Foxtrot-Film
The Ballroom Scene from "I Don't Want to be a Man" - 1918
Ernst Lubitsch frequently inserted comical dance scenes into his films, and this is no exception.
The premise is that a young lady, unhappy with her lot, impersonates a man. She then finds out it's not all it's cracked up to be.
This film provides a wonderful snapshot of Ragtime era Fox Trot/One Step.
Dancing in a London Dive 1929
Dancing in a London dive from the Anna May Wong film "Piccadilly" from 1929.
It opens with a bunch of women doing a Charleston and then moves to general, lively social dancing to include a scandalous inter-racial dance. I cut the bit where the landlord throws the black man out as it detracted from my general purpose of showing the dances of the time.
A Fox-Trot Evening in Paris in 1929
This was trimmed down from Fox Movietone News out takes of an evening at a Paris nightclub in 1929. The sound was pretty bad so I superimposed a French band number.
This was done in support of a "Fox Trot in the 1920s" workshop I gave in DC in May 2016.
Swing Dance and Foxtrot at the 1939 World's Fair
Kids, black and white but nearly all female, swing dancing and foxtrotting at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Silent home movie footage found in the Prellinger collection on the Internet Archive. I added music from Glen Gray and the Casa Loma orchestra (the band on the stage) that seemed like more or less the right tempo. I put this together in aid of my page on the stye of Foxtrot you see in this film. The page is located at http://www.walternelson.com/dr/foxtrot
Dance Scenes from "Nickel Hopper" - 1926
A satirical look at the social dance scene (in a dance hall) at the height of the Charleston craze. Mabel endures a parade of the worst dance partners imaginable. That's Oliver Hardy at the drums. The big bo-hunk who deserves a belt in the beezer is Boris Karloff. Here's my source for the footage:
https://archive.org/details/TheNickel-hopper1926
Dancing in A Dockside Dive in 1928
This scene, in which dancing figures prominently in the background, gives a sense of the sorts of dancing a movie audience would expect to see in a sleazy dive in New York in 1928. It's from "The Docks of New York"
Dancing in a Parisian Dive in 1921
The dance scenes from the 1921 French film Fievre, showing low-down Jazz Age dancing in a low down venue full of drunk, unhappy people. I pasted "The Montmartre Rag" and "Around the Bois de Boulogne" onto the silent footage.
1920s Fox Trot and Waltz - Dance Scenes from "Regent Hall".
I happened on this fragment of an obscure British film set in a dance hall that contains a lot of nice detail. I also love it when they put up a sign saying "Fox Trot" or "Waltz" to remove any doubt. I am a bit disappointed they flashed a One Step sign, but didn't show it. I am curious what a British One Step would look like given how One-Steppy their Fox Trots are. You would seldom see a dance called a One Step in the States by this time.
Video - Dancing the Fox Trot to Happy Days Are Here Again in 1930
This video, made up of Fox Movietone News rough footage from 1930, shows in great detail, ordinary folks dancing the Fox Trot in 1930.
The Baltimore Fox-Trot Variation
Various British dance champions demonstrate the Baltimore.
