Flagg, Quirt, and Olsen - on record

Always on the lookout for new and interesting El Brendel items, the Theater Director of Rome, New York's Captiol Theater, Art Pierce, turned me onto this little number he heard via the RADIOLA! channel on the internet radio feed Live365. It's a 1929 performance by Buddy Morgan and his Veterans, "Sergeant Flagg & Sergeant Quirt" (Columbia 2011 D), and reveals the relationship of the crazy, women loving and hating each other duo from such Fox films as, "What Price Glory" (1926), "The Cock-Eyed World" (1929), "Hot Pepper" (1933), and "Women of All Nations" (1931) in song:



With their trademark "Sez you, Sez me!" slogan, actors Victor Mclaglen (Flagg) and Edmund Lowe (Quirt), brought these two rough hewn characters to life, peppering in saucy language with equally sexy adventures with females around the faux-silver-screen globe.

This recording mimics the situations from 1929's "The Cock-Eyed World" and uses impressions to imitate the lead voices. What is particularly interesting is the Brendel Swede voice communicating probably the best known sceen from the film, the "lay of the land" sequence:



It might also be noted that the Flagg and Quirt characters (as portrayed by McLaglen and Lowe) appear in the short film "The Stolen Jools" (1931) with El Brendel in a minor sketch. The film characters are parodied in the 1932 "kids" short, "War Babies" starring a very young Shirley Temple in the lead role of Charmaine. Then in 1952, 20th Century Fox decided to remake "What Price Glory" with James Cagney (Flagg) and Dan Dailey (Quirt) before the book was finally closed on their travels.