Roman Scandals **** (1933, Eddie Cantor, Gloria Stuart, Ruth Etting, Edward Arnold, Alan Mowbray, Verree Teasdale, Jane Darwell, David Manners) – Classic Movie Review 5137

Director Frank Tuttle’s 1933 movie stars Eddie Cantor as an endearing, kind-hearted young simpleton called Eddie, who falls asleep and dreams he goes back to ancient Rome. This jolly vintage musical is raised high with Cantor’s star turn, bright tunes, amusing jokes, the Goldwyn Girls in dazzling routines choreographed by Busby Berkeley, and second-unit director Ralph Ceder’s comic chariot race sequence finale.

Cantor’s character, run out of his Mid-West American town for trying to make people laugh, dreams that he is the food-tasting slave to the wicked Roman emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold), whose wife, the empress Agrippa (Verree Teasdale), is trying to poison him.

The star appears at his most engaging, exuberant and typical in a dynamic, winning performance. And the deliciously catchy songs include him singing ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’ (Al Dubin, Harry Warren), ‘Build a Little Home’ (Dubin, Warren) and Put a Tax on Love’ (L Wolfe Gilbert, Warren) and Ruth Etting singing ‘No More Love’ (Dubin, Warren).

The original story is by George S Kaufman and Robert E Sherwood.

Lucille Ball is one of the slaves and Paulette Goddard is one of the extras. Ball claimed the slave girls were left chained up high in the rotunda between shots and retakes. One day, she fainted, her fake chains broke and she fell, but another extra caught her.

Also in the cast are Gloria Stuart as Princess Sylvia, Alan Mowbray as Majordomo, David Manners as Josephus, Jane Darwell, Charles C Wilson, Harry Holman, Jack Rutherford, Willard Robertson, Lee Kohlmar, Billy Barty, Charles Arnt, Stanley Fields, Francis Ford, Stanley Blystone, Frank Hagney, John Ince, Paul Porcasi, Barbara Pepper, William Wagner, Clarence Wilson, Florence Wilson and Duke York.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5137

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