| Just as Universal Films did for its 1927 Uncle Tom's Cabin, United Artists prepared a "Thematic Music Cue Sheet" to send out to exhibitors along with Topsy and Eva's eight reels of film. "Cue Sheets" enabled the live musicians whose playing provided the "soundtrack" of silent movies to synchronize their accompaniment with the visual events on screen, with musical selections "cued" to the film's "Titles" (for example, left below, which is cue #7 on page 1). |
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Two of the "Cue Sheet"'s six pages are missing, but from the remaining ones you can get a good idea of what Topsy and Eva "sounded like" to its original audience -- at least when a theater's musicians followed the "Cue Sheet." 41 of the film's 65 total pieces of music are listed. They consist of 27 different songs, only one of which was written by the Duncans, though this song, "Remem'bring," made popular by their stage show, is used as the film's theme song. Unlike most "Tom Shows" and the Universal film, only a few of this movie's songs date from the 19th century context of Stowe's story, which gave the film a more modern sound to accompany its burlesque handling of that story.
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The music is a fairly eclectic mixture. It's not clear if any of the pieces were written specifically for the film, though Ernst Luz, to whom the compilation of songs is credited, is named as the author of several of the selections. Three of these, however, from the "chase sequence" at the end, where Legree pursues Topsy across the snow-covered landscape, are clearly generic "action" pieces (see selections 55 - 56 on page 5 below).
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