Whoopee!

"Whooppee!" was made at a perfect time, 1930. It has experimentation with the new two-strip Technicolor process (which gives an unreal, pleasing pastel quality). The Hays Office (the censorship arm of movies from 1934 to 1956) hadn't come in, allowing for some funny off-color jokes, and some wild costuming of shapely dancing girls. The star, Eddie Cantor was in his prime. Eddie plays a hypochondriac on a cross country auto trip. He winds up at an Indian reservation, wrongfully hunted by the Sheriff. The film moves from being a comic gift from long ago, to a scary reminder of poor race relations only 70 years ago. Eddie hides in coal stove that explodes, and he emerges in black face, allowing him to walk past his pursuers in disquise. He approaches the leading lady of the film. She sees him and yells "How dare YOU speak to ME?!" Looking past the social-incorrectness of the film, the dance numbers have some amazing choreography by Busby Berkeley, who was just beginning to discover new and exciting ways to film dancers.

In terms of cast the film Whoopee is a considerably cut down version of the Broadway show. That could be said of the Donaldson-Kahn score as well. But in terms of the film it was a valiant attempt, a trial run at making the musical not just a photographed stage play. For that effort Whoopee got an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction.

Before Eddie Cantor starred in the musical version of Whoopee on Broadway which ran for 407 performances in the 1928-29 season, it had been a straight comedy play The Nervous Wreck which ran for 279 shows in the 1923-24 season. I have to confess I was a little shocked when I saw that Otto Kruger had played Cantor's role of Henry Williams, the nervous hypochondriac who went west seeking a cure for his multitude of ailments. I sure didn't see that coming.

In any event Whoopee has Cantor at a dude ranch with his private nurse Ethel Shutta who was also repeating her role from Broadway. His good friend an Indian played by Paul Williams has an unrequited love for Eleanor Hunt and she him. But the racial differences make this romance impossible at least on the stage and screen of the Twenties. She's engaged to marry the sheriff John Rutherford, but rather than do that she tricks poor Cantor the schnook into running off with her. That leads all on a merry chase throughout the film.

Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn wrote the score for Whoopee on stage and screen and of course Eddie Cantor's big number was his classic Making Whoopee. Even today this salute to the phrase 'cheaper to keep her' carries a lot of laughs. Donaldson and Kahn wrote some new songs including another that Cantor introduced on screen that also became associated with him throughout his career, My Baby Just Cares For Me.

Ethel Shutta was quite a performer herself and this is the only time we can see her in her prime as she competes with Cantor for laughs and does some nice dancing in the Stetson number. She was married to orchestra leader George Olsen who led the pit orchestra on Broadway for Whoopee and accompanies on the soundtrack in this film.

This film also introduced Busby Berkeley to the silver screen and according to Herbert Goldman's biography of Cantor, it was Cantor who persuaded Sam Goldwyn to hire Berkeley. His numbers are nicely staged though he wasn't anywhere near his peak creative years with Warner Brothers.

On Broadway Ruth Etting had a specialty part and introduced what became her theme song in Love Or Leave Me. Sadly Ruth and the song got eliminated from the film and that is a pity. If you remember the part that Patrice Wymore played in the Gus Kahn biographical film I'll See You In My Dreams her role was based on a combination of Etting and Clara Bow.

Sadly Whoopee does bow to the racial and racist mores of its time. A solution to the marital problems is found that would not fly today.

Despite that Whoopee is worth seeing in order to see one the great performers of the 20th Century in a role that Eddie Cantor made his own.

This is one of the oldest surviving all-color talking films. The only other one I can think of from 1930 that is still with us is Universal's "King of Jazz" and "Under a Texas Moon". It will probably seem odd to you at first that the sheriff and his deputies - I assume they are deputies - are all dressed in rather cartoonish over-sized cowboy hats and pink scarves, but you have to remember two things. First this is, at heart, a musical farce and the costumes are part of that farce. Secondly, remember that two-strip Technicolor was all they had in 1930, that it was still considered a treat by the public, and that pink and blue were the colors this process rendered best.

The tale that acts as a vehicle for all of Eddie Cantor's antics is a simple one, and one that is repeated in several films over the years - that of forbidden love between races. Sally, a white girl, falls in love with Wanenis, an Indian. Since such marriages were forbidden, Wanenis goes away into the wilderness to deal with the fact they cannot be together. In the meantime, Sally's father arranges for her to marry Sheriff Bob Wells. Wanenis returns on Sally's wedding day, not knowing it is her wedding day. When Sally sees Wanenis, she knows she cannot go through with the sham wedding and runs away. The fun comes in with how she runs away. She tells sickly Henry Williams (Eddie Cantor) that she and Bob are planning to elope, and that she needs him to drive her into the next town. However, she leaves a note for everyone else saying she has eloped with Henry. Not only is the vengeful sheriff, his men, and Sally's father soon hot on their trail, but Henry's aggressively love-sick nurse is after them too. Only Wanenis finds this whole thing an odd turn of events and takes a short cut to go looking for them, separate from the rest of the pack. Complications and opportunities for Cantor's always enjoyable remarks, eye movements, and musical interludes ensue.

This film survives intact in splendid shape, and the Technicolor truly yields a spectacular painted desert. Although best remembered songs from this film will always be title song "Makin' Whoopee" and "My Baby Just Cares For Me", both performed by Eddie Cantor, I also really liked the love ballad sung by the star-crossed lovers Sally and Wanenis -"I'll Still Belong to You". It has an operatic quality that is typical of love songs from that era, and oddly enough was written by Nacio Herb Brown of MGM songwriting fame.

Finally, let me mention the fact that some of the racial aspects of this film might leave the modern viewer squeamish such as the stereotypes of native peoples and the fact that Eddie Cantor usually appeared in black-face as part of his act and does here too. Try to remember that none of this is out of character for a film made 80 years ago and no mean-spiritedness was intended at the time.

Highly recommended for a chance to see Eddie Cantor in one of his best.

I just watched Whoopee! on an excellent laserdisc print, and my nostalgia conceit was fed yet again. The world seemed happier and lazier, the chorus girls sweeter and prettier, the tunes bouncier and brighter. Viewers' comments about Eddie Cantor prancing in blackface miss the point: it is not racism that is projected, but a society in which racism is meaningless. My conceit, of course, is absurd; there are no "good old days", and it was no bed of roses to be an average Joe or Jane in 1930 when Whoopee! was made. But movies like these are my escape to Happyland, and while a steady diet of the same would be cloying, a dip into an old musical guarantees me a dreamy uplift.

WHOOPEE (United Artists, 1930), directed by Thornton Freeland, subtitled "A musical comedy of the great wide west," produced in collaboration with Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn, is another one of those reworking Broadway shows to come out of Hollywood during the early days of talkies. Headed by Broadway's own Eddie Cantor, with co-stars, many of whom recreating their stage roles, WHOOPEE ranks one of the better stage-to-screen musicals released during the 1929-30 season. It's also the film responsible in elevating Cantor into major box office attraction. Not only was this his first for Samuel Goldwyn, but the introduction of choreographer Busby Berkeley to the motion picture screen. While Berkeley's now famous dance direction trademarks are evident here, they're far from the best to what he later created at the Warner Brothers studios in the 1930s.

Set in an Arizona dude ranch, Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt) is about to marry Sheriff Bob Wells (John Rutherford), though she really loves Wanenis (Paul Gregory), a young Indian living on an Indian reservation near her father's ranch. Because Wanenis is of Indian blood, it is not permissible for a white girl to marry a "red skin." Also staying on the ranch is Henry Williams (played by Eddie Cantor with horn rim glasses), a hypochrondiac pill popper from the east, there for a rest cure, accompanied by his nurse, Mary Custer (Ethel Shutta), who not only feeds him medicine, but happens to be in love with him. Unable to go on with the wedding, Sally arranges for Henry to drive her away in his ran-shackle Ford, leaving Wells and guests at the altar. Since Wells refuses to take "No" for an answer, he goes in hot pursuit of them, as does Miss Custer, leading them all to another ranch, leading to complications, songs and dance numbers.

The musical program includes: "The Cowboy Number" (sung by Betty Grable); "I'll Still Belong to You" (sung by Paul Gregory); "Makin' Whoopee" (sung by Eddie Cantor); "The Mission Number" (sung by chorus); "A Girl Friend of a Boy Friend of Mine" and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" (both sung by Cantor); "Stetson" (sung by Ethel Shutta); "I'll Still Belong to You" (reprise by Paul Gregory); "The Song of the Setting Sun" (sung by Chief Caupolian) and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" (reprise by Cantor).

Of the song tunes, only three show off the Berkeley style: First "The Cowboy Number," featuring two overhead camera shots of dancing cowboys and girls doing circular formations shots climaxed by snake-like effects; "Stetson" having cowgirls dancing while passing their hats to one another, followed by individual close-ups and camera panning through a leg tunnel; and "The Setting Sun," highlighted with one overhead camera shot of Indian doing formations with their feather hats. Among those in the supporting cast are Albert Hackett as Chester Underwood; Marian Marsh as Harriet Underwood; the George Olson Band, and the 1930 Goldwyn Girls (the most famous one here being Betty Grable).

WHOOPEE, the only Cantor musical reproduced from stage to screen, is a prestigious production. Done in early two-strip Technicolor, considering how many early Technicolor musicals are lost, it's fortunate this one has survived. Unlike the subsequent Cantor/Goldwyn musicals, WHOOPEE never played on commercial television in the 1960s and '70s. It was by 1980 did it finally turn up on cable television before turning up on home video in 1986. While the video transfer to this film is excellent, the color on the TV prints are not as good. It's reflection of the times by ways of making reference to popular hit names as Lawrence Tibbett and Amos and Andy are definitely names that would be of a loss today. Cantor's nervous wreck characterization would be carbon copies by future film comedians, especially Danny Kaye, who's Samuel Goldwyn debut, UP IN ARMS (1944), was a partial reworking to WHOOPEE, though not its remake.

As with other Cantor comedies of the day, some gags are humorous (such as Cantor and character actor Spencer Charters comparing their operations, a gimmick they briefly reprized in Cantor's second Goldwyn musical, PALMY DAYS in 1931), others don't come off as well. One low point occurs when Henry (Cantor), disguised in black-face, calls out to Sally Morgan,. Failing to recognize him, she responds very bluntly, "How dare YOU speak to me!" Quite an uneasy feeling for its viewers that could have been handled differently, with her politely replying, "Do we know each other?" Ethel Shutta, repeating her Miss Custer role from the stage version, is a fine comedienne reminiscent to Warner Brothers' own Winnie Lightner. Unlike Lightner, who appeared in numerous films of the early 1930s, Shutta made this her only screen role during the "golden age of Hollywood."

When WHOOPEE became one of a handful of Eddie Cantor musicals to play on cable channel's American Movie Classics in the 1990s, at one point, host Bob Dorian, before the presentation of the film, asked his viewers to watch the film as it was originally intended and not be offended by some racial slurs, jokes, and Cantor disguised in black-face to keep from being arrested. In spite of how viewers might have felt towards this film then and now, WHOOPEE, played longer and more frequently on AMC (1992 to 1998) than any other Cantor musical. WHOOPEE is one of those Broadway transfers to give contemporary audiences a basic idea of the kind of entertainment endured many generations ago. WHOOPEE, as it stands, remains an interesting antique. (***)