The Happy Hottentots

It's a daring performance; Joe plays a barely surviving vaudevillian who partners in a terrible act. The joke is the theater is so low that they seem to be the only performers on the bill, so they have to keep doing their crummy song and dance every few minutes. Of course they deteriorate, but here's the thing: Joe Frisco mixes good moves with bad, as if to give us our money's worth by playing a poor entertainer with great verve, sneaking in legitimate grace notes. So he's playing "Joe Frisco", well-regarded entertainer, playing Joe Blow at the bottom of the vaudeville ladder. Billy Gilbert steals all his (brief) scenes. They get a lot of comedic mileage out of repetitious walks.

Hilarious! Joe and his partner are desperate to break into show business -- but no one can be this desperate! They find themselves out in the boondocks. "You open the show" "We don't open any shows." "All right, you close the show. " "I think we are the show!" With Billy Gilbert as the dyspeptic stage manager, it's a good thing the only audience is the janitor.

Happy Hottentots, The (1930)

** (out of 4)

Early musical-short has a couple singers (Joe Frisco, Bob Callahan) finally getting off the unemployment line when they land a job at a movie theater. What they don't realize is that they're the only act and must perform fifteen shows a day. This early Vitaphone film is going to appeal to only those who enjoy early talkies and you can find this thing on the bonus disc for Warner's THE JAZZ SINGER. The entire film is set up as a comedy because our two "heroes" just repeat the same tired joke over and over. They do a musical set, want to go rest but are forced to go back on for another number. They do the number and then go to rest only to be thrown back on the stage. This happens about six or seven different times and the only "different" thing we see is when the boys must get on the stage while still eating their ham sandwiches. Needless to say, there's very little here that's actually funny as the screenplay really doesn't deliver any laughs and having the same unfunny thing happen over and over really doesn't help. Both Frisco and Callahan are decent in their roles but one wishes the screenplay had been a little better.

The Happy Hottentots is one of the few filmed records of the artistry of Joe Frisco, the famed stuttering comedian who took one lemon of a handicap and made it lemonade. We were lucky that Bryan Foy, son of another vaudeville legend produced this Vitagraph short for Warner Brothers.

What you see in The Happy Hottentots is what happened to vaudeville when sound motion pictures came in. Guys like Frisco and his partner Bob Callahan in these shorts were performing between films while the projectionist was changing films.

So when Billy Gilbert the stage manager tells them to go on with their act on they go, ad infinitum, getting worse and worse each time and emptying the theater gradually. It's funny, but also quite sad.

Frisco himself was a notorious gambler, a lot of his comedy monologue was concerned with his bad luck, but his addiction to the bet. He was like that other wit Will Rogers who started out as a trick rope artist who told funny stories. After a while Rogers didn't need the rope.

So it was with Frisco who didn't need the song and dance. He was a great favorite of Bing Crosby who had him on his radio show a lot and admired the man's wit. I only wish we had more of it in this short.

'Hottentots' is a negative term used to describe black African natives. Oddly, this seems to have absolutely nothing to do with this short film from Vitaphone (Warner Brothers).

The film involves two not particularly funny or talented guys who form a vaudeville-style routine. They get a booking at a theater and there is a funny(?) bit about them being called again and again and again to perform. Sadly, however, this isn't the least bit funny. The only positive I can think of is that unlike most Vitaphone shorts, this one has some plot.

While Vitaphone brought many stage acts to appear in their early sound shorts, it seems that the Reese Brothers (which were not brothers) were saved for the end--probably because they were not particularly good! Compared to other comics of the day, their antics are pretty dreadful and they weren't about to challenge Laurel & Hardy, Wheeler & Woolsey or even Boris Karloff in the comedy department!! I noticed one reviewer comment that Vaudeville is dead...and I think this duo really helped to kill it!