Swing High

"Pop" Garner's traveling circus winds the roads of 1880s America...but always with "Doc" May's medicine show following close behind. When the medicine show starts drawing customers away from the so-called "Circus Supreme", Garner threatens violence against his competitors. Instead Maryan, his gorgeous trapeze artist daughter, keeps the peace by negotiating an alliance between the two parties. Now performing together, before long Maryan falls in love with Garry, a singer with May's show. This arouses the jealousy of her aerialist partner, Trixie, who sabotages Maryan's high-wire act. Grief-stricken by his sweetheart's injury, Garry falls into drinking and gambling, and is then framed for stealing circus funds by Trixie. Maryan will have to rise from her sick bed to clear her lover's name - all while doing her trapeze act at the same time!

This all-star Pathé circus picture stars Fred Scott and Helen Twelvetrees only four months after the studio had debuted them together in The Grand Parade (1930). Ultimately undistinguished as a 'big studio' leading man, Scott later became a singing cowboy, making 12 movies for low-budget Spectrum Pictures with Al "Fuzzy" St. John as his sidekick. After Spectrum's dissolution, Scott retired from acting, finding success selling Hollywood real estate. Helen Twelvetrees, 1929 winner of the WAMPAS Baby Stars (a yearly selection of 13 promising starlets chosen by The Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers), is best remembered for her role opposite a young and villainous Clark Gable in The Painted Desert (1931). Beautiful Dorothy Burgess appeared in the multiple Academy Award-nominated In Old Arizona (1928). Beloved vaudevillian and famed black comedian Stepin Fetchit (real name: Lincoln Perry) gives a performance that is unfortunately marred by the appalling racial stereotyping of the era.

BONUS: Old Black Joe (1930): The Kentucky Jubilee Singers perform "Old Black Joe" and "My Old Kentucky Home" by Stephen Foster, as well as classic spirituals, in this rare vintage two-reeler made by Tiffany-Stahl Productions.