The Show of Shows

The film features nearly all the stars then working under contract at Warner Bros. Virtually all the performers shown would vanish from the studio by 1931, after tastes had shifted owing to the effects of the Great Depression, which began to be felt late in 1930.

Show of Shows features many of the performers who were popular in silent movies mixed in with hand-picked stage stars and novelty acts. The

• Prologue — A scene set in the
  H.B. Warner as an aristocrat who is executed on a guillotine
  . This opening serves to show that traditional stage shows are finished. Up until 1929, most big cities had added stage acts before silent movies. These were costly, and sound films would make them mostly obsolete. As the aristocrat tries to speak, he is interrupted by the executioner, who rants that they have heard his remarks too often and it is time for him to be gone. After the blade falls, the executioner joyously shouts: "Prologue is Dead! On with the Show of Shows!"
• "Military March"— Led by Monte Blue and Pasadena American Legion Fife and Drum Corps. A pageant set entirely on a huge set of steps with the cadets changing formation to provide a series of color effects in a manner that would be popularized much later by Busby Berkeley.
• "What's Become of the Floradora Boys?" —
  Edwardian
  stage show.
• "$20 Bet"— Fay attempts to sing but is constantly interrupted by
  Sojin Kamiyama
  .
• "Motion Picture Pirates" — Featuring Ted Lewis with a fantasy number set of a pirate ship headed by cut-throat Noah Beery and Tully Marshall with Wheeler Oakman, Kalla Pasha, Bull Montana, Anders Randolf and other well-known movie villains of the era. A group of beautiful girls are captured and saved from an awful fate (almost) by light comedian Johnny Arthur sending up Douglas Fairbanks. The pirates literally blow him overboard. Finally, the day is saved by Ted Lewis, a well-known bandleader at that time who had recently appeared in his own starring vehicle for Warner Bros., Is Everybody Happy? (1929), a film now deemed lost. His trademark was a battered top hat, and his signature tune was "Me and My Shadow".
• "Dear Little Pup" — Performed by Frank Fay. (Shot in black and white.)
• "Ping Pongo" — Performed by Winnie Lightner. (Shot in black and white.)
• "The Only Song I Know" — Performed by Nick Lucas. (Shot in black and white.)
• "If I Could Learn to Love (As Well as I Fight)" — In a brief introductory sequence, missing from circulating prints, French lightweight boxer Georges Carpentier is introduced by Frank Fay, who provokes Carpentier into lightly tapping him with his formidable hands, to which Fay comically overreacts and then beats a hasty retreat. Carpentier was briefly promoted as a star in the Maurice Chevalier mold. He sings here against an Eiffel Tower backdrop accompanied by Patsy Ruth Miller and Alice White and later a singing and dancing chorus of girls. Ultimately, all of them remove their street clothes to reveal athletic togs underneath, and a precision dance routine follows with the participants positioned on an upright series of geometric struts. (This segment is missing from the version currently airing on Turner Classic Movies.)
• "Recitations" — Featuring
  poetic
  recitations that are first performed by each performer whole and then line by line, until when mixed up they form a bizarre and suggestive product. The sequence also includes a parody of the M-G-M song "Your Mother and Mine" and a series of purposely lame and pointless practical jokes.
• "Meet My Sister" — Introduced by a deliberately nervous Richard Barthelmess followed by Hollywood sisters, including Dolores and Helene Costello, singing "My Sister", along with Loretta Young and Sally Blane, Sally O'Neil and Molly O'Day, Alice Day and Marceline Day, Marion Byron and Harriette Lake (later known as Ann Sothern), Viola Dana and Shirley Mason, Lola and Armida Vendrell, and Alberta and Adamae Vaughn. All of the pairs were sisters in real life except for Marion Byron and Harriette Lake, who were not related. The song is partly compromised by having each set of 'twins' representing a different country against a backdrop serving to illustrate each in a display of international stereotypes (Note: this number exists in color from a nitrate full aperture reel held at the BFI National Film Archive).
• Intermission— Title Card (missing from some prints)
• "
  You Were Meant for Me" from the 1929 film The Broadway Melody
  . This number was originally slightly longer, and was also printed in black and white on the release prints.
• "Just an Hour of Love" – Performed by
  Irene Bordoni
• "Chinese Fantasy" — Introduced, via sharp barks, by canine performer Rin Tin Tin, with Nick Lucas singing "Li-Po-Li" and Myrna Loy dancing. (This sequence survives in color.)
• "Frank Fay with Sid Silvers" — A comedy skit with Sid Silvers stepping in as an annoying spectator who is auditioning for a solo spot by showing Frank Fay his own imitation of Al Jolson singing "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody".
• "A Bicycle Built for Two" — Another
  Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Chester Morris, Gertrude Olmstead, Sally Eilers and others singing the 1890s standard "Daisy Bell
  " against a deliberately unreal revolving backdrop.
• "If Your Best Friend Won't Tell You (Why Should I?)" — Sid Silvers back with Frank Fay singing about the horrors of
  halitosis
  .
• "Larry Ceballos' Black and White Girls" — Introduced by Sid Silvers and danced by chorus girls dressed up in black and white dresses. One half of the girls wear outfits with black fronts and white backs (with corresponding wigs) while the others wear outfits exactly the reverse. As the girls turn about in formation, the lines of dancers switch from white to black or form geometric patterns. Music instrumental "
  Jumping Jack
  ". A reworking of an almost identical dance routine set to "The Doll Dance", which also appeared in the 1928 two-reeler Larry Ceballos' Roof Garden Revue. As an after piece, the dance appears to begin again but is halted by Louise Fazenda as the "Dancing Delegate" complaining about the costumes and demanding that Fay be brought on stage – which happens so rapidly that he appears without his pants.
• "Your Love Is All I Crave" — A torch song of lost love sung by Frank Fay. Fay introduces the number with a topical series of jokes: He describes being in a play where the entire cast entered dressed in rags ("It was a futuristic piece"). He also tweaks his own image: "The leading lady called to me: "My Stalwart Youth" ... (I was heavily made up)...."
• "
  Shakespeare extract introduced and recited by John Barrymore. With E. J. Ratcliffe, Anthony Bushell
  and Reginald Sharland.
• "Mexican Moonshine" — Comedy sketch with Monte Blue as a condemned man and Frank Fay as his executioner accompanied by Tully Marshall, Lloyd Hamilton, Kalla Pasha, Lee Moran, Noah Beery and Albert Gran as soldiers. It is a parody of Chesterfield cigarette advertising. Much the same idea, parodying a cigarette advertising slogan, also appears in the opening seconds of Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929).
• "Lady Luck" — The film's finale that is over a quarter of an hour. The original Technicolor version starts with Alexander Gray singing a full-blooded version of the song "Lady Luck" inside an enormous ballroom set with huge windows revealing a midnight green sky. Tap dancers (both white and black groups) dance on a highly polished wooden floor. This all ends as Betty Compson walks down the full length of the stage in procession to meet Alexander Gray, and with the whole cast assembled, hundreds of colored streamers drop from the roof as "Lady Luck" reaches a finale.
• "Curtain of Stars" — With the cast appearing with their heads poked through holes in canvas singing "Lady Luck".