It's a pretty cool instrument that allowed the player to use buttons as chords:
the 1940 film "Captain Caution" shows him playing the mandolin and singing the tune "Hilda", but it appears to be that he isn't playing the instrument at all.
Actors playing instruments onscreen
Re: Actors playing instruments onscreen
El Brendel plays a Kaycraft KeyKord at the beginning of 1934's "The Meanest Gal In Town":
It's a pretty cool instrument that allowed the player to use buttons as chords:
the 1940 film "Captain Caution" shows him playing the mandolin and singing the tune "Hilda", but it appears to be that he isn't playing the instrument at all.
It's a pretty cool instrument that allowed the player to use buttons as chords:
the 1940 film "Captain Caution" shows him playing the mandolin and singing the tune "Hilda", but it appears to be that he isn't playing the instrument at all.
Re: Actors playing instruments onscreen
Janet Gaynor has a go with an autoharp while signing "(I'm A Dreamer) Aren't We All" in 1929's "Sunny Side Up":
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Richard Finegan
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Re: Actors playing instruments onscreen
He also does it in the 1935 British musical feature DANCE BAND.Richard Finegan wrote:At least two of the other films in which he does that routine (always playing "Twelfth Street Rag") are the 1935 MGM/Louis Lewin short PIRATE PARTY ON CATALINA ISLE and the 1942 Soundie TWELFTH STREET RAG.romecapitol wrote:We actually just saw the Buddy Rogers stunt of playing multiple instruments in CLOSE HARMONY, which we ran a week or so ago at Capitolfest.
Art Pierce
Capitol Theatre
Rome, NY
http://www.romecapitol.com" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank
And by the way, in these later versions he doesn't end the routine with the back flip off the piano. That was only in CLOSE HARMONY. Maybe he wasn't quite up for it any more as he got older.