Home Movies of Lew Stone Band and Nat Gonella (featuring Al Bowlly, Harry Berly, Tiny Winters etc.)

Home movies (originally silent) featuring Nat Gonella And His Georgians and members of the Lew Stone Band, including Al Bowlly.

The first film, which is very short, features Nat Gonella playing trumpet on stage with his Georgians. We also see Charlie Winter slapping his double bass. The moustachioed tenor sax player who is singing along is Don Barrigo. In the added soundtrack, you can hear Nat and the boys' Parlophone recording of "Mister Rhythm Man", waxed on February 27th, 1935.

In the second home movie, which dates from 1933 or possibly 1934, various musicians from the Lew Stone Band perform a parody of a gangster-style film. This has been poorly edited (at some stage in the past), but it is still great to see the likes of Al Bowlly, Tiny Winters (in drag!) and Billy Harty (playing the girl's boyfriend), and also Joe Ferrie, Nat Gonella and Joe Crossman, who are seen thumping the hell out of each other! It is particularly interesting - and poignant - to see Harry Berly (black jumper, round glasses and moustache) enjoying himself here, a few years before he sank into a deep depression and then took his own life (in March 1937).

I thought Lew Stone's recording of "My Woman" (1932) and Ray Noble's "You Ought To Be In Pictures" (1934) appropriate for the soundtrack on the second home movie, which finished half way through the latter recording and so I added a photo of Ray Noble and his HMV recording band in Holland in 1933 to fill out the video. Noble's band included a number of sidemen from the Lew Stone band, and on the record we can hear Harry Berly soloing on viola (twice), Al Bowlly singing and Lew Davis playing a fine plunger mute trombone solo (the muted trumpet solo is played by Max Goldberg from Ambrose's Orchestra).