Main Cast: Eddie Cantor, Eleanor Hunt, Paul Gregory, John Rutherford, Ethel Shutta
Release Year: 1930
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
Adapted from Owen Davis's stage comedy The Nervous Wreck (itself filmed in 1927), Flo Ziegfeld's musical spectacular Whoopee! was one of the solid hits of the 1928-29 Broadway season, thanks largely to the irrepressible Eddie Cantor. The property was transferred to film virtually intact in 1930, again produced by Ziegfeld (in collaboration with Sam Goldwyn) and again starring Cantor. The star plays Henry Williams, a wide-eyed hypochondriac who heads to a western resort town in the company of his long-suffering nurse Mary Custer (Ethel Shutta). Meanwhile, Wanenie (Paul Gregory), the son of an Indian chief, pines away out of love for white heiress Sally Morgan (Eleanor Hunt), who has been forbidden to marry Wanenie because of their racial differences. One of the most unsympathetic heroines in screen history, Sally coerces Henry into helping her elope then allows the poor boob to be accused of kidnapping. All sorts of zany complications ensue, not least of which is the side-splitting scene in which Henry, disguised as an Indian, adopts a thick Jewish accent while trying to sell a rug to a tourist. The Sally/Wanenie dilemma ends happily when the young man turns out not to be Indian after all, while Henry, cured of his ills by all the excitement, marries nurse Marie. The "Ziegfeld Touch" is most obvious in the final reels, when the story stops dead in its tracks to offer a long, drawn-out parade of "Glorified" Follies girls wearing enormous headdresses and precious little else. But the film's highlight is Eddie Cantor's sly, insinuating rendition of the title song, in which he details in humorous fashion the pitfalls of "makin' whoopee" with the wrong girl. Featured among the Goldwyn Girls are such future stars as Claire Dodd, Virginia Bruce, and 14-year-old Betty Grable, who energetically performs the very first chorus of the very first song in the film. Lensed in eye-pleasing early Technicolor, Whoopee was a success, launching a long and fruitful cinematic collaboration between Eddie Cantor and Sam Goldwyn. It was remade by Goldwyn in 1944 as Up in Arms, a showcase for the producer's "new Cantor" Danny Kaye. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Filmed for a then eye-popping $1.5 million, Whoopee! is an example of the old fashioned star comic musical film. Built entirely around the raucously neurotic personality of Eddie Cantor, Whoopee!is not great art, but it's a lot of fun. As a bonus, it features the cinematic debut of choreographer Busby Berkeley. While none of the numbers are shot entirely in the now-recognizable Berkeley style, many have touches that foreshadow that style, such as the use of an overhead shot in "Cowboy" and the use of close-ups on beautiful chorus girls in "Stetson." There's an emphasis on the spectacular throughout, which helps to smooth over some of the rough patches in the script. Much of the humor seems tired by modern standards, and the use of blackface in "My Baby Just Cares for Me" is off-putting, especially as Cantor is so otherwise appealing. He does here what he always does, playing a nervous wreck who happily can't seem to stay out of trouble. Cantor's vulnerability is leavened by his underlying rambunctiousness, and his talent was one of a kind. While Whoopee! is clearly his show, he does get some valuable support from Ethel Shutta, and the score is attractive. (Be advised, though, that the lyrics to "Makin' Whoopee" have been somewhat bowdlerized.) ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
The story line of Whoopee is somewhat aged by today's standards but there are several interesting moments in the movie, particularly Cantor's rendition of the song "Makin' Whoopee", and some of the big production numbers with the Goldwyn Girls.
Whoopee is an important but overlooked film in the history of the Hollywood musical. Made a year before the movie industry began to fully feel the effects of the Great Depression, it had a ticket price of five dollars when it opened and made Samuel Goldwyn a lot of money. In the history of musicals, it shows a look years ahead of its time and foreshadows all of the great Warner Bros. musicals of the 1930s.
