Whoopee!
Whoopee! is a 1930 comedy film by Florenz Ziegfeld, Samuel Goldwyn. Directed by Thornton Freeland and released October 5, 1930, this movie starring Eddie Cantor, Ethel Shutta, Paul Gregory, and Eleanor Hunt. It was photographed in two-color Technicolor. Its plot closely follows the 1928 stage show produced by Florenz Ziegfeld.[1]
Whoopee was part of a wave of “all-singing, all-dancing” musicals that hit the U.S. with the advent of talking pictures.
Contents
Plot
Sally Morgan has long been in love with Wanenis, an Indian who lives near her father's ranch, her father has convinced her to become engaged to Sheriff Bob Wells while Wanenis is away being educated in the ways of the white man. Unwilling to go through with the marriage, Sally, who hopes to convince Wanenis to elope with her, prevails upon Henry Williams (Eddie Cantor), a kind-hearted hypochondriac living on the ranch, to take her away in his ramshackle Ford. With her father and Wells in pursuit, Sally and Henry run out of gas, but steal fuel from a car belonging to Jerome Underwood, whose ranch they later go to for food. When Wells and his deputies arrive at the ranch, Henry, now working as the cook, disguises himself in blackface. Later he narrowly escapes the sheriff and takes refuge in an Indian reservation. Wanenis, believing that his race makes his love for Sally impossible, has abandoned white civilization, and Sally is about to be carried off by her father when Matafay, an Indian woman who is to marry Wanenis, forces Chief Black Eagle to reveal the truth, that he adopted Wanenis, who was the orphaned baby son of a white couple who died. Sally's father now consents to the marriage and Henry finally proposes to his devoted nurse, Mary Custer.[2]
Blackface
According to a 2 Jul 1971 DV article, The Museum of Modern Art in New York had recently located a print of the film in a Czech film archive and would be working on a restoration and possible re-issue. According to the article, a print of the film had been kept in a Berlin archive, but when Russian troops took control of that section of the city in 1945, they took possession of the archive and subsequently transferred the original nitrate print onto safety stock using the Ferrania color process. As noted in 1977 news items, when the film was revived for a Los Angeles showing that year, the racial stereotypes, including Cantor's sequence in blackface, were criticized.[3]
Blackface performances were condemned as offensive from the beginning. Civil rights organizations have publicly condemned blackface for decades, saying it dehumanizes blacks by introducing and reinforcing racial stereotypes.[4]
Awards
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by Richard Day.
External Link
Whoopee! at IMDb
Watch Makin' Whoopee song performed by Eddie Cantor at Youtube
References
- ↑ Whoopee!. Retrieved December 29, 2020.(film)
- ↑ Whoopee!, Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
- ↑ WHOOPEE!, AFI Catalog. Retrieved December 29, 2020.
- ↑ Holland, Jesse J. AP Explains: Racist history of blackface began in the 1830s, komonews.com, 6 February 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2020.