Rousingly schizophrenic entertainment, Whoopee! is simultaneously one of the best yet one of the worst musicals ever made. It's tempting to say that all the bits Busby Berkeley directed are great, whilst the book Thornton Freeland handled is uniformly lousy, but that would not be wholly true. Some of the Freeland stuff is not only competently managed, but actually very amusing. So let's say that all the Busby Berkeley scenes are marvellous and Freeland is reasonably proficient so long as Eddie Cantor is in camera range.
Once the camera moves away from Cantor to focus on another player or group of players, the direction goes to pot. Of course just how far Freeland's efforts sink into the mire depends on the players. By far the most consistently able is William H. Philbrick, who makes an excellent stooge for Eddie and introduces all that hilarious business with the waffles (which he delightfully mispronounces to rhyme with "baffles").
Albert Hackett also has a glorious moment or two, Spencer Charters (reprising his Broadway role) tires hard, whilst Ethel Shutta makes a startling improvement as the film progresses from walking disaster to highly appealing comedienne.
Unfortunately there's a large group of "actors" who remain uniformly lousy in all their Freeland-directed scenes. Mind you, it's hard to say who gives the worst performance. Paul Gregory and John Rutherford tie neck-and-neck for that distinction all the way through. Now Gregory is lousier than Rutherford, now Rutherford stinks worse than Gregory, and so on. I'm afraid it ends as a tie. It's just too abysmally close to call. A joint plaque for the Worst Performance Ever Given in a Lead Role in a Major Motion Picture.
That the bad acting is as much the fault of Freeland as the thespians is readily apparent when you see the same performers in their Berkeley-directed numbers. Although he serves as little more than background to Cantor's blackface routine, "My Baby Just Cares For Me", Rutherford seems far less amateurish than usual.
Berkeley maintains that he convinced Goldwyn to let him direct as well as stage the musical numbers, even though this didn't accord with then standard Hollywood practice. Berkeley's position is borne out by a close examination of the movie. Berkeley's fluid camera style and his choice of unusual angles, including his famous overhead shots, is a marked contrast to Freeland's flat work where the camera is nailed to the floor, except for a slight degree of panning. Movement is achieved not by moving the camera but by remarkably skillful cutting from medium shot to close-up, often smoothly effected in the middle of sentences.
My examination reveals that Berkeley didn't direct or stage all the songs. Both the "I'll Still Belong to You" solo and the closing reprise of "My Baby Just Cares For Me" were staged by Freeland - and in the case of the Gregory solo, atrociously at that. On the numbers he did direct, Berkeley did pick-up dialogue as well. This partly explains Shutta's remarkable transformation. It's hard to believe the Shutta of the "Stetson" song is the same girl who made such a hammy stooge for Eddie in his opening scene. Fortunately, it's Cantor's film. Except for his initial scenes where is let down by poor material and flat direction, he hardly ever puts a foot wrong. His timing is perfect. While the rest of the players over-act as if they were back on the Podunk stage (it's hard to credit they were just about all drawn from the original show on Broadway), Cantor brilliantly adjusts his persona for the camera, toning down his mannerisms and projecting his image mostly to a nicety. And it's not only his numbers that are highlights. Even some of his jaded jokes are genuinely funny, - particularly his laugh-a-second run-in with Hackett and the plates.
Aside from the variable direction, technical credits are Goldwyn perfect, with fascinating two-strip Technicolor (here in perfect register), attractive if obviously stage-inspired sets, breathtakingly skilful film editing, odd but likable costumes, and absolutely superb sound recording . Whilst Whoopee! deserves to be seen on a big cinema screen for maximum enjoyment, the video cassette is of outstanding quality. (The cover features Eddie with Muriel Finley (the only chorus girl hired from the Broadway show) on his right (our left!) and Ruth Eddings. According to the blurb (and many reference books), Betty Grable is the chorine who tackles the opening "Cowboy Number". This is incorrect. Betty is the little blonde with the most youthful face in the line-up. She has the last close-up in the "Stetson" parade. Another blonde I recognized is Virginia Bruce. Oddly, I fared less happily with the men. I couldn't spot Dean Jagger or Ed Cobb. But is that Walter Brennan as a bearded, tuxedoed wedding guest?
Once the camera moves away from Cantor to focus on another player or group of players, the direction goes to pot. Of course just how far Freeland's efforts sink into the mire depends on the players. By far the most consistently able is William H. Philbrick, who makes an excellent stooge for Eddie and introduces all that hilarious business with the waffles (which he delightfully mispronounces to rhyme with "baffles").
Albert Hackett also has a glorious moment or two, Spencer Charters (reprising his Broadway role) tires hard, whilst Ethel Shutta makes a startling improvement as the film progresses from walking disaster to highly appealing comedienne.
Unfortunately there's a large group of "actors" who remain uniformly lousy in all their Freeland-directed scenes. Mind you, it's hard to say who gives the worst performance. Paul Gregory and John Rutherford tie neck-and-neck for that distinction all the way through. Now Gregory is lousier than Rutherford, now Rutherford stinks worse than Gregory, and so on. I'm afraid it ends as a tie. It's just too abysmally close to call. A joint plaque for the Worst Performance Ever Given in a Lead Role in a Major Motion Picture.
That the bad acting is as much the fault of Freeland as the thespians is readily apparent when you see the same performers in their Berkeley-directed numbers. Although he serves as little more than background to Cantor's blackface routine, "My Baby Just Cares For Me", Rutherford seems far less amateurish than usual.
Berkeley maintains that he convinced Goldwyn to let him direct as well as stage the musical numbers, even though this didn't accord with then standard Hollywood practice. Berkeley's position is borne out by a close examination of the movie. Berkeley's fluid camera style and his choice of unusual angles, including his famous overhead shots, is a marked contrast to Freeland's flat work where the camera is nailed to the floor, except for a slight degree of panning. Movement is achieved not by moving the camera but by remarkably skillful cutting from medium shot to close-up, often smoothly effected in the middle of sentences.
My examination reveals that Berkeley didn't direct or stage all the songs. Both the "I'll Still Belong to You" solo and the closing reprise of "My Baby Just Cares For Me" were staged by Freeland - and in the case of the Gregory solo, atrociously at that. On the numbers he did direct, Berkeley did pick-up dialogue as well. This partly explains Shutta's remarkable transformation. It's hard to believe the Shutta of the "Stetson" song is the same girl who made such a hammy stooge for Eddie in his opening scene. Fortunately, it's Cantor's film. Except for his initial scenes where is let down by poor material and flat direction, he hardly ever puts a foot wrong. His timing is perfect. While the rest of the players over-act as if they were back on the Podunk stage (it's hard to credit they were just about all drawn from the original show on Broadway), Cantor brilliantly adjusts his persona for the camera, toning down his mannerisms and projecting his image mostly to a nicety. And it's not only his numbers that are highlights. Even some of his jaded jokes are genuinely funny, - particularly his laugh-a-second run-in with Hackett and the plates.
Aside from the variable direction, technical credits are Goldwyn perfect, with fascinating two-strip Technicolor (here in perfect register), attractive if obviously stage-inspired sets, breathtakingly skilful film editing, odd but likable costumes, and absolutely superb sound recording . Whilst Whoopee! deserves to be seen on a big cinema screen for maximum enjoyment, the video cassette is of outstanding quality. (The cover features Eddie with Muriel Finley (the only chorus girl hired from the Broadway show) on his right (our left!) and Ruth Eddings. According to the blurb (and many reference books), Betty Grable is the chorine who tackles the opening "Cowboy Number". This is incorrect. Betty is the little blonde with the most youthful face in the line-up. She has the last close-up in the "Stetson" parade. Another blonde I recognized is Virginia Bruce. Oddly, I fared less happily with the men. I couldn't spot Dean Jagger or Ed Cobb. But is that Walter Brennan as a bearded, tuxedoed wedding guest?