Cantor and Color Make Whoopee

 When Apostles of Pep Were Among Us

Parts of Whoopee! are really funny, as is creaky underpinning and whole show that is Eddie Cantor, 20’s conception of what clicked in comedy derived from stages, this his overall best, with two-color Technicolor poured over dance numbers by early applier Busby Berkeley. I read Richard Barrios' expert coverage in A Song in the Dark and was guided to thirteen-year-old (!) Betty Grable (Didn't they check birth certificates at Goldwyn Girl round-up?) as chorine to give voice for an opener that will transport us close as anything to Broadway as it was in 1928-29 when Whoopee! did 407 performances at the New Amsterdam on Broadway, 12/28 to 11/29. Ticket sales averaged $40K a week, stellar for legit if smaller spud beside what movies by then could realize, especially with new-arrived talkies speeding up turnstiles (The Cock-Eyed World at the Roxy drew $173,391 for its opening frame). Whatever the comparisons, Whoopee was Broadway’s top earning musical during 1928-29, so clearly there was more than just Marx Bros. getting live laughs in those days, Cantor more-so a favorite for headlining the Ziegfeld Follies. Whoopee! on disc has strongest whiff of “live” performing from vanished epoch, my “creaky” applied only in filmic sense, but even at that, Whoopee! vaults ahead of much that came out during 1930. Warner Archive's DVD seems juiced at times, unless two-color Technicolor really was able to capture blues, which I always understood it could not. A still OK disc, if not an altogether accurate one. There must be overpowering temptation to "fix" old movies where easily done so at modern transfer desks.

Cantor Cavorts as The Kid From Spain

Whoopee! was meeting of minds between Samuel Goldwyn and Florenz Ziegfeld, the latter eased aside by stronger will of the former. The musical-comedy was transposed more-less as was, though songs we’d like are missing, Love Me Or Leave Me less comedic than others of the score, omissions including also I Faw Down and Go Boom, while Eddie’s signature tune, Makin’ Whoopee, stayed evermore in his repertoire, as familiar perhaps to 50’s TV viewers as it had been for showgoers in 1928-29, Eddie inevitably reviving it anytime, anywhere, he was invited to perform. Part of ongoing Cantor charm was his association with silly songs, a balm to fans looking back from the 50’s to times that were simpler, and many thought, better. He truly was the “Apostle of Pep.” Colgate’s Comedy Hour used Cantor, would have continued doing so, but for health collapse that foreclosed strenuous comedy, which Eddie’s always had been. Still, the old routines could be managed so long as he stood relatively still, not the Eddie his public had known, but necessity that had to be met. He had been among first to do “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” kept on right to a point where he no longer could. There was comfort in Cantor taking a tune most saw as weird artifact (look at Bananas treatment by Sabrina), but embraced anyway, just because no one pretended it to be anything other than absurd, and besides, hadn’t the fifties given us “How Much Is That Doggy In the Window”?

A Tab Version of Whoopee Goes On Tour, "Supervised" By An Absent Eddie

Spending was demonic, a cool million when most features got done for a quarter or less of that, but Whoopee! plus Eddie Cantor was considered a surest thing around, which it was, provided you knew vaudeville and Cantor's domination of it. But 1930 was before Eddie got firm hold of radio millions (as in listeners), so his public was an urban one, as was approach to humor recognized less by hix/stix that Goldwyn/UA had to serve. Eddie sings his ribald songs, the title one lyrically tamed for tenderer stub-holding sensibilities. Reviewer of the play Robert E. Sherwood, for Life, pointed out verse as in “It’s not the chorus girl’s voice that gets her the big Rolls Royce --- It’s making whoopee!” This and spray of verbal naughties were pared, bow to provincial crowds not accustomed to Cantor’s freewheeling. Latter was among secrets of his live-performer success, for no two renditions of Whoopee were the same, Eddie following own dictates as to what to say or do on a given night. His stage commenting even on events that may have happened that very afternoon made jibes play like a late edition just on streets outside the New Amsterdam. You could, and many did, go see Whoopee multiple times to hear what was on Cantor's mind, a technique others, like Will Rogers, famously used, but Eddie’s was all the funnier by breaking often free of “book” portions, him nonconformist in addition to being funny. Outsiders got the flavor of New York and certainly Broadway from ultimate insider that was Cantor. He had been raised in Gotham (Lower East Side), took the town for his own, reflected it better than virtually anyone on any stage. If his act was at times “clubby,” well that was OK too, for Eddie was exotic in his ethnic displays, and to heck with pleasing, or even being understood by, everybody, though fortunately he was magnetic enough to pull all beneath his big tent.

Broadway was principally about parading its uniqueness, artists like Cantor not inclined to overlap with anyone else’s approach. Look at singularity of him, Will Rogers, Jolson, W.C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Ed Wynn --- you’d not confuse a particle of these with the others, or anybody, question being how specialness might translate someday to movies, where please-all-and-sundry was steadfastly the rule, Broadway as one’s own playpen suddenly a place to confine rather than bask in. Cantor had to be smoothed out for widest consumption, an account well given by Henry Jenkins in his book, What Made Pistachio Nuts?. Eddie could cut loose at the Follies or Roof Garden, ad-libbing near the knuckle of permissive talk, but movies were not of mind to let him perform fully his way, a devil's bargain he recognized and resigned to. There was screen awareness of him from shorts done in a last year and released by Paramount, one reel at most of Cantor plus patter, best sampling a piece called Midnight Frolic, set at one of his Roof Garden shows, albeit Astoria-reconstructed, still close enough to seem authentic. We look at the grey image and wonder if this was as good as Eddie got, hardly a fair comparison to him doing routines when they were freshest, and before live crowds. Midnight Frolic first-ran in tandem (3/29) with The Letter, starring Jeanne Eagels, a heavy dose for which Cantor was welcome relief. To that point, film use of Cantor was a matter of tries to encourage (Kid Boots), but later to fail (Special Delivery). Both were silent features, neither made his job simpler. Eddie headlined one of the early DeForest reels where we hear him speak, also sing, stage-derived material, but how many saw this experimental bit, shown as it was in but few venues, and hardly noticed by a mainstream?

Prolific Eddie Cantor and Family

Eddie had a cameo as himself in Glorifying The American Girl, in fact an extended routine, but the feature came late in a musicals cycle and drew less attention than if it arrived sooner. A lot no doubt assumed Whoopee! was Cantor’s debut on film (note the movie’s exclamation point as opposed to the play which went without the !), and for extraordinary effort applied here, it might as well have been. Whoopee!'s value beyond entertaining, which it still does, is giving us Broadway in something like the flesh, pink as piglets per two-color with charm of its narrow range. Eddie Cantor would go merry way of clowning for Goldwyn, a plushest fun-maker of any lead comic during the 30's. You could wish others of the era had half so much money behind their vehicles, and besides, Eddie kept a pretty high standard by his measure, even if viewers find him today as inaccessible as, say, Joe E. Brown, but Brown was enormously popular too for a lengthy vogue, so again, maybe 30’s folk knew something we don’t. Goldwyn was generous to his star hire, a five-year pact from 1930-31, $100K per vehicle with ten percent of profits for sweetener, at rate of one feature per year. If you like Eddie, each serves fine. I looked at Palmy Days and Roman Scandals recently and laughed. Kid Millions has a wrap reel in newly christened Three-Color Technicolor that made 16mm prints a collector grail at one time … Eddie and Our Gang kids loose in a massive deco Ice Cream factory, pure Classic Era pleasure.

Cantor seems to have mastered all mediums --- recording when it was primitive, and then more developed, a radio program to go the distance, received warmly on television as that newest of forms gave even oldest hands from vaudeville new relevance. You could say Eddie was too “hot” for the mellow tube, though circumstances softened his act by the 50’s to incorporate as much nostalgia for his and others’ past peak, recreating hoke with troupers still babies or unborn when he started out (Eddie continued “discovering” young talent, Eddie Fisher among these). Slowdown was made necessary by heart ailment that plagued Cantor from the early 50's to the end that was 1964. This gave him time to regroup and perhaps reflect, as evidenced by another memoir, Take My Life, through spirited dictation of which his stenographer and ghost assist could barely keep up. Energy was slowed, but not Eddie’s enthusiasm, still immense and particularly so when he took account of glory days and personalities he shared them with. He had a room where walls displayed them all. Mention Bill Fields or Will Rogers and he could talk a staccato blue streak. I don’t know of anyone in show business who so appreciated other people’s talent as Cantor did. He never went a scorched earth route, but would spell out friend oddities which, coming from Eddie, sounded like expression of endearment. A for-instance: pal Fred Allen could never click on television because he simply disliked people, said Cantor matter of fact. Well, maybe Fred himself wouldn’t have denied that.

Had he lived longer, Eddie would undoubtedly have been a willing and enthusiastic resource for show-era researchers. Apart from entertaining, he was revered the while (a long while, virtually his entertainer lifetime) for charity work, known well for length/breadth, the March of Dimes his creation. Eddie took that idea straight to Roosevelt’s office, door of which was always open to him. Family members (grandchildren) keep Eddie alive with DVD releases (“Lost Performances”), made up of rare stuff. Admirable effort, if a steep climb to maintain visibility. You Tube is full of him, including Colgate shows, his Person To Person with Ed Murrow, much more. Warner Archive did a nice box of the Goldwyn comedies, save Whoopee! and Kid Millions, which were offered separately. Beyond Goldwyns, the Archive has Show Business, Thank Your Lucky Stars, others, while Fox on Demand offers Ali Baba Goes To Town (but check reviews, several there say it is a lousy transfer).