ernie Golden, and even Billy Golden, but never Jack Golden! I would never have guessed him!!! Thanks for all the research!

[@KawhackitaRag]

I haven't yet found a photo of Jack Russin to compare, but I DID find one of his more famous brother, the saxophonist Babe Russin, and I think there is possibly a family resemblance to the man in this video, although the image quality in this video is slightly on the low side so I'm not sure.

[@nicholashorne8004]

Her best is "My canary has circles under his eyes"

[@321abcable]

They used to write melodies in those days -try to find one tune these days.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

sven sundquist I've found a bunch of good ones, but let's not let that info spoil this very nice performance.

[@michaelmcgee8543]

At that time m.g.m was considering doing all talking features and wanted to do some experimentations before they proceeded to talking features.

[@KawhackitaRag]

Thanks for posting this!!! Does anyone know the pianist? He looks quite young...

[@KawhackitaRag]

she says "Jack, go ahead and play", so his name is Jack.

[@davidclarke10]

Do you like the 20s more than the 50s?

[@ZyonSigil]

I'm a hundred years to late to be in love but that's okay I love you anyway Marion Harris.

[@grezek]

Is that Red Nichols on piano"

[@PaulArtz]

I'm putting in an unsteady vote for Jack Pettis.

[@KawhackitaRag]

I have never found a single mention of him being a pianist (rather, a sax and clarinet player) so I think your vote is definitely unsteady. I mean, he _could_ have played piano, but it would probably be more jazz oriented and less pop oriented than this, and had he been as technically good as this pianist, then he probably would have played piano on at least record, and I know of none. Sorry!

[@Khultan]

♪♪♪♪♪♪▼♪♪♪♪♪♪

[@alanoneill3065]

isn't she beautiful

[@luvbach1]

+a oneiill You said it!

[@orangeflavouredbanana7770]

Yeah

[@SMIHEARTSTARZZ]

this THIS

[@alanoneill3065]

Isn't wonderful to think that those nice songwriters in New York could write nice little songs about the poor hucks suffering from the depression...the poor folks must have been SOOOO glad

[@alanoneill3065]

@Cynthia Murphy Irving Berlin really? Gee that's a piece of luck! but I get your point my point remains also,...the poor people living in shacks in the Mid West experienced poverty to an extent greater than in the cities...where there was always a hustle to be made

[@alanoneill3065]

@Cynthia Murphy Thank you for your very nice reply...I guess your grandparents were similar to the people I visualised in the song We Love It. I did note that the narrator of the song had acquired a car...so they were doing ok I suppose. I guess I was considering those who suffered during the Dust Bowl...which admittedly occurred after this recording One thing I share with Marion is based upon this... "In 1936, she married Leonard Urry, an English theatrical agent. Their house was destroyed in a German rocket attack in 1941" My parents house was also destroyed by German bombing

[@alanoneill3065]

@Cynthia Murphy Well,,,I am calling the second performed We Love it...I THINK that may be its title

[@Lee_Morse]

This is from 1928...

[@alanoneill3065]

@@Lee_Morse ok..i accept your correction, but the general principle remains

[@CaptainTaylor1990]

🎶🎼🎵🎵🎼🎶🎶🎵nobooooody caaaaares foooor meeeeeeeeee🎶🎶🎶🎼🎵🎶🎵