Wonder Bar

In the series of Warner Bros/Busby Berkeley musicals stretching from 42ND Street to Varsity Show, Wonder Bar remains the least appreciated (and perhaps the least seen). It's quite remarkable in that the plot, aside from a few opening scenes, keeps "real time" and relationships begin/end, lives are lost, and and all sorts of minor dramas are tied up neatly in one evening at a nightclub.

Al Jolson, as the club owner, takes some getting used to, but he's actually more low-key than usual here--and even a bit touching in scenes. And how fabulous do Kay Francis and Delores Del Rio look in this film? Who cares if they can't act--they do lots of radiant posing and wear gorgeous outfits. There are some bits with Louise Fazenda and a much younger man that left me gasping. The brief (and very funny) "gay scene" and hunky Ricardo Cortez whipping Del Rio also had me shaking my head in disbelief. Anyone care to count how many censorship Code infractions are contained in this film? It raised a stir with the Catholic church and Legion of Decency, and I've read a memo somewhere that some audiences reportedly were appalled by the goings-on in this movie (it was a hit though--grossing nearly a million dollars for the studio).

If you're reading about this movie you already know about the musical numbers--"Don't Say Goodnight", with its octagon of mirrors and chorus stretching into infinity, and "Goin to Heaven on a Mule", with the blackface angels and dancing watermelon. "Mule" is beyond belief--it must've been a killer on the big screen. Viewers are still offended by it, and certainly should be--all it is missing is a Grand Dragon.

A witty, fascinating, naughty, beautifully photographed film. If 42ND Street is the king of the WB/Busby Berkeley crown, Wonder Bar is the banished, scandalous cousin that is inevitably more fun.

Jolson's Al Wonder is a cross between Rufus T. Firefly and an early blueprint for Bogart's Rick in CASABLANCA (he owns a club, he fixes everybody's problems, he's hopelessly in love with a woman (del Rio) who's attached to somebody else, and he's an American living in a foreign city -- Paris, in this case).

Ricardo Cortez and Dolores del Rio display mannerisms typical of actors still in transition from the silent era. They both bring some magnetism to the screen, as do Kay Francis and Dick Powell. The comedy thread, featuring Guy Kibbee, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert and Louise Fazenda as two American couples determined to take advantage of the sexual exoticism of Paris, gets a little thin.

It's a well made film, although clearly dated, and with some interesting moral ambiguity. Its limits as art and as entertainment are transcended during two sublime Busby Berkeley sequences: the first a typically dazzling choreographic gem emerging from a Cortez/del Rio dance routine; and the second, equally impressive, but bizarre, following Jolson in blackface going up to Heaven on a mule, during which Jolson seems to want to add Cab Calloway to his character's identikit.

It's to Lloyd Bacon's (and the cast's) credit that the contrivances of the plot don't dull the film's impact too much, but it is only when BB's magic unfolds that WONDER BAR becomes exceptionally good.

This is a helluva time, riotous precode stuff—perverse entertainment according to some. The Code was invented for just such a film, though thankfully not in time for it, to rob us of pleasures that someone thought would destroy the common fabric if indulged too often.

It's the Depression, though the film takes place in Paris so as not to offend. The film is by the 42nd Street/Footlight Parade team, so a show about a show being staged. The entire film is one long night of song and revelry in Al Jolson's Wonder Bar.

It would be far fetched to claim this as intentionally analogous to the times. In a way, however, it can be said to parse out from and abstract—in the dreamlike way of Hollywood—a certain kind of Depression-era experience.

What has happened from the perspective of the commonfolk in the audience, is that whimsical gods have decided to throw a crank in the gears of the world, snapping order and mechanism—anything goes for a while. In stark reality, this means bread lines and hobo trains.

Here are some of the situations that develop in the story: adultery, theft and all sorts of deceit and secret drama, what amounts to owner- sanctioned prostitution both male and female, a homosexual couple freely dance together, a man who all through the film insinuates suicide and no one bothers to stop him.. and get this, murder goes unpunished and doesn't even weigh on anybody's conscience.

Instead of being made to feel horror and desperation at this snapping of order, we have a grand time. The focus is on us being entertained. This is of course not uncommon for musicals of the time, in fact it is the very engine of it—the show must go on. Here, however, we have Gold Diggers of 33 grinded out through the dionysian wringer.

How about the actual show? Busby Berkeley is here, and that means gaudiness, scope and sensual razzmatazz. I so love the man, at least in those brief years when inspiration was still fresh. There are two numbers here, the first as you expect it; fresh women, body-particles which contrary to shapeless reality, up on the stage form abstract—erotic— order, vaginal molecules that swirl and shudder and blossom fruits in our imagination.

Now you would expect, as was the norm in the 'backstage' mode, the big number to somehow address the situations, a kind of visual situation of situations. It's why I think this mode matters and have been surveying it, quite apart from the pleasures of frill and song.

Here's where it gets really interesting.

The last number once more has Jolson in blackface and was deemed so vile this one, it was excised by censors from future prints. Now Jolson has been scheming all through the film, as the proprietor, to win the affections of his star, not unkindly mind you, but it leads to some nasty turns. Jolson's character—who would be feeling pangs of guilt in normal reality—in his disguise as humble godfearing tom, goes to heaven on a mule; he is mirthfully greeted there by angels in blackface, kids playing banjo, a chorus of happy souls swirling in the clouds.

God, this is great. Jolson as the great manipulator is reprieved from wrongdoing, two layers here: in his mind and imagination, as having conceived the show, secondly in the public mind, in the show being shared for the enjoyment of an audience both in and out of the film, and in its dazzle of course eclipsing in lasting impression the events of the plot.

You think I'm reading too much? Keep in mind I am always observing dynamics, not deciphering intent.

You will notice that the number is linked and flows out from a previous number ('Gaucho'), where reality seeps into the dance in the form of violent passion and the audience applauds, sanctifying the amoral mechanics of illusion. Dolores del Rio as the voluptuous object of desire looks ravishing, everything happens for her eyes. Imagine: she ends in the arms of meek, boring pretty-boy Dick Powell.

Anything goes—a musical Mabuse of sorts, but the manipulator of cinematic illusion walks away instead of as in Fritz Lang's film, succumbing to madness and police. We applaud, blessing his powers of seduction over reason.

Something to meditate upon.

I love "Wonder Bar." I love it in all its vulgarity and I even love the "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule" number despite Busby Berkeley's seeming determination to include virtually every ridiculous racist stereotype of Blacks. "Wonder Bar" seems to me to be one of the few Berkeley movies (like "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "Footlight Parade") whose plot is genuinely interesting and entertaining in itself and not just an excuse to set up the spectacular numbers. The alternation between drama and comedy which bothers some of the other reviewers is one of the best things about this film; it gives it a contemporary quality even if some of the numbers badly date it. Lloyd Bacon's direction is unusually stylish for this generally hacky filmmaker, the Harry Warren/Al Dubin songs are at least serviceable and sometimes better than that, and though Warners was dubious enough about Al Jolson's continued popularity that they surrounded him with an all-star cast (Dick Powell, Kay Francis, Dolores del Rio, Ricardo Cortez), he triumphs.

One thing I've always loved about Jolson is that -- unlike Eddie Cantor and other contemporaries, who sang in blackface exactly the way they sang in whiteface (viz. the Cantor/Berkeley "Whoopee!") -- Jolson didn't. In his whiteface number in "Wonder Bar," "Vive la France," Jolson's voice is a shrill high tenor with an annoyingly fast vibrato. His singing on "Mule" is in an almost different style: he drops his register, slows down his vibrato, sings from deeper in his chest and genuinely tries for -- and, I think, achieves -- the simple, direct eloquence of the Black singers of the time. Whatever you think of Jolson's blackface act (and I'll admit it dates VERY badly), blackface liberated Jolson and freed him to sing in a deeper, more soulful style. One could make the case that Jolson did for Black music what Benny Goodman and Elvis Presley did later -- as a white performer he could reach audiences Blacks themselves couldn't -- and Jolson actually did it twice, in the 1910's when he got his start on Broadway and the 1940's when the success of "The Jolson Story" launched his comeback. White audiences tired of the bland "crooners" of the early 1940's seized on Jolson's direct, ballsy style, and his comeback paved the way for other Black-influenced white singers like Frankie Laine, Johnnie Ray and Elvis.

Also, if you'll dig out your copy of the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack CD and listen to the 1928 recording of "Big Rock Candy Mountain" by Harry McClintock and you'll find that the fantasy of heaven in the "Mule" number isn't all that different from the one in this song ("where the hens lay soft-boiled eggs ... and they hung the jerk who invented work") by a whiteface performer aimed at a white audience. O.K., so no one would dare do a number like this today, but "Mule" is still astonishing and, despite the patronization, worthy to stand as the one Jolson/Berkeley collaboration.

Along with DANTE'S INFERNO and THE MERRY WIDOW also made in 1934, I think this film is the reason the censorship Hays code was rigidly enforced in Hollywood for the next 30 years. Deleriously vulgar and immoral in every scene, all set in a sensational nightclub for all ages and kinky tastes, each leering winking and squabbling, all set to foxtrots and waltzes re-imagined by Busby Berkeley and climaxing with the most hilariously offensive musical number of all time: Going To heaven On A Mule. There's no point explaining it or any other of the screwy dance numbers...including the leather clad S&M themed whipping (and murder) tango by "Inez and Harry"...complete with loud cracks of the whip across the gorgeous face of the awesomely beautiful Delores Del Rio. Someone at Warners must have decided to create a shopping list of production possibilities directly from the planned Hays code of banned themes. It just does not stop being deliberately immoral vulgar and hilariously rude for all of its 88 minutes. I loved all 189 minutes of it because I kept re winding so many bits over and over just to gasp between laughs at the blatant unstoppable cheerfulness of it's violations. All in the most glamorous setting and style imaginable. The orchestral score is excellent - and I have an LP from the 70s with GO INTO YOUR DANCE on the other side. It is created directly from the soundtrack so there is plenty of dialog as well. WONDERBAR is CABARET 1934 for real. Wait 'till you see the epic musical sequence called Don't Say Goodnight where a squadron of negligee clad showgirls dance around massive moving 'pillars' that have big veiny patterns weaving down from the top. That is in between floating past the camera, lit from behind so we can see how sheer their garments are. The scene where two turkey -like old dames ditch their husbands and together pick up the one gigolo (planning a threesome) is a screamer...he clinches the job with the incestuous note "You remind me of my mother" to which they very happily go for him.... and this is all just starters! On top of all this is Al Jolson leering and bellowing, all lustful and creepy... not too much a stretch for Joel Grey in 1972 singing Wilkommen and getting an Oscar! Find WONDERBAR and show it to everyone you know! Colossal and bent as all hell... to music. Read the other comments on this site for the story and viewer outrage. Haha!