Fox's Cure For Anyone's Depression

The U.S. "Department Of Amusement" Offers Stand Up and Cheer (1934)

There's a splendid book by Henry Jenkins called What Made Pistachio Nuts that explores vaudeville performers as they translated to early-30's screen comedy. A number of them appear in Stand Up and Cheer, a pastiche of stand-alone acts and musical highlights barely related to a backstage drama with Warner Baxter, embattled as in 42nd Street, trying to put on a national revue. He's been president-appointed as Cabinet Secretary of Amusement, which might not have been a bad idea in real life. Will Rogers dreamed up the concept for Fox, but wouldn't play the lead, thus Baxter in reprise of his signature WB role. Stand Up and Cheer is recalled, if at all, as an early showcase for Shirley Temple, who gets but few scenes and a single song/dance number. The print 20th offers on DVD is incomplete --- over ten minutes is out --- there being no good excuse for that as the footage is known to exist. There are good, some startling, moments, the latter put forth by Mitchell and Durant as acrobatic dignitaries using each other like beach balls, theirs the Stand Up section you'll take to troubled sleep (how did these two keep heads on straight?). Stepin' Fetchit is also in, though some of his are among parts missing. "Hillbilly" music gets saluted in strictly Broadway terms, an odd clash of styles. The 30's phenomenon of mountain melodies was nicely explored by Gregory A. Waller in an essay, Hillbilly Music and Will Rogers: Small-Town Picture Shows in the 1930's, which appears in a book Waller edited, Moviegoing In America (highly recommended).