Red Nichols and His Five Pennies (1929)
*** (out of 4)
Entertaining, 9-minute short from Vitaphone/Warner has Red Nichols and his "Five Pennies" doing songs including China Boy, Nobody's Sweetheart, Ida Sweet as Apple Cider and Who Cares?. If you're familiar with Nichols and his band then you're going to know that they perform some really fast jazz and the entire strength of their band seems to be that they enjoy starting off slow before just going and going for a feverish, fast pace and this is what they do best. I've seen a number of their shorts and each time they have no troubles impressing me and this here is no exception. The highlight of the film has to be Sweetheart, which also features Eddie Condon singing. Condon does two numbers and both are them are quite good as his voice perfectly mixes with the music. The "directing" isn't all that special as the visuals are quite lazy as the group are just pretty much in one spot and perform their act while the camera stays still and records it. There are a few edits here and there but you can tell that the budget was very low. Fans of this short should also check out 1936's RED NICHOLS & HIS WORLD FAMOUS PENNIES.
