(92 mins.) Released 1933-11-27
Director: Frank Tuttle
Stars: Eddie Cantor, The Goldwyn Girls, Ruth Etting, Gloria Stuart
Busby Berkeley ... production numbers director
comedy, fantasy, musical, romance
originally posted 15 Oct 2017 07:01
Early big production number (no dancing, but lots of people and furniture captured by BB's moving camera) with Cantor singing Build a Little Home. This rabble rousing incites corrupt authorities to throw him out of town. As he's walking away from Rome OK (why does IMDb plot summary identify the state?), his shoes change from modern covered to Roman sandals, and we spend almost the rest of the film in ancient Rome.
Ruth Etting sings No More Love in a slave auction with lots of BB staging/dancing. I managed to spot Lucille Ball among the tableau of "naked" girls. Nice production. Etting plays Olga, not to be confused with Gloria Stuart, the other blonde who plays the Princess. Even when they appear together on screen, I don't know which is which.
Cantor sings Keep Young and Beautiful while blacked up (and mimicking stereotypical, er, slave, behavior for a few moments) and mistaken for an Ethiopian beauty expert in the harem. The white harem girls have black attendants who look extra dark and uniformly so (probably makeup.) Another nice BB production number.
"The one without the parsley is the one without the poison." foreshadows D.Kaye's "The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true." in The Court Jester (1955), NOT a Goldwyn production. (IMDb common cast/crew search finds only a cinematographer in common between the films,) Cantor's 3rd song appears in this scene, and is too brief to remember.
Alan Mowbry is always seen in profile at a distance and has lots of curly hair. I only recognized his voice. Edward Arnold gives his usually appropriate performance as the Emperor.
I'm at a loss why I rated this 7 two+ years ago. Maybe the chariot chase which resolves the Roman plot. Even though it's sped up, it's still impressive. The chariot sequence director shares a title card with BB and Tuttle, the film's director. Gregg Toland is among 3 credited cinematographers.
Goldwyn, dir. Tuttle [+BB], 7-
