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International House (1933 film)
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International House (1933) is a comedy film, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and released by Paramount Pictures. The tagline of the film was "the Grand Hotel of comedy".
Actors
film is a mix of numerous acts and bits, like a vaudeville variety show, interlaced with a plot line, in the style of the Big Broadcast pictures that were also released by Paramount during the 1930s
The ostensible plot line concerns a Chinese inventor trying to sell a "radioscope", an early version of television.
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Encyclopedia
International House (1933) is a comedy film, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and released by Paramount Pictures. The tagline of the film was "the Grand Hotel of comedy".
Cast
Actors
Performers
Synopsis
The film is a mix of numerous acts and bits, like a vaudeville variety show, interlaced with a plot line, in the style of the Big Broadcast pictures that were also released by Paramount during the 1930s
The ostensible plot line concerns a Chinese inventor trying to sell a "radioscope", an early version of television. Unlike real television, this imagined mechanism did not need a camera, but its monitor could zoom in on acts around the world. In addition to the typical Fieldsian comic lunacy, it also provides a snapshot of some popular stage and radio acts of the era.
The setting is supposed to be a hotel in Wuhu, China (from the dialogue, "Wuhu" was clearly chosen as a pun on the greeting "Yoo hoo") and the "international" in the title resonates with the real-life International Settlement in Shanghai. It was actually filmed on the Paramount's Hollywood back lot.
Fields portrays Dr. Henry R. Quail, who is one of many people -- from all over the world -- converging on the "International House Hotel" in Wuhu, hoping to buy (or steal) Dr. Wong's television invention.
Controversy
The film was produced in the days before the Production Code fully controlled filmmaking, and was notable for several instances of "risqué" or "blue humor" (by 1933 standards). The most interesting of these, to film and music historians, is probably Cab Calloway's song Reefer Man, in which bass player Al Morgan does a slap stringbass bit as if in a trance and Calloway sings about him being "high" on "reefers".
In another scene, Fields, from his gyrocopter or autogyro, asks where he is, and when the effeminate concierge (Franklin Pangborn) says "Wuhu!!" (in an exaggerated way, like "Woo hoo!!"), Fields says "Don't let the 'posey' fool you" and throws away the boutonniere in his lapel (as if this is a sign he's gay).
At the film's ending, in which Fields and Joyce and the other protagonists escape in Fields' autogyro, they find one of the seats occupied by a basket full of kittens of different color patterns. Pondering their diverse genetics, Joyce rhetorically asks, "I wonder what their parents were?" Fields answers, "Careless!"
Earthquake
During the filming of International House, a small tremor struck the set of the film, while cameras were rolling. The moment, captured on camera, was shown in the Paramount News newsreel across the nation, and was possibly the first earthquake to be captured in action on film. However, some believe that this footage was faked, and that the chandelier that sways back and forth, and the lamp that tips over were suspended on wires. According a couple interviewees on the documentary featurette about W.C. Fields on the W.C. Fields: Comedy Collection Vol. 1 DVD of International House this footage was a publicity stunt constructed by Fields, and was assuredly faked.
The same earthquake was centered in Long Beach, which was not very far away. 115 people were killed and most of the downtown section was destroyed. See also 1933 Long Beach earthquake.
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