Main Cast: Eddie Cantor, Stanley Fields, Ann Sothern, Doris Davenport, Ethel Merman, Otto Hoffman, George Murphy, Paul Harvey, Eve Sully
Release Year: 1934
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Brooklyn tugboat worker Eddie (Eddie Cantor), bullied and cowed by his tough-guy stepfather and stepbrothers (a la Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother), inherits $77 million from his uncle, an Egyptologist. Con artist Dot (Ethel Merman) wants to get her lunchhooks on the money, and to this end offers herself as Eddie's adopted mother (never mind that she's nearly 20 years younger), intending to have her thuggish brother Louie (Warren Hymer) bump off our hero at the first opportunity. The nonsensical plotline ends up with Eddie, Dot, Louie, pompous Southern colonel Larrabee (Berton Churchill), and nominal romantic leads Jerry (George Murphy in his film debut) and Jane (Ann Sothern) trapped in the palace of Arab potentate Mulhulla (Paul Harvey). The better-than-average comic banter includes some funny bits between Cantor and Eve Sully, of the comedy team of "Block and Sully" (her husband-partner Jesse Block is also in the picture, but just barely). Spotted among the featured players in Kid Millions are such "Our Gang" members as Stymie Beard, Scotty Beckett and Tommy Bond, and there's a specialty by the Nicholas Brothers during Cantor's obligatory "blackface" number; and yes, that's Lucille Ball as a blonde Goldwyn Girl in the harem sequence. PS: According to Ethel Merman, the film's elaborate Technicolor ice-cream factory finale, in which Eddie allows dozens of tenement kids to gorge themselves on his tasty confections, posed censorship problems: while producer Sam Goldwyn was allowed to show the little boys with comically extended stomachs, he was not permitted to do so with the little girls, for fear that the audience might think the female moppets were pregnant! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Stage and radio comic Eddie Cantor found a welcome home on the silver screen in the 1930s, but his films haven't proven as timeless as the best of other comic talents like the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields. Still, his films tend to offer more than a fair share of delights and Kid Millions is a lot of fun, even if it's dated and titanically inconsequential. The script is sheer folderol, a coat rack on which to hang a number of jokes (some unbearably corny), vaudeville routines, physical schticks, and musical numbers. The script is so unimportant that the conflict involving juvenile George Murphy and ingénue (!) Ann Sothern is simply dropped without resolution and a minstrel show and the yummy Technicolor ending are shoehorned in with neither rhyme nor reason. Fortunately, Cantor and company provide enough entertainment to make up for the inferior material. Cantor is not to everyone's taste, especially when he dons blackface (as he habitually does), but his spirited milquetoast persona served him well and he has an undeniably engaging presence and an unerring delivery. He's joined by a cast that's almost all aces: In addition to Sothern and Murphy, Ethel Merman is on hand to sock across some songs, Eve Sully to knock off some jokes, and some very young Nicholas Brothers to provide fancy footwork. Seymour Felix's choreography tries very hard to emulate Busby Berkeley; it doesn't come close, but it's more than adequate and the bizarre finale is definitely a treat. Put together with spit and glue, Kid Millions is not great filmmaking, but -- blackface aside -- it's quite entertaining. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
The story features Eddie, a kid from Brooklyn, New York City, United States who suddenly inherits $77 million dollars from his lost father, an archeologist that had looted Egypt of its treaures. In order to reclaim the inheritance, Eddie begins his boat ride to Egypt. However, on the boat he meets various characters who claim also to receive a part of the inheritance, though their stories are doubtful. Later on, Eddie learns that the Sheik Mulhulla has threatened to kill anyone who tries to claim the treasure, and that Princess Fanya has fallen deeply in love with Eddie and wants Eddie's hand in marriage.
The film's "ice cream fantasy sequence" was Samuel Goldwyn's first attempt at film with three-strip Technicolor. The cast of Our Gang appear among the children in this sequence.
