It's a 1930 short called The Devil's Cabraret, which has an interesting backstory:
What an odd, creaky old COLOR short this was. Simply, I did not have the inclination to view anything full-length and as always happens, by the last week before Halloween there’s a big of fatigue in viewing genre entertainment. Someone I follow on Letterboxd reviewed this yesterday and as it was new to me, was 16 minutes long and could be found in the Hades of the Internet…
Charles Middleton plays Satan, who is in the office building of Hades; this is represented by flames outside the window and wacky sight gags. Edward Buzzell (who later became the director of such pictures as Song of the Thin Man & the Marx Brothers film At the Circus) is HOWIE BURNS, a goofball assistant who gets yelled at by Satan due to an increase in souls making their way to Heaven. Howie’s scheme? Interrupting a religious meeting, inviting the congregation to the titular cabaret, and they get to see a musical number involving a giant devil head in the background. Not surprisingly for the time, jazz music was used to augment all the “sin” happening on-screen in this decidedly Pre-Code effort.
In short, the big musical number was to be one of several for an abandoned musical called The March of Time. I can’t list the other examples but this was one which built a story around that number so it wouldn’t go to waste. Burns is a goofball who makes fun of both a plump woman and another dame who stutters; that is “humor” worthy of eternal damnation in 2024.
It’s a mixed bag aside from what I’ve seen called the Hades Ballet (that can be witnessed separately on Dailymotion) scene yet it’s still a wacky short which has a unique backstory, Middleton as Old Scratch and according to sources, Ann Dvorak as a background player.
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