User Reviews

In his day, Eddie Cantor was a huge star on stage. He could sing, dance, do comedy and was very popular. However, one part of his act that's hard to embrace today is his propensity to do black-face-- much like Al Jolson and George Jessel. While in 2016, the thought of a minstrel act is reprehensible, back in the day it was popular and folks didn't think twice about how racist it was. I am NOT defending this...just explaining the times because this short film features Cantor doing one of these numbers! The film was made at the old Astoria Studio in New York and in this studio, they decked it up to look like a nightclub.

Eddie appears a couple minutes into the film (following some dancers and an emcee announcing him). He does a bit of comedy and sings...all in black-face! You also see a few stars in the audience, such as Richard Dix--though I have the feeling that they weren't actually there at the studio but it was stock footage instead. I won't swear to that...but I can't see them getting Dix (a big star at the time) to trudge out to the out of the way studio for a 5 second appearance!

So is this any good? Well, not really. You can find much better Cantor footage in some of his later films (such as "Forty Little Mothers" or "If You Knew Susie") and the sound quality is poor. On the other hand, at least from a historical perspective, the short is a valuable piece--a look back into the times in which it was made. Very surreal, to say the least, when you see it today!

Just watched this rarity on YouTube. It's a performance of Eddie Cantor in a nightclub setting and he's in blackface throughout. Supposedly, it's after hours and Cantor has just finished his Broadway performance so he's now telling some jokes and singing some songs. He also points to his audience many of his celebrity co-stars from his current show. The whole thing has the feel of a concert film with actual audience members laughing and clapping through the entire thing. To tell the truth, I didn't find myself sharing in the laughs of that audience during some of this short though I was amused at his cracks at Henry Ford especially when comparing how successful Cantor's fellow Jews were in selling second-hand cars than Ford was in selling new ones! The songs he sang were also pretty entertaining though hardly memorable. In summary, A Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic seemed like an interesting time capsule of a bygone era though I probably had to have been there to really get the feel of what it was like then.

Florence Ziegfeld's famed Midnight Frolics in New York's rooftop theaters are part of Broadway legend. They offered theater goers who could afford the cover charge the chance to be entertained by some of Broadway's biggest stars and prettiest chorus girls in an intimate setting. After the big stage show earlier in the evening, Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor and many other theater legends kept the makeup on, went upstairs and continued telling jokes and singing songs into the wee hours of the morning.

Although the Frolics had gone out of fashion some ten years earlier, in 1929 Ziegfeld recreated a Frolic in New York's Astoria studio for the sound movie camera with Eddie Cantor as the star. It may have been staged just for the camera, but the film has the feel of a live performance with Cantor telling topical jokes and singing three novelty songs in his trade marked high energy style. I got the sense that he wanted to start bouncing around the stage the way he did in his live appearances but that the bulky camera and early sound equipment forced him to stay in one place.

Even so the Cantor personality leaps off the screen and it seems that if Cantor was alive today he would have no trouble as a stand-up comic. This is the 1929 version of what is now the opening monologue on late night TV talk shows. Cantor has a great rapport with the audience that I'm sure would work today. All he would have to do is update the jokes to current issues.

Even so, it is interesting to hear him joke about issues that were in the news in 1929. His jokes about Henry Ford's antisemitism are particularly interesting.

Curiously, Cantor is in black face through the entire performance even though there is no minstrel material in this show. Considered offensive by many even then, black face entertainers were a staple of that era and Cantor frequently "blacked up" on Broadway and in the movies. In addition to any offense that might be caused by the black face makeup, it also keeps us from seeing Cantor's wonderfully expressive face as well as we might, and that's a pity.

This film was considered lost for several decades and apparently survives in one 35mm print from which some new prints have been made. Although that surviving original print has some splices that interfere with some of Cantor's comments, it is in relatively good condition with excellent picture and sound quality allowing us to reach back and see a Broadway legend in his prime.