Sheet music for Take Your Girlie to the Movies, from http://www.letrs.indiana.edu

Indiana University is a specialist provider of digitisation services and digitised resources, among which is Indiana University Sheet Music Collections. This is a database of some 150,000 examples of sheet music in their collection, immaculately presented with sound cataloguing detail and many of the records having digitised cover images and sheet music. There is a simple and advanced search option, and searching on titles and using the option to choose digitised images only brings up records associated with going to the movies from the silent era.

The rise of cinema-going in the 1910s and 1920s was also the great era of recorded popular song, and many tunes were composed which celebrated the stars or were title songs designed to promote particular films. Among those to look out for on the site which have covers and music score available are:

Mary Pickford: The darling of them all (1914) – composers/lyricists: Richard A. Whiting, Dave Radford, Daisy Sullivan.

Poor Pauline (1914) – composer: Raymond W. Walker, lyricist: Charles R. McCarron, a ditty celebrating Pearl White and the Perils of Pauline serial.

Kathleen Mavourneen (1919) – composer: Albert Von Tilzer, lyricist: Will A. Heelan – written to accompany the Theda Bara picture of that name.

Mickey (1919) – composer: Neil Moret, lyricist: Harry Williams, written to promote the Mabel Normand picture.

Smilin’ Through (1920) – music/lyrics by Arthur Penn – written to accompany the Norma Talmadge film.

And the near-legendary Take your girlie to the movies (If you can’t make love at home) (1919) – composer: Pete Wendling, lyricists: Edgar Leslie and Bert Kalmar.

“Take your girlie to the movies,
If you can’t make love at home.
There’s no little brother there who always squeals,
You can say an awful lot in seven reels!

Take your lessons at the movies,
And have love scenes of your own!
When the picture’s over and it’s time to leave,
Don’t forget to brush the powder off your sleeve!”

etc etc

Finally, there’s At the Moving Picture Ball (1920) – composer: Joseph H. Santly, lyricist: Howard Johnson. There’s an MP3 file of this sung by Maurice Burkhardt on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive that’s free to download, and here are the name-dropping lyrics should you wish to sing along:

Reel 1
Hip hooray I feel delighted, yesterday I was invited
To a swell affair, all the movie stars were there
Oh what fun, the party lasted till the break of dawn
Famous players turned to cabareters, how they fooled and carried on.

Chorus:
Dancing at the Moving Picture Ball, some scenario
Great big stars paraded ’round the hall, they were merry oh,
Handsome Wallace Reid stepped out full of speed,
And Theda Bara was a terror, she “vamped the little lady”, so did Alice Brady,
Douglas Fairbanks shimmied on one hand, like an acrobat
Mary Pickford did a toe dance grand, and
Charlie Chaplin with his feet
Stepped all over poor Blanche Sweet
Dancing at that Moving Picture Ball.

Reel 2
Ev’ry girl a handsome looker, had a dance with Mr Zukor
Mr Thomas Ince stepped around just like a prince
William Fox and Jesse Lasky both joined in the fun
Big directors mingled with the actors, why the whole bunch seemed like one.

Chorus:
Dancing at the Moving Picture Ball, some scenario
Great big stars paraded ’round the hall, they were merry oh,
Handsome Wallace Reid stepped out full of speed,
And Theda Bara was a terror, she “vamped the little lady”, so did Alice Brady,
Douglas Fairbanks shimmied on one hand, like an acrobat
Mary Pickford did a toe dance grand, and
Sennett’s bathing girls were there, each one was a little ‘bear’
Dancing at that Moving Picture Ball.

Love that rhyming of looker with Zukor…