Whoopee!

Is It Really The Season For Makin' Whoopee?
In 1930 Eddie Cantor was at the height of his career when "Whoopee" was made into a motion picture, taken from the 1929 play of the same title produced by "The Great Ziegfeld".
"Whoopee" is the story of two childhood friends who grew up together only to fall in love. One was a "white girl" the other "an Indian". Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt) is the girl and Wanenis (Paul Gregory) is the Indian. As time goes by Sally's father forbids the two from ever getting married. This lead Wanenis to leave the small town only to return as fate would have it, on the wedding day of Sheriff Bob Wells (Jack Rutherford) and Sally! Soon Sally has doubts about getting married to Bob when she sees Wenenis again. Now, perhaps your asking yourself, what has any of this got to do with Eddie Cantor? Absolutely nothing. Cantor plays Henry Williams. A neurotic who shys away from the advances made by his nurse, Mary Custer (Ethel Shutta) and perfers the...

CANTOR'S 193O TECHNICOLOR MUSICAL HIT.
Cantor is a state-of-the-art hypochondriac whose imagined poor health causes him to bring many hilarious situations into view. The character he portrays - Henry Williams - is something of a busybody who moves to Arizona for his health's sake and gets himself involved in the affairs of Sally Morgan...The art direction and musical numbers are still fascinating to observe and Cantor is hilarious when he explains blithely that he could die from any one of his several diseases right on the spot. This film - which was co-produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn - made Eddie Cantor a film star of the early talkies. Based upon THE NERVOUS WRECK by Owen Davis, this primitive Technicolor musical still has the ability to entertain - especially if you are partial to Eddie Cantor's brand of comedy. Look for a 14 (!) year-old Betty Grable as one of the Goldwyn Girls in this opus which was remade in 1944 as the Danny Kaye star-making vehicle UP IN ARMS. As a footnote, Goldwyn opened his...

The static camera rules!
This is certainly an oddity, from the hues of two-strip Technicolor to the scenes of Cantor emerging from his hiding place of an oven (in itself unsettling, given the added hindsight of WWII and Hitler's Ultimate Solution) in blackface. The songs, however, are superb, and "George Olsen's Music" in the background gives this underrated bandleader some nice exposure. Technically "Whoopee" fares better than the Marx Brother's "Animal Crackers" of the same year--they even manage to sneak in a couple of exterior shots!

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