Stand Up and Cheer!

I just watched this movie again, and I think it is wonderful. Shirley Temple is adorable, as always. Madge Evans is terrific. She was way underrated as an actress. She was so good in so many films; Dinner at Eight , Beauty For Sale, and Mayor of Hell are a few that come to mind. Warner Baxter is good, but his role does not offer him the acting opportunity that 42nd Street did , one year earlier.

As for Stepin Fetchit, he is marvelous!!! The man was a comic genius. I rate him as good as Stan Laurel. People nowadays keep stressing the stereotypes of minorities in old films. That's true, but even so, actors like Fetchit displayed great talent. And didn't most comedians, of any color, play stereotypical roles? Silliness has always been a source of comedy, whether it was performed by Stepin Fetchit, Stan Laurel, Cary Grant, or Willie Fung.

I love the musical numbers! They are upbeat, and happy. my favorite one is not Baby, Take A Bow, but Broadway's Gone Hillbilly. I think that The Picken Sisters sing in this number, although they are not listed in the cast.

STAND UP AND CHEER (Fox, 1934), directed by Hamilton MacFadden, features Warner Baxter as Lawrence Cromwell, a Broadway producer who is appointed by the U.S. president as secretary of amusement to rid the country of the Depression blues. Madge Evans co-stars as Cromwell's secretary, Mary Adams, and Arthur Byron as John Hartly, a corrupt politician who wants to keep the Depression going so he can stay in political power, but fails in trying to bribe Cromwell to give up his position.

An enjoyable Depression musical which reflects upon the people and the times, is noted virtually as a Shirley Temple movie. With Baxter and Evans enjoying more screen time, Temple, with her limitations to the plot, became an overnight sensation playing little Shirley Dugan, daughter to song and dance man, Jimmy Dugan (James Dunn). The musical numbers in STAND UP AND CHEER do not play for the audiences in the movie (there are none), but mainly to its viewers. The song and dance appears during the course of the story, beginning with Dick (billed Nick) Foran coming out of a front page newspaper as Baxter and Evans read the headlines, and singing "I'm Laughing," later sung by a cross-country of citizens, and concluding with Aunt Jemima (Tess Gardella) and chorus. Next comes "Baby, Take a Bow" performed by Dunn, a chorine, and Temple; "Broadway's Gone Hillbilly" (sung by Sylvia Froos and chorus); "She's Way Up Thar" (sung by John "Skins" Miller); "This Is Our Last Night Together" (an audition number, sung by John Boles and Sylvia Froos); and the big parade march of happy Americans singing "We're Out of the Red" (introduced by Foran as the Paul Revere bearer of good news on a horse riding across the sky).

As many classic movies in recent years have been nearly restored to its original length, such as the 1933 classic, KING KONG, for example, STAND UP AND CHEER seems to have never played in its entirety on television since the 1960s, and currently is the victim of further butchery. While the Stepin Fetchit segment, in which he encounters a penguin dressed, acting and talking like Jimmy Durante, has been restored, other scenes have been deleted, making the print in circulation since 1984 choppy and confusing. There's one scene in the story in which Baxter says "No" to Fetchit before hearing what he has to say. The violent gags of comedy team of Mitchell and Durant as U.S. senators are either trimmed or completely cut out. I was fortunate to have watched the complete version of STAND UP AND CHEER at a revival theater in New York City in the 1980s. Scenes missing from current prints are Aunt Jemima's introduction to "I'm Laughing," and Nick Foran's introduction to the finale, "We're Out of the Red." 'Skins' Miller, billed as the hillbilly, seen looking for a gal named Sally, bursting into song, "She's Way Up Thar," while Fetchit is out in the mountains with a butterfly net hired to get a hillbilly by Dinwiddie (Nigel Bruce), is completely gone. The closing cast credits is shown on screen in freeze frame and ends abruptly. Originally presented in theaters at 80 minutes, it can now be seen on video cassette (sometimes colorized) and on TV at the 69 minute length. A pity, because those seeing this for the first time today will think this is how it was presented to 1934 audiences, and it wasn't.

STAND UP AND CHEER, which formerly played on American Movie Classics from 1996 to 2001, can be seen once in a while on the Fox Movie Channel. While no great masterpiece, this is one movie that deserves restoration to its original 80 minute length to be fully appreciated. (**1/2)

This is a billed as a "Shirley Temple film," but it really isn't because she hardly appears in it. In fact, she doesn't appear until after 20 minutes have gone by, and then after the scene and a subsequent dance routine with James Dunn, disappears again until the very end. When she's here, she's as cute as ever, especially being so young.

Warner Baxter had the main role as "Lawrence Cromwell." He was assisted by his secretary played by a very pretty Madge Evans, whom I didn't know until trying to find out on this website because the video box doesn't even have her listed in the billing.

The rest of the cast included a couple of people I was familiar with from other roles, such as Nigel Bruce, who played Dr. Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes. We also have a lady who played Aunt Jemima and Stepin Fetchit, both a couple of embarrassing stereotypes of the period. I was never a fan of Fetchin, not for PC reasons but simply because of his whiny voice and stupid characters he played. He was the same here except when he dove into a fish tank, which made gave me a big laugh.

This film had a good share of strange characters but, despite that, overall isn't anything that memorable....perhaps because Shirley had such a small role.

The portrayals of African American characters in this movie are, as has been pointed out, stereotypical, but I would like to suggest that where the actors themselves are allowed to show their talents, they transcend the stereotypes in ways even the filmmakers themselves recognized.

Take, for example, the show-stopping finale to "I'm Laughing," performed by Tess Gardella. There are a series of tableaux in this number, of various individuals all representing different marginalized groups: Immigrants, sweatshop workers, laborers of all kinds, all leading up to Tess Gardella herself busting out with the biggest, cheeriest performance of all, surrounded by a rousing, dancing chorus. It was clearly meant to recap the song's theme--if I can laugh, as downtrodden as I am, so can you--and to embody those who persevere and triumph over circumstance. With a swish of her ample hips and a gleam in her eye, Ms. Gardella triumphs.

The standard Stepin Fetchit routine has been analyzed everywhere, but let me just add that in this picture, the actor personifies African American resistance. In 1934 Black men were still not free from the vicious system of racial etiquette known as Jim Crow, and were therefore limited in the number of personae they were allowed to display. The genius of Stepin Fetchit is that he acts out the prescribed social role while frustrating those who prescribe it by withholding his intelligence and personality from the social interaction altogether. He slyly gives white people exactly what they demand,nothing more, forcing them to realize that perhaps that's not what they want after all. The resistance is his and the joke is on them.

This starts off quite promisingly, with a bumbling 'Dinwiddle" (Nigel Bruce) explaining to awaiting reporters just what his job as chief scout for Broadway impresario "Cromwell" (Warner Baxter) actually is. Then, right on cue, his boss arrives by gyro-copter on the White House lawn for a meeting at which the President offers him a $100m budget and one year as "Secretary of Amusement". His task? Cheer up the American populace after the misery of the 1920s. He quickly assembles his own cabinet - including "Mary" (Madge Evans) as his minister for children and sets about making us all smile. Sadly, Baxter and Evans - and their predictably evolving affection - feature but sparingly in what is essentially a compendium of just about every style entertainment act around at the time. An early outing for the smiling Shirley Temple is probably most notable, but even she struggles to breath much life into this almost documentary style film that could serve well as an history of what made Americans laugh in the early thirties. Some of the artistes work better than others, but a weak, occasionally politically driven, narrative and an off-form effort from what we do see of Baxter just doesn't really work. It watchable as a nostalgia exercise, but as little else I'm afraid.