The Yacht Party

A Warner Brothers Vitaphone Short Subject.

With music provided by Roger Wolfe Kahn & His Orchestra, THE YACHT PARTY provides some snappy music for a few idle rich guests.

Without enough plot to hang a yachtsman's hat on, this short film is simply an excuse for a few minutes of silly songs. Highlights are comic singer Gertrude Niesen's impersonation of Lyda Roberti and incredibly double-jointed Melissa Mason performing a solo dance in which she does things with her legs which scarcely seem human. Rich kid Kahn produces some enjoyable music; the final moments, in which he supposedly conducts his orchestra from a biplane, presages his eventual career change to airplane design & testing. Music mavens will spot an unbilled Artie Shaw playing the clarinet.

Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.