Just about finished with January 2021 - HALLELUJAH - and, as the robot on our kitchen table keeps incessantly mentioning "The Birthday Roundup," we shall spotlight luminaries born on January 31 today, starting by listening to Isham Jones & His Orchestra.
After raising a toast to birthday boy Franz Schubert, since the last blog post was devoted to Ziegfeld Follies star W.C. Fields, we will start with another Ziegfeld Follies headliner, Eddie Cantor, born on this day in 1892.
First and foremost in today's tribute, here's the ultimate classic comedy aficionado Joe Franklin (1926-2015), much-missed expert on all things old school showbiz - and Eddie's #1 fan - remembering his favorite comedian.
Cantor a.k.a. "Banjo Eyes," a first half of the 20th century entertainment powerhouse, starred in vaudeville, Broadway, radio, motion pictures and television. After appearing on stage with the juggling team of Bedini and Arthur in 1911, then as a featured player in the popular "kiddie kabaret" troupe led by songwriter and impresario Gus Edwards, and after that as Ziegfeld Follies headliner in 1917-1919, Eddie Cantor starred in silent feature films.
One, Special Delivery, was directed by none other than Roscoe Arbuckle and another, Kid Boots co-starred the one, the only Clara Bow, the "It" girl who the cameras adored.
Eddie Cantor first made sound films as early as 1923.
Cantor even received the ultimate Hollywood tribute: he was caricatured in animated cartoons.
When it comes to the 21st century view of Eddie Cantor's career, the elephant in the room remains the preponderance of blackface in his movies. It remains very difficult for baby boomers who saw Eddie Cantor flicks on television in the 1960's to comprehend why anyone thought blackface was funny, and utterly impossible to explain the ubiquitous stage makeup to anyone under the age of 40. Weren't African-Americans at least part of the paying vaudeville and moviegoing audiences back then (one would assume they were not)?
There are moments of blackface in the movies of his contemporaries, but it is not a staple of every film, as the burnt cork routine is in Whoopee, Palmy Days, The Kid From Spain and Roman Scandals. His first talkie, the Paramount short subject A Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic (1929), is ALL blackface.
Even with historical perspective regarding the first three decades of the 20th century, this staple of entertainment, presented for what would be assumed to be segregated audiences, looks indefensible on all levels. Yet, everybody in show business blacked up - it was standard stage makeup at the turn of the 20th century. Even the legendary Bert Williams, the Nassau-born sensation of Broadway, recordings and the Ziegfeld Follies, used the burnt cork for his stage and silent film appearances.
Eddie's act at first featured a variety of different characters, but the theatre audiences of the WW1 era favored Eddie in blackface. They went bananas over burnt cork Eddie. Is this difficult for us to grasp in 2021? Yes.
Eddie starred in WHOOPEE both on Broadway and as his first sound feature.
In addition, Eddie performed favorite songs in a series of Paramount 1-reel short subjects, including Getting A Ticket and Insurance.
This pre-Code movie aficionado finds Mr. Cantor's movies, especially the Samuel Goldwyn musical comedies of 1931-1937, very enjoyable. The unabashed and unapologetic silliness that permeates Cantor's Goldwyn pictures (and the Busby Berkeley production numbers), has considerable charms. Love Eddie's singing and that quality of cheerful lechery also seen in the starring vehicles of RKO Radio Pictures comedy team Bert Wheeler & Robert Woolsey. The casts feature terrific co-stars (Charlotte Greenwood, Lyda Roberti, Ethel Merman) and plenty of Bert Kalmar - Harry Ruby songs, which, as usual, are a hoot.
Love the 1932 opus The Kid From Spain, directed by Leo McCarey, as much due to the hilarious Lyda Roberti, one of the great comediennes of 1930's stage and screen, as to the way-out Busby Berkeley musical numbers and the wacky pre-Code comedy of Cantor.
Kid Millions (1934) is a particularly zany and fun Eddie Cantor flick.
Among the supporting players in Kid Millions (1934): the extremely, wildly goofy comedienne Eva Sully from Block & Sully, in one of her few silver screen appearances. She is funny, unhinged and way over-the-top, making Cass Daley, Betty Hutton, Judy Canova, Martha Raye, Mabel Todd and fellow Eddie Cantor co-star Joan Davis look shy, retiring and demure by comparison.
Of the Cantor co-stars, Ethel Merman in particular has terrific chemistry with Eddie. They riff off each other quite well in Kid Millions and Strike Me Pink.
Cantor’s many decades in show business stretched from the Gus Edwards kiddie review shows in the teens to The Colgate Comedy Hour in the 1950's.
Shifting from classic movies to sports, the greatness of the recently passed Baseball Hall Of Famer Hank Aaron is still heavily on our minds - and it just happens that today, January 31 is also the birthday of several baseball greats. A particularly stalwart member of the Baseball Hall Of Fame was multi-position player Ernie Banks (January 31, 1931 – January 23, 2015) A.K.A. Mr. Chicago Cub.
Ernie's motto was "let's play two!"
The former San Francisco Giant players and the team's announcers have spoken glowingly of Ernie, an ambassador for the sport and the most likable, upbeat, energetic, positive guy ever.
Nolan Ryan, who this blogger saw, in a Giants-Astros game, have one of his extremely rare off days and give up 8 runs at San Francisco's windy Candlestick Park, was termed the Ryan Express for throwing unhittable fastballs and knee-buckling curveballs, baffling hitters in both the National and American Leagues.
Lots of Nuke LaLoosh types hit 105 MPH on the radar gun, but very few of them can throw smoke and paint the corners, a.k.a. pitch, as Nolan Ryan did, let alone still be on the hill in the big leagues at the age of 46. Happy Birthday, Nolan - Mr. Von Ryan Express!
The early talkie musicals featured entertainers who, having headlined feature films over an extended period of time, received some measure of enduring fame, others whose stardom was short-lived, as well as performers who, because they appeared in few movies, remain lesser-known.
Dear readers, do you start rolling around on the floor, laughing to the point of utter hysterics on the mere mention of the name "Osgood Fielding"?
Bought Blu-rays and DVDS of his movies or, even better, had the pleasure of seeing him get big laughs onstage in a touring company of Show Boat? Then you know what an outstanding performer and comedian Joe E. Brown was.
In the following toe-tapping number from Top Speed, Joe's dancing partner, Laura Lee, was also terrific, holding her own with the goofy, triple-jointed, rubber-legged comic - and showing plenty of spunk in the process. Take it, Joe and Laura!
Your correspondent is an absolute sucker for the epic late silent films (directed with cinematic genius by F.W. Murnau and Frank Borzage, respectively) Sunrise and Seventh Heaven. Both starred another actress in the category of "the camera loves her", Janet Gaynor.
Here's Janet, with extra Alice White style pep, demonstrating charm, the effects of excessive coffee drinking and early talkie musical mojo in a Fox feature that made its New York premiere squarely between the September 1929 implosion of the London Stock Exchange and the Wall Street crash in October, Sunnyside Up.
Actress and vocalist Sharon Lynn is remembered fondly as the uber-villainess co-star of the Laurel & Hardy feature Way Out West, but also achieved silver screen immortality in the wonderful "Turn On The Heat" production number - also in Sunnyside Up.
Ms. Lynn, also among the stars of the lost Fox Movietone Follies Of 1929, delivers the vocal prelude to skillful and snazzy dancing by nimble Ziegfeld Follies hoofer Ann Pennington in the following production number from Happy Days.
Sam Goldwyn signed vaudeville icon Eddie Cantor to a contract. His appearances in silents (Kid Boots) were quite successful, so, to make a splash in talkies, Goldwyn produced Whoopee as just the first of a slew of musical comedy vehicles starring the legendary "Banjo Eyes".
Whoopee not only starred the great Eddie Cantor, but also a bevy of adorable showgirls (including Betty Grable) and, most importantly, the way-out visions of the one, the only Busby Berkeley.
Paramount Pictures got into the musicals game early, with Rouben Mamoulian's Applause, starring legendary "torch singer" Helen Morgan, as well as The Love Parade, the first of several wildly successful vehicles co-starring Maurice Chevalier, everyone's favorite randy Parisian, with diva Jeanette McDonald.
Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated musical didn't just spotlight the stars but also featured magnificent numbers featuring the supporting players, in this case England's finest acrobatic comedian, Lupino Lane, and actress-songstress-comedienne Lillian Roth.
Some of the lesser-known stars and supporting players from the movie musicals of 1929-1930 were incredible performers. One was Broadway legend Zelma O'Neal, hugely popular on stage and in her excellent recordings.
Zelma was a larger-than-life personality, and, unfortunately, the movie that provided the perfect showcase for her formidable talents never materialized. Why MGM never signed her to be singing-dancing "comic relief" in their big budget musical extravaganzas starring Eleanor Powell and other headliners, we'll never know.
Still, Ms. O' Neal was responsible for absolutely blazing moments in her relatively few silver screen appearances.
Although the popular team of silent film headliner Buddy Rogers (from Wild Bill Wellman's WINGS) and winsome musical star Nancy Carroll were the headliners of Paramount Pictures' Follow Thru, the question remains, who stole the picture?
Answer? Zelma O'Neal and her equally funny co-star, the fabulous Jack Haley!
Singing the number she originated onstage, Zelma demonstrates her buoyant good humor, comedy chops and winning personality. No doubt, those who got to see Zelma tear it up onstage enjoyed a rare treat!
Readers of this blog may recognize Zelma from Peach O' Reno, a splendid and fast-paced 1931 film starring the comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. In the following clip, Bert and sprightly Dorothy Lee, as Joe E. Brown did so well, show us a thing or two about keeping the fun quotient in entertainment.
Here, Mr. Woolsey does a bit of terpsichorean tripping the lights fantastic - invariably with good humor.
Wheeler & Woolsey also began their movie career in musicals shot in glorious two-strip Technicolor. The first two RKO films starring the team, Rio Rita (1929) and Dixiana (1930), employ the semi-operatic format which was popular on stage, but never quite right for movies.
The team, however, would go on to star in a series of very good comedies through the 1930's, daunted only when strict enforcement of the Production Code commenced in July 1934 and "sanitized" their trademark double entendre-filled humor.
Even in these rather stage bound films, Bert, Bob and Dorothy are nothing if not troupers! Dorothy and Bert sing the following song with a genuine sweetness that's a welcome alternative to the empty snark of 2014 entertainment.
Another team that was not served well by the "filmed stage play" method was the Marx Brothers. Their first feature films were the stagey adaptations of their Broadway smashes
The Coconuts (which featured the music of Irving Berlin and a book by George S. Kaufman, with additional material by Morrie Ryskind) and Animal Crackers. Then as now, Groucho got the last laugh.
Here's Groucho, merging Algonquin Round Table with Gilbert & Sullivan in a ditty he deftly pulverized Broadway audiences with and would sing with caustic glee the rest of his performing life.
Part 4 of this series will cover the WTF wonders that were musical short subjects, from MGM, Paramount, Vitaphone, Columbia and more.
We sign off with a respectful Jack Buchanan top hat tip to The Talkie King, who has done film historians a valuable service by posting dozens of numbers from movie musicals on his YouTube channel.
Last year, creator of cool radio shows and film scholar Aaron Neathery posted a great Eddie Cantor tune, The Only Thing I Want For Christmas, on The Third Banana blog last year. I like it a lot and, being way too damn lazy to write a blog, cribbed Eddie's 1939 Yuletide offering for today's Merry Christmas blog entry.
Regarding Eddie Cantor and vaudeville, the following documentary provides valuable insights on this wildly popular artform that preceded movies, radio and TV.
I saw this, believe it or not, for the first time last night at San Francisco's fabulous Castro Theatre, as part of their excellent Samuel Goldwyn retrospective. Also thought I had seen every bizarre musical production number ever committed to film in 1928-1934. Well, think again!
The final 20 minutes of Kid Millions had me sitting with gaping-mouthed astonishment, marveling at the sheer quantity and variety of WTF moments!
I've been waiting for someone to post the "Bend Down, Sister" number from Palmy Days (1931) online. I found it - and thanks; this is sublimely ridiculous!
This ultra-goofy film starts with a mega-bakery staffed entirely by showgirls, run as a dictatorial and draconian paramilitary organization. The bakery boss played by Charlotte Greenwood espouses a world view that surely led to anorexia and bulimia if anybody actually took this silliness seriously. Also a hoot is the prescient spoof (starting at 7:37) of a certain specific hucksterism that would emerge as New Age claptrap decades later.
Now, where can I buy a DVD of this, Roman Scandals, The Kid From Spain (which co-stars the hilarious Lyda Roberti) and other Eddie Cantor musical comedies produced by Sam Goldwyn?
