by Allan Fish
(USA 1933 93m) DVD2 (Spain only)
Oedipus Wrecks
p Samuel Goldwyn d Frank Tuttle w George Oppenheimer, William Anthony McGuire, Arthur Sheekman, Nat Perrin story George S.Kaufman, Robert E.Sherwood ph Gregg Toland chariot sequ. Ralph Cedar ed Stuart Heisler m Alfred Newman ch Busby Berkeley m/ly Harry Warren, Al Dubin, L.Wolfe Gilbert art Richard Day cos John Harkrider
Eddie Cantor (Eddie/Oedipus), Verree Teasdale (Empress Agrippa), Edward Arnold (Valerius Caesar), David Manners (Josephus), Ruth Etting (Olga), Gloria Stuart (Princess Sylvia), Alan Mowbray (Majordomo), Willard Robertson (Warren Finlay Cooper), Stanley Fields (slave trader), Clarence Wilson (Boggs, the museum keeper), Lucille Ball,
Nearly eighty years on, the star vehicles of Eddie Cantor now seem to belong to another era, rather like the Danny Kaye vehicles a decade later. The comparison is not idly invoked as both were the flagship comedic talents of Samuel Goldwyn in their respective eras. And there’s even a link from Kaye back to Cantor by way of homage which seems to have been missed by most reviewers. Cantor’s star reign was from around 1930-1935, like many other comedians he lost his lustre with the killjoy enforcement of the hays Code. He would make a comeback in the likes of Thank Your Lucky Stars and Show Business, the latter the first of a successful partnership with Joan Davis, but they’re diluted, almost self-mocking Cantor. Despite the incidental pleasures of Whoopee (in which he sang ‘Making Whoopee’ as only he could), The Kid from Spain and Kid Millions, there’s only one of his films that comes close to the level of classic.
Eddie plays Eddie, living in West Rome, a small American town with corrupt politicians trying to put up prisons and museums of Roman artefacts and evicting the local poor in the process. Eddie stands up for them and gets himself marched to the city limits and told to keep walking. This he does, but a mile or so outside town he imagines himself back in Ancient Rome (after one assumes a bang on the head). Sold to friend of the people Josephus in a slave auction, he quickly finds himself in trouble with the tyrannical emperor Valerius. After a flirtation with the lions and then with torture, he finds himself food taster at the Imperial Court, a position so precarious it amounts to being an ‘Official Sacrifice’. Throw in an English princess blackmailed into being the emperor’s concubine and an empress trying desperately to poison her husband.
The flashback idea was hardly a new one, and the present day book-ends are less interesting than the Roman portions, and though they are capped by a magnificently edited chariot race sequence by Ralph Cedar, the plot of the lovers and the Imperial intrigue is left in the balance and unresolved. Not that any of this matters, for it’s the individual ingredients that make it so memorable. There’s choice dialogue aplenty, not least in the slave auction bidding wars (“I can cook a little, I can take care of the children, and if there are no children I can take care of that…PAUSE…by being a son to you”), and the musical numbers are something to behold with choreography from Busby Berkeley in his last film prior to achieving immortality at Warners. Notable are a torch song from Ruth Etting, in a rare film appearance, in which Goldwyn girls, naked but for Rapunzel wigs, are tied up on a giant podium while other slave girls gyrate and dance around to such an extent one has to pinch oneself into not thinking it a musical number directed by C.B.de Mille. And then topping even that there’s the song for which Scandals would be famous, ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’, performed by Cantor in a now un-PC blackface moving between a harem of scantily – if at all – clad young ladies (Lucille Ball can briefly be spotted amongst them), references to flesh and skin stretching to a line about Cantor’s immigrant ancestry when observing “look at my skin, it’s imported all the way from Russia.” A joke that could just as easily apply to Kaye, whose The Court Jester borrowed the thrust of its most famous poison sketch from this Cantor vehicle, only here it’s food not drink; “the one without the parsley is the one without the poison.”
How Roman Scandals made the Elite 70:
Sam Juliano’s No. 21 choice
Allan Fish’s No. 26 choice
I’ve always wanted to see this film. It appears that a DVD is presently unavailable. Eddie Cantor is one of those unsung talents, whose work ages like vintage wine.
Cantor’s Goldwyn films used to be on TV a lot in the Eighties and I remember being entertained by them despite the blackface, though I remember little about this one beyond the highlights Allan describes. I liked their vaudevillian blend of irreverent topicality and archetype — which one has that Gandhi impersonator running around in it? Cantor tried to repeat the formula post-Goldwyn with Ali Baba Goes to Town but in the Code-enforcement era I like him a lot in his dual/duel role in Thank Your Lucky Stars. Thanks for refreshing my memories.
Samuel, that’s an interesting point about the 80′s attention to Cantor’s films.
I think Allan’s superlative review of this sadly underexposed film points to ‘Mutual Envy.’
Allan has told me by e mail that he really would have loved seeing most if not all of the Pre-Code Festival, where ROMAN SCANDALS played two weeks ago, and I was ravished by my first viewing of the film. What Allan says in the excellent review pretty much expresses my own feelings. I loved Cantor, Laughton, the rapid-fire one-liners, the classic comedy shtick and the marvelous use of the flashback bookends, and that spirited song that one can never get out of their head.
I really lament this didn’t make the upcoming musical countdown (it narrowly missed in fact) but I am sure few have seen it.
Too bad this didn’t make the musical countdown, as it would have given the venture an added touch of originality. As it is I’d love to see it.
Well Frank, we are doing the Top 70 now, so you may be surprised! Ha!
These films need to come around more often. I saw this a few years ago in a Busby Berkeley series – this is a hoot, though I think I liked Palmy Days even more…. Whoopee I saw on TV way back when – 80s, early 90s (before the internet anyway) – and had no idea what it was – why was it in color? it had to be a parody, they’d never have gotten away with that much smut in the 30s would they? though even then, I couldn’t miss the fact that the dances were Berkeley. They are all a blast.
I will add that the song “Build a Little Home,” which appears near the beginning during the opening bookend is magnificent. It sets teh festive and comic tone that is sustained throughout this little-seen sleeper. Alan’s review remains as vintage as old wine, and heck it’s only a few weeks old.
Well technically it was written three years ago…
It’s been forever since I’ve seen Roman Scandals but perhaps I need to see it again. There desperately needs to be a box set of Cantor beyond the random flicks in some epic 90 movie set of musicals. Truth be told I don’t recall it being quite THIS good, but then if you watch a bunch of Cantor his stuff kind of blurs together after a while.
My fave of his has always been Whoopee. Early two color Technicolor, a great score, early Busby dance numbers, Cantor at his most unrestrained. But yeah, a box set of Whoopee, Palmy Days, The Kid From Spain, Roman Scandals, Kid Millions, and Strike Me Pink is badly needed.
It won’t ever happen, Holmes, not now that Fuhrer Turner has stopped all production of library DVDs unless they are Blu Ray upgrades of guaranteed money spinners. Everything else is in Archive hell.
Terrific write up on a film I have heard much about but have not seen… Too bad they only released it in Spain…
The sad thing is that no matter how apetizing you make the film, there is little likelihood of seeing it. I know Sam was lucky to come upon it at the festival. But a Spanish DVD only?
Eddie Cantor was an underrated performer.
Great review.