Su majestad la farsa

Any film that gets Eddie Cantor to revive Making Whoopee and I Don't Want To Get Well is one worth seeing even with the skimpy plot.

Show Business is the story of a vaudeville act, how they got together and their trials and tribulations from the turn of the last century until the Twenties. It was right after talking pictures came in that vaudeville began slowly to decline.

This was an era that Eddie Cantor knew well, it was the kind of Show Business he cut his performing teeth with before hitting the big time on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies. The quartet is Cantor, George Murphy, Constance Moore, and Joan Davis.

Davis chases Cantor through out the film which is ironic because she got him in the real life. It was on this film that they had a discreet affair that was well known in performing circles, but the public never found out about lest Cantor's family image be ruined. Davis's comedy here and elsewhere was the physical sort of stuff that Lucille Ball so popularized on television. Davis too had her biggest success in her television series I Married Joan. She died way too young.

Murphy and Moore have an on, off, and on again romance with Nancy Kelly doing her best to break them up. Murphy's big number is the old standard It Had To Be You which at the time was enjoying a revival with a best selling duet record by Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest.

No original music for Show Business, just some good old standards. Unfortunately there is a blackface number that all four of the leads are involved in. Cantor did blackface though it never was THE centerpiece of his stage persona like it was for rival Al Jolson.

Show Business is a pleasant afternoon's diversion about the days of vaudeville. And what days they were.

A clearly minor musical that nonetheless treasures the typical freshness of RKO productions of that time. Once again Cantor's peculiar comedy stands out, but also George Murphy's enthusiasm.

Along with them, the rest of the cast is quite unknown, highlighting the nice Joan Davis.

Although the story is quite simple and has been seen on the screen on many other occasions, this unpretentious film that mixes comedy and melodrama will appeal to all lovers of the musical or fans of Cantor.

In fact, the film is produced by him and is intended to be a self-tribute on the occasion of his 35-year career.

And wit like you would never see nowadays.

The story of a four person act, two men Eddie Martin (Eddie Cantor) and George Doane (George Murphy) and two women Joan Mason (Joan Davis) and Constance Ford (Constance Moore) (lot of thought evidently went into those names), their lives, their loves, their highs, their lows and some very entertaining performances. Particularly from Joan Davis who gets all the fabulous one-liners.

There a some classic songs in there too, "Making Whoopee" and "It Had To Be You." All in all, a very entertaining way to spend a slow Saturday afternoon.

Another Leslie Halliwell favourite, this period musical follows the pattern of several others of its ilk – the career from obscurity to popularity, hitting the skids and the climb back to the top of a burlesque/vaudeville troupe (apparently, the former is deemed a low- grade art form and despised by the latter, but there is little to differentiate them in this film and elsewhere!). Incidentally, co-star George Murphy – whom the fall from grace hits the hardest here – had also featured in the very similar (also comparable quality-wise) FOR ME AND MY GAL (1942), where it was Gene Kelly who got on the wrong end of fame and fortune.

The movie under review was actually instigated by comedian Eddie Cantor (who personally produced it): he had had a successful run of star vehicles with Samuel Goldwyn in the 1930s, followed by a couple of well- regarded efforts for other studios later on – Warners' star-studded THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS (1943) and this one, made over at RKO (its success even prompted a sequel, named after one of Cantor's best-known tunes i.e. IF YOU KNEW SUSIE {1948}). There is actually an autobiographical element to SHOW BUSINESS, since the character he plays obtains his greatest hit with Cantor's very own "Makin' Whoopee" (which inspired his 1930 star vehicle)! Also on hand is comedienne Joan Davis, whose initial disdain for Cantor grows into a true and almost protective love – frequently breaking the fourth wall to assure the viewer that she cannot help herself; their Cleopatra routine is a hoot!

The film encompasses comedy, songs (notably the standard "It Had To Be You", sung – either alternately or concurrently – by Murphy and love interest Nancy Kelly), romance (the latter broken up by his former partner, in both senses of the word) and nostalgia and, while neither the classic Halliwell deems it to be (conversely, Leonard Maltin rated it a more modest **1/2) nor Cantor's most representative work (that would be ROMAN SCANDALS {1933}), there is no doubt that it offers solid entertainment throughout and, as stated in an after-credits title-card, was conceived primarily as wartime escapism for American audiences, be they at home or abroad fighting.

The copy I saw of "Show Business" was very flawed and I hope you can find a better one than the one on YouTube. The picture was scratchy, the sound tinny and whoever posted it stuck a giant watermark across the screen! Even worse is that they removed a blackface segment because it might offend. I personally hate censorship and wish they'd instead given a prologue discussing this scene instead of just removing it.

The story is about the burlesque singing and dancing team of Eddie and George (Eddie Cantor and George Murphy). Soon they meet up with Joan and Nancy (Joan Davis and Nancy Kelly) and they are so good they're able to move up to vaudeville. Things are just fine until George and Nancy marry. On the day their daughter is born, a STUPID misunderstanding tears them apart and the rest of the film is predictable....as years pass, you know eventually they'll get back together.

A serious problem for me was that I didn't care about George and Nancy. Their histrionics really took away from what I loved.... Eddie and Joan. They were wonderful together....just like they'd been in previous films. In hindsight, I really wish they film had just been about them and the other two written out of the picture. Worth seeing despite this...but not exactly a must-see picture.