SHOW BUSINESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 289, 5 January 1945, Page 17

SHOW BUSINESS

(RKO Radio)

HE most attractive features of this Eddie Cantor film are its nostalgic melodies, its broad comedy, and its general air of

intimacy. Unlike most musical pictures, it avoids spectacle for the sake of spectacle, and its payroll for chorus girls must have been one of the smallest on record. The old-time vaudeville show; just a few hard-working troupers on the stage at a time; an audience which is quick to applaud or to jeerin these respects the film achieves an authentic atmosphere. And instead of "creating" new tunes, it is for the most part content to employ the songs which became temporarily popular in the second and third decades of this century, many of them in shows connected with the name of Eddie Cantor. His style of comedy is no longer a novelty; nevertheless he is still a very talented clown who knows how to get the best out of a comic line or a piece of funny business. : It is a pity, however, that somebody like Cantor who knows so much about show business did not know better than to use a chunk of sentimental flapdoodle for the plot. Or perhaps it is just-because Cantor is an old-fashioned showman that he could not, or would not, avoid such hoary cliches’ as the wife who thinks she is wronged, the dead baby, the never-darken-my-doorstep-again speech, the heart-broken husband who goes off to the wars and later to the dogs, and the big reconciliation act in the finale. This sort of thing may have moved audiences to tears and applause 15 years or so ago, but I cannot help thinking that it is more likely to arouse derision nowadays. It is a pity that we have grown so polite, that the cinema is so impersonal, and that eggs and tomatoes are so precious; a few of them thrown at the screen at such moments, after the fashion of our more robust forebears, might have a tonic effect on film producers.