| Ben Bernie and All the Lads | |
| Producer: | Lee de Forest |
| Starring: | Ben Bernie Oscar Levant |
| Distributor: | De Forest Phonofilm |
| Runtime: | 10 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
Ben Bernie and All the Lads is a short film made by Lee de Forest in the De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. The film features Ben Bernie conducting his band All The Lads, and features pianist Oscar Levant and saxophonist Jack Pettis. At the time of the filming, Ben Bernie and All the Lads were a featured band at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City.[1]
The band and Levant perform songs—or medleys of songs—including:
by composers such as Bernie, George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Irving Berlin, and Oscar Hammerstein.
The film was produced by de Forest at his studio in New York City in 1925. Earlier dates have been claimed, with no hard evidence to support them, but one of the featured songs, "Sweet Georgia Brown", was not copyrighted, published or recorded until 1925.