IT Girls, Flappers, Jazz Babies, and Vamps

Clara Bow in It (1927)

Tomorrow begins Film Forum's two-week series "IT Girls, Flappers, Jazz Babies, and Vamps" or as I call it, my big birthday present. Yes, there will be 31 films shown featuring  some of the loveliest and greatest of the silver screen starting with Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins in Ernst Lubitsch's witty Trouble in Paradise (1932) and ending with Clara Bow in Dorothy Arzner's delightful Get Your Man (1927). In between there's Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Anna May Wong, Colleen Moore, and more. I am trying to limit myself to only seeing films that I haven't seen on the big screen before but that rule might just get broken (I'll report back on which screenings I attend). So thank you Bruce Goldstein and Film Forum for scheduling this series during my birthday month. And if anyone is looking for me during the next few weeks, you'll know where to find me.

For more information about the series, visit Film Forum.

Jazz Baby

Louise Brooks, the ultimate Jazz Baby.

Jazz Baby

My daddy was a rag-time trombone player. 

My mammy was a rag-time cabaret-er. 

They met one day at a tango tea. 

There was a syncopated wedding 

And then came me. 

Folks think the way I walk is a fad, 

But it's just a birthday present from my mammy and dad. 

‘Cause I'm a Jazz Baby. 

I wanna be jazzin’ all the time. 

There's something in the tone of a saxophone 

That makes me do a little wiggle all my own. 

'Cause I'm a Jazz Baby, 

Full of jazzbo harmony. 

Ya’ know, that Walk the Dog and Ball the Jack 

That cause all the talk, 

Well, that’s just a copy of the way I nat’chally walk. 

'Cause I'm a Jazz Baby 

Little jazz baby that's me. 

Rocked to sleep while the cradle went to and fro 

To and fro to the tune of the Tickle-toe. 

Ever since I started in to growing 

I loved to hear the music playin’ 

See my dear old mammy swayin' 

Jazz, jazz, that's all I ever knew 

All day long; I never would get through 

Jazz, jazz, That's all I want to do. 

Play me a little jazz. 

‘Cause I’m a Jazz Baby! 

Little Jazz Baby that’s all.

Written in 1919 by Blanche Merrill and M.K. Jerome, "Jazz Baby" was a song that captured the spirit of a new era and gave a nickname to the young women of the 1920s. To hear a recording of the song, listen here.