Whoopee! (1930)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Thornton Freeland

Writers:

E.J. Rath (story) &
Robert Hobart Davis (story) ...

Release Date:

7 September 1930 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Musical

Plot:

Western sheriff Bob Wells is preparing to marry Sally Morgan; she loves part-Indian Wanenis, whose race is an obstacle...

Plot Keywords:

Disability | Courtship | Two Strip Technicolor | Racial Prejudice | Based On Play

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Eddie Cantor	...	Henry Williams
Ethel Shutta	...	Mary Custer
Paul Gregory	...	Wanenis
Eleanor Hunt	...	Sally Morgan
Jack Rutherford	...	Sheriff Bob Wells
Spencer Charters	...	Jerome Underwood
Albert Hackett	...	Chester Underwood
Chief Caupolican	...	Black Eagle
Lou-Scha-Enya	...	Matafay
George Olsen	...	Himself, George Olsen (as George Olsen and His Orchestra)

Also Known As:

Whoopee (USA) (alternative spelling)

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (2-strip Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Filming Locations:

Palm Springs, California, USA

Company:

Samuel Goldwyn Company, The

Trivia:

Unfortunately absent from this film version of the 1928 Broadway musical is Ruth Etting. In that show, she sang her signature torch song "Love Me or Leave Me" (music by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by Gus Kahn). No film is known to exist of Etting performing the song. Doris Day portrays Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me (1955).

Quotes:

Jerome Underwood: You know who I am?
Henry Williams: Who?
Jerome Underwood: I'm an Underwood.
Henry Williams: Indian no care for typewriter!

Movie Connections:

Version of Up in Arms (1944)

Soundtrack:

TODAY'S THE DAY

A musical-comedy of the great wide west

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 headliner, Eddie Cantor, he is supported by supporting players, many of whom reprised their stage roles. WHOOPEE, which ranks one of the better stage-to-screen musicals to be distributed during the 1929-30 season, and the film responsible in elevating Eddie Cantor into major box office attraction, it should be noted that this wasn't Cantor's motion picture debut. He had appeared in a couple of silent feature comedies for Paramount in the late 1920s, some sound comedy shorts as well as a guest appearance as himself in GLORIFYING THE AMERICAN GIRL (Paramount, 1929), before the movie going public took notice of him with this performance. Not only did this become the first of Samuel Goldwyn's annual musicals to star Eddie Cantor in the 1930s, it also brought choreographer Busby Berkeley to Hollywood, with his, being his movie debut. While Berkeley's now famous dance direction trademarks are evident here, they are far from the best in what he was to create in later years, particilarly those he would later do over at Warner Brothers.

Set in an Arizona dude ranch, Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt) is about to marry Sheriff Bob Wells (John Rutherford), but she is really in love with Wanenis (Paul Gregory), a young Indian who lives on a 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 a hypochrondiac pill popper named Henry Williams (played by Eddie Cantor with horn rim glasses) from the east, having 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 Williams to drive her away in his ranshackle Ford, leaving Wells and guests at the altar. But Wells refuses to take "No" for an answer, so he goes in hot pursuit of them, as does Henry's nurse, Miss Custer, which leads them all to another ranch, highlighted by misunderstandings, songs and dance numbers.

The musical program are as follows: "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, the ones to show off the Berkeley style are "The Cowboy Number," which includes two overhead camera shots of dancing cowboys and girls doing circular formations shots along with a snake-like effect that would close this number; "Stetson" with cowgirls dancing as they pass along their hats to one another, along with facial close-ups and camera panning through a tunnel of female formation of legs; and "The Setting Sun," highlighted with one overhead camera shot of Indian doing formations with their feather hats.

Also seen 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 starring Cantor musical to be reproduced from stage to screen, is a prestigious production. Done in early two-strip Technicolor, it's been fortunate that this early musical has survived after all these years. Unlike the subsequent Cantor/Goldwyn musicals, WHOOPEE never played on commercial television in the 1960s and '70s. But by 1980, it had resurfaced for the first time in decades during the early years of cable television, and finally being distributed to home video in 1986. While the video transfer to this film is excellent, the TV prints to this early Technicolor film are not as good. WHOOPEE is in many ways dated, especially through some dialogue making reference to popular hit names of the day such as Lawrence Tibbett and Amos and Andy, names that wouldn't mean much 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), became a partial reworking to WHOOPEE. As with other Cantor comedies of the day, some gags are humorous (such as Cantor and character actor Spencer Charters comparing their operations, a gimmic they briefly reprised in Cantor's second Goldwyn musical, PALMY DAYS in 1931), others don't come off as well. One low point occurs when Henry (Cantor) is disguised in blackface, and when he calls out to Sally Morgan, who fails to recognize him, she responds very bluntly, "How dare YOU speak to me!" Quite an uncomfortbable feeling that could have been handled quite differently, with her saying politely, "Do we know each other?" Ethel Shutta, who reprised her Broadway role as Miss Custer, is a fine comedienne in the same league as Warner Brothers' own Winnie Lightner. But unlike Lightner, who appeared in numerous films of the early 1930s, Shutta made this her only screen role during the "golden age of Hollywood." As with Ziegfeld's other Broadway musical, SHOW BOAT (which first became a 1929 part-talkie by Universal), the romantic lovers find they cannot unite as one mainly because of race issues (SHOW BOAT's Julie LaVerne being half black in love with Steve, a white man). In this instance, Wanenis is a native Indian in love with Sally, a white girl.

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 of its racial slurs and jokes, along with Cantor's comedy scene where he is disguised in blackface. 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. But its worth having around as part of cinema history where a Broadway show is reproduced to the screen almost intact, giving more contemporary audiences an basic idea of the kind of entertainment endured many generations ago. WHOOPEE is an interesting antique.