Whoopee! **** (1930, Eddie Cantor, Ethel Shutta, Paul Gregory, Eleanor Hunt, Jack Rutherford, Spencer Charters, Albert Hackett) – Classic Movie Review 8562

Director Thornton Freeland’s 1930 early Technicolor musical Whoopee! showcases one of Eddie Cantor’s quintessential performances based on his hit Ziegfeld Broadway show as the hypochondriac shy guy Henry Williams, who makes romantic whoopee at a Western health spa. Henry’s nurse Mary (Ethel Shutta) has been trying to seduce him. Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt) flees her wedding to Sheriff Bob Wells (Jack Rutherford) with Henry because she loves part-Indian Wanenis (Paul Gregory).

The daft show is still quite a lot of fun, as an Eighties Broadway theatre revival showed, with its evergreen hits ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ (music by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by Gus Kahn) and ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’ (music by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by Gus Kahn). But the film’s main assets are the likeable Cantor’s irrepressible energy, the spectacular Busby Berkeley song ‘n’ dance staging, and the glorious two-strip Technicolor. Make a little allowance for the film’s age and early sound techniques, and it is a rich treat.

Betty Grable is one of the chorus girls, aged 13. As one of The Goldwyn Girls, she leads off the Busby Berkeley-staged production number ‘Cowboys’ (music by Walter Donaldson, lyrics by Gus Kahn). That same year, she had a chorus bit in the New Movietone Follies of 1930. Paulette Goddard, Ann Sothern, Betty Stockton, Christine Maple, Georgia Lerch, Dorothy Knapp, Jane Keithley, Jean Howard, Muriel Finley, Jean Fenwick, Claire Dodd, Mildred Dixon, Doris Eaton, Ruth Eddings, Virginia Bruce and Barbara Weeks are also Goldwyn Girls.

Also in the cast are Eleanor Hunt, Paul Gregory, Jack Rutherford, Ethel Shutta, Spencer Charters, Albert Hackett, Chief Caupolican, Lou-Scha-Enya, William H Philbrick, Dean Jagger, Theodore Lorch, Marian Marsh, Paul Panzer and Frank Rice.

Whoopee! is directed by Thornton Freeland, runs 93 minutes, is made by The Samuel Goldwyn Company, released by United Artists, is written by William M Conselman (screen adaptation), based on the play The Nervous Wreck by Owen Davis, is shot in two-strip Technicolor by Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan and Gregg Toland, is produced by Samuel Goldwyn and Florenz Ziegfeld Jr, is scored by Alfred Newman (musical director), with music by Walter Donaldson and lyrics by Gus Kahn, choreography by Busby Berkeley and production design by Richard Day.

Whoopee! is remade by producer Samuel Goldwyn as Up in Arms in 1944 with Danny Kaye.

Eddie Cantor, Eleanor Hunt, Ethel Shutta, Paul Gregory, Jack Rutherford, Spencer Charters, Albert Hackett and Chief Caupolican all reprise their roles from the original 1928 Broadway show. Buddy Ebsen was not so lucky and didn’t make the movie.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8562

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