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} | Poster for the 1930 film. Notice the naked women on the poster for this Pre-code film. |
Whoopee! was a Broadway musical comedy which debuted on 4 December, 1928. The book is by William Anthony McGuire, featuring music by Walter Donaldson and lyrics by Gus Kahn. The original version was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and starred Eddie Cantor and Ruth Etting. The two-act musical ran for 379 performances.
Whoopee was filmed lavishisly in 1930 into a musical comedy film, closely following the version produced by Florenz Ziegfeld on the stage. Directed by Thornton Freeland, it was photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn. 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 of phonograph records in 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.*Whoopee! at the Internet Movie Database
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