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Palmy Days

Screening on Film
Directed by Edward Sutherland.
With Eddie Cantor, Charlotte Greenwood, Barbara Weeks.
US, 1931, 35mm, black & white, 80 min.
Print source: HFA

After the success of Whoopee!, Sam Goldwyn reteamed Eddie Cantor and Busby Berkeley for another musical comedy. Caught up in fraudulent fortune-telling schemes, Cantor is mistaken for an “efficiency expert” hired to improve business at Clark’s Bakery. Though the bakery’s motto is “Glorifying the American Doughnut,” the real product appears to be the famous Goldwyn Girls and friends clad in extremely Pre-Code backless uniforms. Flaunting an all-female staff making doughnuts factory-style in unison with pseudo-military affect, the stage is set for Berkeley to take over with such numbers as the exercise-promoting “Bend Down Sister”—in which the dancers form elaborate, mesmerizing patterns with sticks—and Cantor’s popular tune “Yes, Yes! (My Baby Said Yes),” which ends with chorines using placards to transform into a bus that carries away the film’s couple. Not directed by Berkeley but by Mervin LeRoy, Cantor’s blackface number was added at the last minute in an effort to increase the music and reduce the plot, which had received a lukewarm response from preview audiences.

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Rosine Mbakam, 2025 McMillan-Stewart Fellow