Whoopee! (film)

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Whoopee (1930)

Directed by	Thornton Freeland
Produced by	Samuel Goldwyn Florenz Ziegfeld
Written by	William M. Conselman E.J. Rath (story) Robert Hobart Davis (story) Owen Davis (play) William Anthony McGuire (musical)
Starring	Eddie Cantor Ethel Shutta Paul Gregory Eleanor Hunt
Music by	Nacio Herb Brown Walter Donaldson Edward Eliscu
Cinematography	Lee Garmes Ray Rennahan Gregg Toland (Technicolor)
Editing by	Stuart Heisler
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	September 7, 1930
Running time	101 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

Whoopee is an "All-Talking All-Color" musical comedy film from 1930 photographed in Technicolor. The film closely followed the stage show produced by Florenz Ziegfeld in 1928.

[edit] Production

The film was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Thornton Freeland. Whoopee made a movie star of Eddie Cantor, already one of the leading stars of Broadway revues and musical comedies as well as being a popular recording artist in the United States. George Olsen and his Music, already well-known Victor recording artists, repeated their work from the stage version. Other stars in the film were Eleanor Hunt, Ethel Shutta (George Olsen's wife), and Paul Gregory. Future stars Betty Grable, Ann Sothern, and Virginia Bruce appeared uncredited as "Goldwyn Girls". The film also launched the Hollywood career of Busby Berkeley and was Alfred Newman's first job in Hollywood. Richard Day did the set designs and behind the camera was Gregg Toland, who later found fame with Orson Welles.

[edit] Plot

Poster for the 1930 film. Notice the naked women on the poster for this Pre-Production code film.

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" (later a hit for Ray Charles), 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.