Wild People

Wild People (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining short from MGM has a couple guys (Harry Jans, Harold Whalen) working for a radio company needing to find new talent. They travel to an unknown island where civilization hasn't changed much over the past thousand years and they find some weird tropical dancers and talented singers. This 17-minute short has a few interesting moments that make it worth viewing even if the actual songs are rather bland and boring. What makes this thing so interesting is that it was shot in 2-strip Technicolor and I'm sure there are many film buffs like myself who enjoy watching this early color process. The print shown on TCM was in pretty rough shape but there was enough detail to make your eyes melt into the screen and put a smile on your face. Another plus are some rather sexual pre-Code moments with the MGM Dancing Girls wearing some very short skirts and shaking their hips. It doesn't sound like much today but for 1932 it was pretty risky. The "comedy" from Jans and Whalen was pretty lame but I do wonderful about the underline notes of them two constantly dancing with each other and being more interested in each other than the actual girls on screen.

The comedy is routine, the acting is pretty bad, the plot can be summarized in six words or less, but it's worth watching anyway, for a rare glimpse of the best Hollywood dancer of the late 1920s & early 1930s, Joyzelle Joyner. Joyzelle is not exactly a household name today, & neither was she well-known even in her heyday. But if you like interpretive dancing, she's well worth the effort in trying to find any of her (rare) appearances. She was featured in DeMille's "Sign of the Cross," a much easier to find film. In that one, she played a lesbian dancer (Hollywood's first lesbian portrayal?). On some film stills, she's portrayed as an "Oriental dancer," but she's only "Oriental" if that's a word used to describe persons of American heritage born in Alabama! I rate this 7/10, & six of those points are for Joyzelle's all too brief appearance.

At the Globe Broadcasting Company, radio station "idea man" Harry Jans and former school chum Harold Whalen are assigned to broadcast from a tropical island. They bring members of a population of prehistoric "Wild People" to the microphone for songs and banter. After a couple of brief solos, the comedy team is joined by the "M.G.M. Dancing Girls" for a dance clad in cheeky costumes with bone necklaces and orange Afro wigs. Everyone is sure the musical is a big success, but a surprise ending limits the show's audience. "A Colortone Musical," this was, "Photographed by Technicolor Process."

**** Wild People (1932) Ray McCarey ~ Harry Jans, Harold Whalen, Joyzelle Joyner, Eddie Baker

This film shows two young men who want to host a radio show in New Zealand where the people adapted to the cave people lifestyles. They host it there in a cave, but forgot to plug the radio wire in. Later in the film, you will see that the cave people captured a bunch of panther ladies. Then they swing dance and have music playing in the background. This film is one of the most entertaining musicals shorts I've ever seen in my life. It is one of those shorts when you have a sad day, but when you watch this it will lighten you up. The best part is the music near the end and how the brown suit guy dances. Particularly, one of my favorites is the blonde women. I would not recommend liberals, silent/ baby boomer generation and liberals to watch this since it would offend them to pieces. This film is not their safe space I should say. This short film never aired on television in the 1950s-1960s because it wasn't meant to. These short films were meant to play before the main feature played in the theatre./

I recently bought several DVD collections of shorts from both Vitaphone (Warner Brothers) as well as MGM. I have been surprised at the quality difference in the two. While Warner/Vitaphone was a top studio, MGM was often called the 'Tiffany Studio'--the best of the best. Well, when it came to short, this certainly is NOT the case and most of the MGM shorts are pretty terrible...especially the comedies. MGM never did all that well with slapstick and goofy comedies and helped to wreck the careers of the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton--mostly because they never had good gag writers. Never is this more evident than in the shorts...and most, like "Wild People" are just dumb.

The story begins with Jans and Whalen being sent from the radio station off to New Guinea, as the head of the station is apparently nuts! He wants a variety show broadcast all the way from this third world nation...why, I have no idea!

When the story switches to New Guinea, NONE of the people or sets look the least bit like New Guinea. Instead, you have lots of white people dressed up like a live action version of "The Flintstones". They then perform several acts that are just terrible and a Panther Woman dance that is highly reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich's "Hot Voodoo" number in "Blonde Venus" (also from 1932)....which, when you think about it, makes no sense because it's a RADIO broadcast.

The bottom line is that I never even came close to laughing even once and the film is just plain unfunny...period. The only mildly interesting thing about the film is its use of Two-Color Technicolor, but it's so badly faded you can barely tell it was once a color film.