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Gus Arnheim and His Orchestra, with Vocal refrain (Buster Dees) -- This ...
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Gus Arnheim and His Orchestra, with Vocal refrain (Buster Dees) -- This Is Heaven, Fox-Trot from United Artists picture "This Is Heaven" (Yellen /Akst) , Victor 1929
NOTE: THIS IS HEAVEN (1929) This film was to have been Robert Montgomery's first talkie. He was hired to play opposite Hungarian silent star Vilma Banky in this silent film with talking sequences which was produced by United Artists. The film was also Vilma Banky's first talkie, however it failed to provide her with a stable position in a newly developing talkie movie business. Production had begun on the film when director Alfred Santell suddenly decided Montgomery couldn't act and he was subsequently fired. He was replaced by rather indistinctive James Hall and Montgomery moved on to MGM where that unusually handsome and talented actor obtained enormous succes in a musical movie comedy: So This is College.
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Vilma Bánky (b. Vilma Koncsics 1901 in Nagydorog, Austria-Hungary -- d. 1991) was a Hungarian-born American silent film actress, although the early part of her acting career began in Budapest, spreading to France, Austria, and Germany. Banky was best known for her roles in The Eagle and The Son of the Sheik with Rudolph Valentino and several romantic teamings with Ronald Colman.
Her father was a bureau chief under Franz Joseph's Austro-Hungarian Empire. Shortly after her birth, her father was transferred to Budapest, and the family relocated. After graduation from secondary school, Bánky took courses to work as a stenographer, but was offered a role in the now lost film, Im Letzten Augenblick, directed by German director Carl Boese in 1919. After her successful performance, she was offered more film-engagements in Austria and in Germany. On a trip to Budapest in 1925, Hollywood film producer Samuel Goldwyn discovered and signed her to a contract. Both her mother and father were vehemently against Bánky's acting career as was her fiancé; nonetheless she left for the United States in March 1925, arriving to a great deal of fanfare. She was hailed as "The Hungarian Rhapsody" and was an immediate hit with American audiences. The New York Times remarked in its review of her first American film, The Dark Angel, that she "is a young person of rare beauty ..." In 1925 and 26 Vilma Bánky appeared opposite Rudolph Valentino in "The Eagle" and "The Son of the Sheik" . However, her thick Hungarian accent cut her career short with the advent of sound; after a mediocre success of her first talkie "This Is Heaven" she began losing interest in films and wanted to settle down with Rod La Rocque and simply be his wife. By 1930 she had begun announcing her intention to retire in a few years. Her post Hollywood years were spent selling real estate with her husband and playing golf, her favorite sport. In 1981, Bánky established an educational fund called the Banky -- La Rocque Foundation, which is still in operation. Vilma Bánky died on March 18, 1991, from cardiopulmonary failure, aged 90, her ashes were scattered at sea where her husband's had been.
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