Stand Up and Cheer (1934) is a morale-boosting movie
about…morale boosting…during the worst years of the Great Depression. Whether it actually succeeded in spreading
optimism could certainly be doubted, but it likely was successful as, at least,
a diversion. The thin plot of a new
government office being created to bolster good feeling during the hard times
was the framework for a lineup of vaudeville acts and musical numbers that
carries us through the end of the movie and the fictional end of the
Depression.
Warner Baxter, a driven, hard-working producer (not too unlike
the character he played in 42nd Street the year before), is
summoned by the President (who does not sound like FDR) to take over a new
cabinet position, Secretary of Amusement (which reminds one, less cheerfully,
of the “Secretary of Morale” position grifter and sellout to fascists Andy
Griffith was given in A
Face in the Crowd – 1957 – which we covered here). Mr. Baxter arrives at the Capitol Building in
an autogyro, a 1920s and 1930s precursor to the modern helicopter. Someday I’d like to take a look at autogyros
in movies and cartoons of that period.
Unlike the role Griffith played, however, Mr. Baxter is no
megalomaniac, just a driven workaholic with a passion for the entertainment
industry. He calls for entertainers of
all types: circus acts, ballet, vaudevillians, but apparently no “boop-a-doop
singers.” The Roaring Twenties are
behind us, and flappers are passé (it’s all about autogyros now). He calls for auditions from all 48 states,
Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, which at that time was still a U.S.
territory.
Madge Evans plays an underling in charge of the children’s
division. We last saw her as the tragic
and touching female lead in Hallelujah, I’m a Bum! (1933) here. She will eventually become Baxter’s love
interest, though there’s hardly any time for that in the continual stream of
acts, sometimes coming at us in unexpected ways. The first, rather startlingly, is when Baxter
and Madge Evans are looking at a newspaper, and punching through the big
headlines is Nick Foran (whom you may remember better as Dick Foran, changing
his first name the following year) singing in a booming baritone, “I’m
laughing.” Despite being out of work and down on his luck, this barrel-chested
workingman declares that “I’ve got nothing to laugh about, but if I can laugh
and sing and shout, brother, so can you!”
His spirited verse launches a montage of people who’ve got nothing to
laugh about either, but they still carry on cheerfully, including a farmer, a
woman with many children washing laundry on the roof of a tenement, and, most
touchingly, a garment worker at her sewing machine in a sweatshop.
Her moment in the song is not as rollicking;
the tempo has slowed, and she is almost whisper-quiet, singing of dreams and
future hopes.
The final verse in this song is taken by Aunt Jemima in what
appears to be a church hall. The actress
is actually named Tess Gardella, but the corporate logo – for reasons both
racial and monetary – was seemingly deemed to take precedence over a real
actress. Aunt Jemima was one of the
oldest and most successful corporate logos in the U.S., dating back to 1889 and
the Pearl Milling Company. Pushing their
flour product at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they hired
Nancy Green, a former slave, to cook pancakes, tell stories and sing songs in a
kind of cozy folklore embodiment of the home goodness of their flour, and Aunt
Jemima became a company trademark. It
was certainly not the first capitalist fantasy ever generated in our culture, but
it would last longer than most.
The mammy image went through a few transformations over the years,
but most curious was the adoption of the name by performers. To be sure “Aunt Jemima” began as a minstrel
character even before she became a corporate trademark, but though several
actresses were hired to portray her in company promotions, Tess Gardella, who
originated the role of Queenie in the seminal Show Boat (1927) on
Broadway, was billed as “Aunt Jemima,” as this was the stage name she used in
vaudeville – though she was not connected with the company that made flour and
pancake mix. (Reportedly, a
light-skinned woman, she performed often in blackface.) You can see her here
on this YouTube clip.
Another veteran of Show Boat was Stepin Fetchit, who
played Joe in the 1929 “part-talky” version.
His real name was, impressively, Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry. “Stepin Fetchit” was his own vaudeville
creation, “The Laziest Man in the World,” and made him one of the highest-paid
performers in vaudeville, and his name in the credits of Stand Up and Cheer
is more prominent than most of the rest of the cast. For all that, the stereotype he embellished
brought him no good fortune in later years and fell out of favor. Though I can admire his success in vaudeville
and early 1930s films, I confess I find him one of the most annoying characters
in this movie or most other movies he appeared in—not because of the insulting
stereotype—Hollywood was full of them—but because of the quality of his
speaking voice. To me, it’s like nails
on a chalkboard.
Stepin Fetchit’s part in this movie is to latch on to Warner
Baxter and take a job as a guard to keep out the riffraff. He stumbles about, has a comic struggle
babysitting a penguin, and takes a plunge into a large aquarium.
Strangely, the penguin is voiced-over, muttering complaints,
by an actor doing a Jimmy Durante impersonation, wearing Durante’s trademark
hat. One wonders why Mr. Durante himself
isn’t in the movie? Maybe the penguin
had a better agent.
Stepin Fetchit isn’t alone in the physical slapstick
department; Jack Durant and Frank Mitchell play a couple of bumbling senators
who keep up with a stream of nonsense dialogue about a dam project (“We’ve been
together on every dam project!”) while they do acrobatic tumbling and throwing
each other around Baxter’s office. It’s
quite funny and rather jaw-dropping. Literally.
Handsome John Boles, in his romantic tenor days, is dressed in a
white Naval uniform and sings a love ballad with Sylvia Froos, he with the
rolling “r’s” and she looking a little bored.
Look for little Scotty Becket in a brief, uncredited role as one of the child actors under Madge Evans' tutelage.
Warner Baxter runs into a snag when the big business oligarchs
(though the term was not commonly used then) try to scuttle his project with a “campaign
of ridicule.” He nearly quits.
I would expect any film buff worthy of the name knows that
the real breakout star of the film was little Shirley Temple, who plays the
daughter of hoofer James Dunn. She is a
charming moppet—her own trademark, merchandising to follow—and sings a verse of
“Baby, Take a Bow” with Mr. Dunn.
Practically before the director could yell, “CUT!”, little Shirley was
whisked away into a new movie called Baby, Take a Bow (along with Mr.
Dunn), and became the highest box office draw for the next four years.
So memorable a figure she cut in Stand Up and Cheer,
that in the film’s finale, after a rather long salute to hillbilly music “Broadway’s
Gone Hillbilly,” (which features the always delightful sight of chorus girls
dancing on top of New York City skyscrapers), that Shirley takes a solo bow in
the big parade in Washington.
This happens when James Dunn rushes into the despondent Warner
Baxter’s office and announces that the Depression is over!
“Factories are opening up!
Men are going back to work by the thousands, our farm products are being
sold the world over, savings accounts are leaping up, the banks are pouring out
new loans! There is no
unemployment! Fear has been
banished! Confidence reborn! Poverty has been wiped out…We’re out of the red!”
That’s kind of a lot to scream at somebody, using up all
those exclamation points like that. But
Dunn is right, the Great Depression has ended, and to celebrate, an NRA-style
parade commences with armies of workers, nurses, teachers, military—and little
Shirley Temple—all singing “We’re Out of the Red.”
Must be true. Nick (Dick) Foran is back, dressed as Paul Revere, and his ghostly figure is riding across the sky on a horse, singing it, too.
I can remember watching this movie on TV with my parents
when I was a child, and my mother chuckling, “And that’s how the Great
Depression ended.” And my father
snorting, “Yeah, just like that.”
Even as young as I was, I could tell they were being
sarcastic, but at the same time, the strangely wistful, almost sad smiles told
me they wished it could have been like that. They were the original audience for that
movie when they were young teens. Maybe at
that age they really believed the Depression could end like that, any day
now. Maybe seeing the movie again after
so many years, they realized they’d been hoodwinked. Maybe they also realized that the fantasy was
needed at the time. Warner Baxter
certainly thought so.
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From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books. From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.
