The Life of the Party is a 1930

1930 in film

-Events:* November 1: The Big Trail featuring a young John Wayne in his first starring role is released in both 35mm, and a very early form of 70mm film and was the first large scale big-budget film of the sound era costing over $2 million. The film was praised for its aesthetic quality and realism...

 American musical comedy film photographed entirely in Technicolor

Technicolor

Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...

. The musical numbers of this film were cut out before general release in the United States because the public had grown tired of musicals by late 1930. Only one song was left in the picture. The complete film was released intact in countries outside the United States where a backlash against musicals never occurred. It is unknown whether a copy of this full version still exists. The film only survives in a black and white copy (of the United States release print) made in the 1950s for television.

Plot

The girls try to find a millionaire in Havana but end up finding a male "gold-digger" who is looking for a rich woman to help pay his bills. Eventually, the dressmaker arrives in Havana.

Cast

• Winnie Lightner
  Winnie Lightner
  Winnie Lightner was an American motion picture actress. Perhaps her most famous role was as a gold-digger named Mabel, in Gold Diggers of Broadway...
  
   as Flo
• Irene Delroy as Dorothy 'Dot' Stottsbury
• Jack Whiting
  Jack Whiting
  John George Benjamin 'Jack' Whiting was an English cricketer. Whiting's batting style is unknown, but he was a right-arm fast bowler. He was born in Stoke Goldington, Buckinghamshire....
  
   as Jerry 'A.J.' Smith
• Charles Butterworth
  Charles Butterworth
  Charles Butterworth, Ph.D. is a noted philosopher of the Straussian school and currently a professor of political philosophy at the University of Maryland, College Park....
  
   as Colonel Joy
• Charles Judels
  Charles Judels
  Charles Judels was a Dutch-born American film actor. He appeared in 137 films between 1915 and 1949. He also did extensive work as a voice-over actor in animated films, notably as the voice of Stromboli in Walt Disney's Pinocchio, and in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes short Porky's Garden.He was...
  
   as Monsieur LeMaire (the Dressmaker)
• John Davidson
  John Davidson (actor)
  John Davidson was an American film actor. He appeared in 148 films between 1915 and 1963.He was born in New York, New York and died in Los Angeles, California.-Selected filmography:...
  
   as Mr. A.J. Smith
• Arthur Hoyt
  Arthur Hoyt
  Arthur Hoyt was an American film character actor who appeared in more than 275 films in his 34 year film career, about a third of them silent films. He was a brother of Harry O...
  
   as Jerry's secretary

also the Our Gang

Our Gang

Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...

 kids did appear in the film

Songs

• "Poison Ivy"
• "Can It Be Possible?"(Cut from United States release print)
• "One Robin Doesn't Make A Spring" (Cut from United States release print)
• "Somehow" (Cut from United States release print)

Preservation

Only a black and white copy of the cut print released in the United States (without most of the musical numbers) seems to have survived. The complete film was released intact in countries outside the United States where a backlash against musicals never occurred. It is unknown whether a copy of this full version still exists.

Production

The music heard of the credits at the beginning of the film was added in the 1950s. These credits are also not original but have been redrawn, removing all indication that the film was photographed in Technicolor. The original music survives on Vitaphone

Vitaphone

Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...

disks. The rest of the film, beginning with the first title card ("New York was originally purchased from the Indians..."), has the original sound.