Connie Haines: The Continental ~ 1944 Prelinger Archives Soundie

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Haines

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Connie Haines (January 20, 1921 – September 22, 2008) was an American singer and actress. Her 200 recordings were frequently up-tempo big band songs with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey orchestras, and Frank Sinatra...

Early years

Born Yvonne Marie Antoinette Jasme in Savannah, Georgia, Haines was of French-Irish descent. Her mother Mildred JaMais (February 15, 1899 – January 7, 2010) died about sixteen months after her daughter, shortly before her 111th birthday.

She began performing at age 4 as a singer in Pick Malone's Saucy Baby Show in Savannah, and by age 9 had a regular radio show performing as "Baby Yvonne Marie, the Little Princess of the Air". Her professional debut in New York came at the Roxy Theatre when she was 14.

Career

After a number of regional successes and winning the Major Bowes contest, she was hired by Harry James, who asked her to change her name. In 1981, she recalled: "He said you don't look like Yvonne Marie Antonette Jasme. And there would be no room on the marquee for me. You look like a Connie to me."[4] She became the lead singer on The Abbott and Costello Show from 1942 to 1946. She later joined Tommy Dorsey, and Haines credited Dorsey with developing her style further. Haines performed in a number of films, including Duchess of Idaho.

In the early 1950s, Haines had a program, Connie Haines Entertains, on the short-lived Progressive Broadcasting System.

She later did a television show with Frankie Laine. On February 7, 1960, she became hostess of Faith of Our Children.[6] Beginning June 18, 1961, Haines had her own TV program, the Connie Haines Show, which also featured Ziggie Elman, Frankie Carle and the Steiner Brothers.

Haines gave "command performances before three presidents of the United States: Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson."...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundies

Soundies were three-minute American musical films, produced between 1940 and 1947, each containing a song, dance, and/or band or orchestral number. Produced professionally on 35mm black-and-white film, like theatrical motion pictures, they were printed in the more portable and economical 16mm gauge.

The films were shown in a coin-operated "movie jukebox" called the Panoram, manufactured by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. Each Panoram housed a 16mm RCA film projector, with eight Soundies films threaded in an endless-loop arrangement. A system of mirrors flashed the image from the lower half of the cabinet onto a front-facing screen in the top half. Each film cost 10 cents to play, and there was no choice of song; the patron saw whatever film was next in the queue. Panorams could be found in public amusement centers, nightclubs, taverns, restaurants, and factory lounges, and the films were changed weekly. The completed Soundies were generally made available within a few weeks of their filming, by the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America...

The movie-jukebox idea spawned several imitations and variations of the technical design; the most successful of these imitators were the Techniprocess company (led by Rudy Vallee) and the Featurettes company, which used original novelty songs and usually unknown talent (17-year-old Gwen Verdon appears in a couple of the Featurettes, as "Gwen Verdun"). As Soundies quickly became the market leader for jukebox films, the other companies disbanded, and some sold their films to the Soundies concern...