Palmy Days

Palmy Days was Eddie Cantor's first original feature film, the previous two Kid Boots and Whoopee were film adaptions of Cantor's previous Broadway successes that presumably carried built in audiences. Palmy Days could be said to be Cantor's first personal film success. It sure came at a time he needed it because being wiped out in the stock market crash Cantor was working real hard to rebuild his nest egg and support his wife and five daughters.

His innocent schnook character who turns the tables often on bigger and cleverer foes was finding real appeal with the movie going public. Cantor works for phony psychic Charles Middleton working all the special effects to convince Middleton's marks during séances that their dearly departed are actually communicating with them. One of Middleton's bigger suckers is bakery owner Spencer Charters who employs a flock of beautiful Goldwyn Girls as his bakers. Cantor who's been abused by Middleton decides to trip up one of his cons by getting a job at Charters's bakery, but Charters mistakes him for someone else and hires him as an efficiency expert. You have to love some of Cantor's brilliant ideas like sawing the corners of Charters's desk so that folks would not be tempted to linger awhile sitting on said corners and taking up his time.

Eddie also hooks up with Amazonian physical culturist Charlotte Greenwood who is always a delight. The two worked well together, they should have done more joint films. Charlotte also has the first musical number in the film Bend Down Sister or exercising with the Goldwyn Girls. Busby Berkeley did the choreography and while he hadn't really reached the creative heights as he did with Warner Brothers his style is unmistakable.

Cantor gets two numbers My Baby Said Yes Yes and There's Nothing Too Good For My Baby. Both are delivered in his quick tempo style, Michael Jackson had nothing on Eddie Cantor when it came to moving about on stage.

Of course Middleton is down, but not out. Cantor and Greenwood have a hilarious climax with Middleton and his two torpedoes Harry Woods and George Raft in the bakery. This was one of Raft's earliest films and he barely gets any dialog, but casting him as a gangster was definitely something he could always handle.

Palmy Days holds up well after more than 80 years, it's classic comedy is timeless and the film is great introduction to one of the funniest men of the last century Eddie Cantor.

I strongly recommend you try "Palmy Days"...it has a lot of energy and heart and it's also a lot of fun. However, be forewarned...it features a song and dance number with Eddie Cantor in blackface...something he did often with his stage act. Now before you get all excited and think Cantor is a horrible racist, there are two things to remember. First, while we realize that blackface acts are offensive today, back in the 1920s and 30s, they were popular...and some black performers even did blackface numbers...painting while around their mouths. Second, Cantor is the man Sammy Davis Jr. Credited for starting his career rolling...and Cantor was very effusive in his praise of Davis. So, simply labeling him a racist seems a bit simplistic. He did it, it was NOT good...but it's also a part of our history.

As far as the story goes, it begins with Eddie working for an evil phony psychic. Yolando (Charles Middleton) is simply concerned with money...and he has absolutely no scruples and will do ANYTHING to get it. Eddie is too nice a guy for this and soon quits...and spends much of the movie actually trying to stop Yolando and his thugs from robbing Mr. Clark. As for Clark, he has hired away Eddie from Yolando and made him his Donut company's new efficiency expert. Along the way, one of his employees, Helen (Charlotte Greenwood), falls for Eddie and Eddie THINKS that Clark's cute young daughter wants to marry him...but it's really Helen. What's next? See the film.

This film features several Busby Berkeley song and dance numbers....thought I really enjoyed Cantor's numbers even more. The lyrics were quite clever and cute. It also has a lot of energy, many nice laughs and is a movie that simply left me smiling! Having Charlotte Greenwood to support Cantor really helped...they were wonderful together. The film is one of Cantor's best, though his very best is the delightful "Forty Little Mothers"...one not to be missed.

By the way, look closely at Yolando's henchmen. One is George Raft before he became a star (in the mid-1930s).

This is fine but I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous years, Whoopee!, Eddie Cantor is still great but here some of the scenes no longer seem to work as they much have done back in the day. Also, spirited performance though she gives, Charlotte Greenwood, doesn't quite seem to shine as many other girls do. Indeed the rest of the girls, whether in factory working gear (backless and braless!), gymnastic wear or swimming gear (and seemingly nude(!)) look tremendous throughout. The Busby Berkeley are magical as ever and the songs fine. Its just that one or two of the comedy routines show their age and the protracted finale has not worn well. Have to say though, Mr Cantor amazes and must have been absolutely sensational at the time. Even now his contortions make one wince and his routine when appointed efficiency manager, really funny even now. He could certainly sing too, although we have to close one eye when he blacks up.

Light musical comedy set in a bakery business, with a couple of Busby Berkeley coreographies and lots of Eddie Cantor gags and numbers, helped by Charlotte Greenwood as a physical trainer, whose tall stature makes a comic contrast with Eddie. He stars as a false medium's assistant who is mistankenly taken by an expert and hired by the bakery owner, sucessfully transforms the business into a sort of show-cafè and then tries to prevent it to be robbed by the medium's gang (which includes a young George Raft), while falling in love with the boss' daughter (Joan Clark).

PALMY DAYS (United Artists, 1931), directed by Edward Sutherland, became Samuel Goldwyn's second annual Eddie Cantor production, and another laugh fest with dance numbers and smiling chorines, compliments from choreographer, Busby Berkeley. This being the shortest Cantor musical in the Goldwyn series (77 minutes), it also consists of the least amount of songs (a total of three), plus a handful of funny dialog as well as some violent physical comedy that would be considered something of a throwback during the Mack Sennett silent comedy days.

In this venture, Eddie Cantor plays Eddie Simpson, a nervous little man (as he was in his initial Goldwyn musical, WHOOPEE, in 1930, this time singing whenever he becomes excited), who becomes an unwitting assistant to Yolando (Charles Middleton), a phony spiritualist. Helen Martin (Charlotte Greenwood), a single woman in search for a husband, who manages a gymnasium, regularly attends Yolando's séances. Merry mix-ups follow when Helen mistakes Eddie for her future husband, while Eddie is mistaken for the predicted efficiency expert by Yolando's gullible but millionaire client, A.B. Clark (Spencer Charters), owner of a gigantic bakery business. Eddie becomes interested with Clark's doll-faced daughter, Joan (Barbara Weeks), whom he believes is in love with him, but she is really interested in Steve Clayton (Paul Page). Because Eddie stands in the way of Yolando's corrupt scheme to rob Clark of his $25,000, he hires his two thugs, Joe (George Raft) and Plug Moynihan (Harry Woods) to do away with him, but Eddie has his own problems being pursued by the man-chasing Miss Martin who won't take no for an answer from her "Romeo."

The musical numbers for PALMY DAYS include: "Bend Down Sister" by Ballard MacDonald and Con Conrad (sung by Charlotte Greenwood and Goldwyn girls); "There's Nothing Too Good For My Baby" by Benny Davis, Harry Akst and Eddie Cantor (sung by Eddie Cantor in blackface); "My Honey Said Yes, Yes" by Cliff Friend (sung by Cantor/ performed by Goldwyn Girls); and "My Honey Said Yes, Yes" (finale reprise by Cantor and Greenwood). If the "My Honey Said Yes, Yes" score sounds familiar, it was later used for the 1981 Steve Martin musical, PENNIES FROM HEAVEN.

Aside from two production numbers with the Busby Berkeley overhead camera shots and kaleidoscopic routines, trademarks that would make him famous, PALMY DAYS features several very funny comedy routines, including Greenwood giving Cantor a workout in the gymnasium, even at one point having him twisted in pretzel fashion like a contortionist; being offered a medicine ball with Cantor feeling it too big to swallow; and later being pursued by gangsters (Raft and Woods), hiding out into the company gym locker room while the girls prepare to take their daily swim, thus having Eddie disguising himself as one of the girls (looking almost amazingly like Jack Lemmon's cross dressing character in the 1959 comedy classic, SOME LIKE IT HOT), and being forced to strip by Helen Martin for a shower and a dip into the pool. (Watch Eddie get himself out of that!) The movie is highlighted with a comedic chase in the Clark bakery involving Eddie, Helen, Yolando and his gang over the $25,000 which is hidden in the dough of bread. The one brief scene in which Eddie tries to show off his operation to Mr. Clark (Spencer Charters), is a little inside humor lifted from their comedy routine in WHOOPEE. And let's not overlook a line uttered by Cantor during a séance early in the story, "There is a Minneapolis in heaven, just as there is a St. Paul."

The chemistry between Eddie Cantor and Charlotte Greenwood is priceless. It's a pity they didn't do another movie together. In recent years, PALMY DAYS enjoyed some frequent cable television revivals briefly on Turner Network Television (TNT) in the early 1990s, the Nostalgia Channel, and on American Movie Classics during the season of 1992-93. It was distributed on video cassette, and one of the six package set of Cantor/Goldwyn musicals, but has since been discontinued, with the exception of ROMAN SCANDALS (1933) and KID MILLIONS (1934) which continued in video sale distribution for several years thereafter.

PALMY DAYS would not rank as the American Film Institute's top 100 comedies of the twentieth century, but it's worth viewing, particularly due to Cantor's buffoonery that at times pre-dates the 1960s comedies of Jerry Lewis, but not to the extreme, and/or spotting some future film stars as George Raft (in a small role); watching the villainous Charles Middleton, five years before achieving fame as Ming the Merciless in the FLASH GORDON chaptered serials for Universal in 1936; and Betty Grable and Virginia Bruce, recognizable and visible in the opening dance routines. (***)