Torero a la fuerza

I like Eddie Cantor movies. This is an early talkie and one of his best. It has two superb dance sequences from Busby Berkeley.

I'd have rated it an 8 but for the number done in black-face. Yes, I know that was fairly standard at the time. It grates today, though. The whole thing is fun. It's improbable but that can be the key to the charm of a Cantor movie.

Nevertheless, the highlight for me was his leading lady. I'd heard the name Lyda Roberti. Probably I've seen her before, too. But I was knocked out by her delightful comic performance. Here was a pretty woman, svelte and attractive, who was a topnotch comic. She presaged such greats as Joan Davis and Judy Canova.

I see she died young. What a loss to Hollywood then and to those of us who treasure vintage movies now! Lyda, you were sublime!

Forced into Mexico by crooks, a nervous young man impersonates THE KID FROM SPAIN--an imaginary bullfighter -- to keep from getting arrested.

Follies star Eddie Cantor prances his way through this naughty pre-Code comedy. Rolling his eyes and clapping his hands, he uses every trick at his disposal to amuse and he succeeds quite nicely. Cantor never slows down, but, like a mischievous little boy, he seems forever looking for new trouble to explore. His climactic scene in the bullfighting arena remains his best remembered movie moment.

Robert Young seems an odd choice to portray a Mexican college boy, and his problematic courtship of pretty Ruth Hall is totally lacking in excitement, but fortunately it isn't given an inordinate amount of screen time. Polish comic actress Lyda Roberti makes a good foil for Cantor; her amusing face almost matches his own in stealing scenes and her singing & acting are delightfully offbeat.

The dastardly deeds are handled by two of the era's best bad guys--John Miljan as an evil matador and J. Carrol Naish as his grimy sidekick. In addition, Cantor gets to share comedy sequences with three funny fellows--Paul Porcasi as a harried border guard; beefy Noah Beery as Miss Hall's very stern papa & Stanley Fields as a dumb-as-mud killer.

Movie mavens will recognize diminutive Edgar ‘Blueboy' Connor as a bull trainer and a young Betty Grable as one of the chorus girls--both uncredited.

Busby Berkeley directed the movie's musical production numbers, including the opening scene in a girls' dormitory, which seems to serve no other purpose than to expose a good deal of female flesh. The film's conclusion seems a bit abrupt. The villains have not been punished and the Young/Hall romance is still unresolved, but Cantor seems quite happy so why quibble?

I like The Kid From Spain very much, it's certainly one of Eddie Cantor's best films. But I'm still trying to figure out why in the world Sam Goldwyn borrowed Robert Young from MGM and cast him as a Mexican. Why didn't he use someone like Gilbert Roland?

Still it's Cantor's show and it begins with Eddie the schnook getting expelled from college after his pal Young puts him in the girl's dormitory where he's discovered by the Dean of Women. To his credit Young owns up to the prank and gets expelled along with Cantor. The two of them decide to go south of the border, but on the way Eddie is forced to drive a gang of bank-robbers across the border.

When American cop Robert Emmett O'Connor goes south after the robbers, the fast thinking Young introduces Cantor as a great bullfighter fresh over from Spain. Now Cantor's got to go through with it or else.

It's pretty thin stuff, but it's enjoyable and the climax with Cantor in the Corrida fighting a bull is something else. See how he overcomes the bovine challenge. Some of that business was used by Lou Costello in Mexican Hayride.

Cantor and Young pair off with Lyda Roberti and Ruth Hall and Ms. Roberti joins Eddie in singing Look What You've Done. The other song Cantor does is unfortunately in black-face and it's What A Perfect Combination. Both songs were recorded by him and sold reasonably well to Depression audiences. The score was written Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby songwriters best known for their Marx Brothers material.

I do say though Robert Young was not a convincing Latino. He was painful to watch and I'm sure he felt more ridiculous than anyone else in the film. It's The Kid From Spain's great weakness.

Other than that, The Kid From Spain is an enjoyable film and those who want to know about the comedic art of Eddie Cantor can't do better than this film to learn.

Utterly hilarious Pre Code musical with two massive and riotous Busby Berkeley dance sequences, this Eddie cantor farce was a huge success in Depressed 1932. Filmed and released in the musical lull years 1931 and 1932 when a musical was supposed to be box office poison, this bull snorter is genuinely toe tapping and rib tickling. Imagine seeing this in a 3000 seater full of unhappy people needing a laugh! THE KID FROM SPAIN must have blown the roofs off with thunderclaps of laughter from one side of the country to the other. It is on record as the highest rentals /film hire between 1932 and 1939 with $2.6m returned to the distributor. This means it must have sold over $6m in tickets...in the most economically bad time of the decade and at a time when ticket prices were in cents. Imagine today if seventy million Americans went to one film in its first release! We're talking TITANIC level ticket sales. Well THE KID FROM SPAIN did exactly that. The two dance sequences are truly spectacular and very funny...the finale WHAT A PEFECT COMBINATION is about risqué as it gets in reverse rude lyrics given he is singing about "I'm the lock and you're the key". Warners Bros clearly handed Busby their studio key after this UA success and booked a box office berth, ready to shuffle off to their 42nd Street box office honeymoon. This KID is worth adopting for your home.

Set in a girls' dormitory that looks more like a palace, it is astonishingly sexy, even by pre-code standards (you won't believe some of the innuendo they got away with); it is also one of the only two big production numbers that Busby Berkeley staged for this movie. Choreographically they're standard stuff compared to what he would do later in his career, but you can still spot glimpses of his genius. As for the rest of the movie, a very slight plot provides the framework for some funny moments (Mexican border standoff, "can you shoot me if I stand over here?", and what may be the first use of slow motion for comic purposes on the screen). **1/2 out of 4.