George White's Scandals (1934)

Great Film overall

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

At just 80 minutes, this has about 15 minutes of plot and over an hour of sketches, songs and a talented group of performers bringing it all together. The film starts with a sold-out performance of the "Scandals" with Mr. George White himself selling tickets at the box office (standing room only, of course...). Then out comes Alice Faye to sing her first big hit on-screen, "Oh You Nasty Man", a delightfully huge and audacious production numbers. I could have done without the chorus line of moppets repeating this song, thrown in as if they were in hiding from "Annie's" Miss Hannigan. If you thought the chandelier girls in "Show of Shows" and the human harps in "Fashions" were enough to make any mother nervous, wait until you see Mr. White's curtain! And if you thought Al Jolson "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule" was the epitome of bad taste, think again. That spot goes to Jimmy Durante, repeating a bit of his old "Scandals" number "That's Why Darkies Were Born". Young black chorus girls allowed themselves to have dummies of black field workers carrying them around on their back, and a huge mammy rolls in, hiding "pickaninny" chorus girls with similar black children underneath her skirt. This jaw-dropping number offers every tacky stereotype ever used in a minstrel show which could be one reason that Fox Classics hasn't added this to its list of released titles, instead releasing the 1935 version which is audacious but certainly not offensive.What there is as far as storyline involves leading lady Alice Faye being in love with leading man Rudy Vallee while he dates scandalous society girl Adrienne Ames. Co-stars Cliff Edwards, Durante and Dixie Dunbar scheme to give the "Scandals" a finale it will never forget. Edwards (paired with Dunbar) is hysterical in a "Scenes From a Marriage" sketch called "So Nice!" which shows a couple from their honeymoon through old age, and the three men get together for a big funny production number called "Every Day is Father's Day". The romantic ballads are strangely dull, but there's a cute little sextet of the three men and their women gallivanting around town to "My Dog Loves Your Dog". One number all of a sudden tosses the lyrics on screen as a chorus girl jumps from word to word, pretending to be a bouncing ball. As a musical film with story, it lacks interest, but as a revue, it is a lot of fun, much like the "Scandals" were when they came along to rival the "Ziegfeld Follies" when our grandparents (more probably great grandparents) were youngsters.

What a wacky funny glitzy mega musical from Fox in early 1934. The WB-Busby Berkeley films sure spawned major studio competition to out style each other with with glamor and dance, and this revue movie with a terrific cast is a genuine big musical event. Paramount already had the awesome MURDER AT THE VANITIES and Universal unleashed their hideous MOONLIGHT AND PRETZELS and MGM ran up DANCING LADY. So GEORGE WHITE'S SCANDALS is another Wonderbar/King Of Jazz nightclub theater revue of styled steppin' and pre code naughtiness. Gorgeous 18 year old Alice Faye in her big debut is a star on the spot, Spunky 16 year old Dixie Dunbar sings up a storm with Ukulele Ike and they add Jimmy Durante for raucous comedy blather. All very funny and often inventively spectacular ...and with a ghastly black-face number poking fun at Jolson's Going To Heaven On A Mule number from WONDERBAR. There is enough faux Berkeley spangle and angle and clever special effects to keep anyone like me who loves this deco pre code musical period happy. There is a bouncing ball song using showgirls instead of a ball, a terrific "You Nasty Man' song of rude lyrics, and even a tiny tot Mae West gig with a 5 year old Shirley Temple in the chorus. Mad fun and very lavish, this is a good scandal (even a dog act!) and easily explains why there was a 1935 and 1945 sequel.

If you love cute dogs, don't on any account miss a chance to see this picture for the number in which THREE men (Durante, Vallee, and Edwards) try to pick up girls with the trusty device of the cute dog. In "My Dog Loves Your Dog" each man point out to a girl that his dog is very fond of the girl's dog, so why don't they follow their pets' example! (Not such a bad idea, when one considers the number of couples who have broken up because of a pet, so it's great if things can go right from the start.) The song is rather babyish, but it is very sweet because it creates the idea that the reason the woman should take the man is that he will offer her doglike devotion (but not in a drippy way, in a lighthearted way--Rudy Vallee sings to Alice Faye, "You know that I really am/Much nicer than that sealyham"! As dog lovers know, this is another reason to watch the film, a real period piece, because sealyhams, which were fashionable in the Twenties and early Thirties, are now almost extinct!

The ineffable Alice Faye made her film debut in this rousing backstage extravaganza, an interesting assembly of Broadway revue, comic sketches, songs, and dancing, in which she played an aspiring singer Kitty Donnelly and her romance with Rudy Valle. Although the movie is loaded with big-scale Busby Berkeley-inspired production numbers, its chief virtue is to watch and be mesmerized by Faye's glorious singing, her distinctive contralto voice.This is the movie where Faye sings "Oh, You Nasty Man" -- one of her most cheerfully lurid (though not necessarily the best), songs. Other songs and numbers include "So Nice", "Every Day's a Father's Day", "Following in the Mother's Footsteps", "Sweet and Simple", "Picking Cotton", and "The Man on the Flying Trapeze".Audiences applauded Faye's vivacity, and the movie made her an instant musical star. Up until her 1936 musical, "Sing, Baby, Baby", Faye really looked like a Jean Harlow-ish platinum blonde with pencil eyelashes. A year later she starred in a follow-up, "George White's 1935 Scandals" - also worth seeking out, if only for Faye's singing.