First Thoughts on "Roman Scandals"
A podcast about the great movie years.
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When we recorded the episode for 1933 with Megan Abbott we learned that the #1 box office smash of the year was Roman Scandals starring Eddie Cantor. I commented that I had tried to watch the movie, but couldn’t finish it. Megan then went on to praise the film and Cantor’s performance, and I thought, let’s give it another spin.
HA! THIS MOVIE IS A ROLLER COASTER.
I gave it a shot after the recording and realized I only watched about five minutes last time, after that point it was all new to me. So of course I was delighted when Cantor turns out to be a proper Depression-era Robin Hood character who gets reamed by his boss at the grocery store for giving away the food when he goes on deliveries.
“Well, you’re charging it against my wages, ain’t ya?”
Turns out he’s got bigger problems though, when Top Hat connoisseur Warren Finley Cooper has the cops displace a whole neighborhood of poor people so they can literally build a new jail. Cantor rallies the locals and does a great song-and-dance number full of American leftist tropes. Not gonna lie - I loved it. My grandparents were a bunch of Okies who had to share shoes with their siblings. It was right up their alley.
So here I am all warm and fuzzy thinking nice thoughts about my grandparents when this fkn guy Cantor reminds me the era wasn’t all union pickets and government jobs.
WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS SHIT:
This is a song called “Keep Young and Beautiful” where Eddie Cantor appears in…Black Body? His face is definitely covered, but he’s dancing around in a toga so they had to do his arms and legs too. It’s overwhelming. The last shot of whiskey you shouldn’t have done. The final bite that ruins the whole meal.
And that’s all before he opens his dumb but still-white mouth:
Keep young and beautiful
It's your duty to be beautiful
Keep young and beautiful
If you wanta be loved, dah-dah-dah-dah
Don't fail to do your stuff
With a little powder and a puff
Keep young and beautiful
If you wanta be loved
If you're wise, exercise all the fat off
Take it off, off o' here, off o' there
When you're seen anywhere with your hat off
Have a permanent wave in your hair
Take care of all those charms
And you'll always be in someone's arms
Keep young and beautiful
If you wanta be loved
I couldn’t really watch anything after that. I skipped ahead a little, worked out the rest of the plot, but I turned down the volume and mostly tuned it out. It’s offensive and there’s nothing for me to learn there. Those things are true, but that’s not why I stopped paying attention.
I turned it off because for the second time, this movie reminded me of my grandparents. They were great, and I loved them, and they taught me a lot of good things. But as I found out more about the world I realized sometimes, when they got onto certain subjects, it was best to stop paying attention.
-Mike