Whoopee!
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- For the comic, see Whoopee! (comic).
Whoopee! is a 1930 musical comedy film adaptation of the popular Broadway show of the same name. Directed by Thornton Freeland, it was made in two-color Technicolor. It was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn. Whoopee! made a movie star of Eddie Cantor, already one of the leading Vaudeville and phonograph record stars of the United States. Other stars in the film are Eleanor Hunt, Ethel Shutta, and Paul Gregory. Future stars Betty Grable, Ann Sothern, and Virginia Bruce appear uncredited as "Goldwyn Girls". The film also launched the Hollywood career of Busby Berkeley and was Alfred Newman's first gig in Hollywood. Richard Day did the set designs and behind the camera was Gregg Toland, who later found fame with Orson Welles.
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 $5 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 Brothers musicals of the 1930s.
External links
- [Whoopee!] at the Internet Movie Database
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