Show Business

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.

We have a musical that starts well but then fades until you are finally glad that it has come to an end. The cast are fine when it comes to singing and dancing especially in the first half of the film – some great songs and sequences. However, the lead character as played by George Murphy isn't nice to his girlfriend Nancy Kelly from the start and so the audience aren't really on his side from the beginning. In fact, none of the relationships make sense – his other alliance with Constance Moore is totally confusing. She divorces him, then wants him back – it never makes sense. The film suffers because it chooses to follow this unrealistic love triangle story that would just never be there. Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis provide the comedy partnership and deliver their lines well, but you have to be a Cantor fan to enjoy his schtick.

There are moments of humour and good songs but why perform "It Had to Be You" three times? It was good on the first occasion but then becomes corny. The film gets boring, I'm sad to say.

This very funny and often very rude musical comedy is basically a biography of a burlesque to vaudeville song and dance team over the first 30 years of the 20th century. Produced in 1944 by RKO it forms part of the series of looser censorship titles that seemed to find some freedom to be more realistic (with a franker sexuality) during the war years. It is also part of the nostalgia mentality of WW2. SHOWBUSINESS is not a WW2 film but one made to shore up reasons why America fought, displaying a warm hearted Americana that justifies the American spirit - on stage in crummy burlesque and splashier vaudeville. The main stars are the unconvincing grinning George Murphy, always awkward and odd especially when tap dancing and the reliable and then retired 30s mega star Eddie Cantor who I personally find hilarious. Pratfall queen and camp comedienne Joan Davis becomes Edde's love interest: but... in this film Eddie's character is so clearly gay (the script makes no doubt he is both a sissy and not interested in a female lover that it is up to Joan to constantly turn to the camera and exclaim "but I just love that boy" chasing and embracing him while he squirms, even to the final fade out. One genuinely laugh out loud gag between them involves a massive salami...since she knows what Eddie likes. The dance numbers are pedestrian and just a blip above curiosity and there are so many montages using RKO musical stock footage that they almost take over the interest in the film, picking what obscure old title they have been lifted from. However, Joan and Eddie provide such a font of vulgar sex jokes and sly camp farce that they save the film from being bland. Oddly enough with all the vulgar jokes on hand, the Eddie Cantor song 'Makin Whoopee" is delivered in a slurred tone as if not to make such a big obvious deal of what 'makin whoopee' is actually referring to. A case of when the 1930 rendition is better than the 1944 one.

SHOW BUSINESS (1944) seems like a rather obscure old film, but it's surprisingly enjoyable. Nothing major, but it's a lot of fun.

The movie is a breezy tale about entertainers on the old vaudeville circuit (~1910s) and it showcases some classic songs like "It Had To Be You", "Dinah", and "Makin' Whoopee".

The cast may not be flashy, but they're a delight. The film is anchored by song and dance men George Murphy and Eddie Cantor. The two partners soon meet up with female showbiz duo Constance Moore and Joan Davis. There's singing, dancing, comedy bits, romance, and some dramatic beats along the way.

(Interestingly, the principal cast all play characters sharing their first names.)

I am not familiar with Joan Davis, but she's very funny as a wisecracking Eve Arden-type. Eddie Cantor plays the comedic sidekick role here, and I think I enjoyed him more than in his earlier starring vehicles. His comedy shtick is actually pretty sharp and he tones down some of his characteristic bug-eyed stuff. Cantor and Davis make an excellent comedy pair.

Eddie Cantor seemed to be in his comfort zone, essentially playing himself, an old-time vaudevillian hopping up and down a stage. Cantor produced the film, which leads one to suspect he might have been retracing his own steps through the glory days of vaudeville. "Makin' Whoopee", sung by Cantor in the film, had actually been popularized by Cantor himself in a Florenz Ziegfeld production.

Leading lady Constance Moore was not a typical fresh-faced beauty, but I thought she was lovely. She reminded me vaguely of other actresses but I'd never seen her in a film before. I'll have to keep an eye out for her.

I had low expectations for this B-musical, but I was pleasantly surprised. Give it a look.

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.