Wonder Bar is a 1934

1934 in film

-Events:*January 26 - Samuel Goldwyn purchases the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the L. Frank Baum estate for $40,000.*February 19 - Bob Hope marries Dolores Reade...

 pre-code movie adaptation of a Broadway musical of the same name directed by Lloyd Bacon

Lloyd Bacon

Lloyd Francis Bacon was a screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director.-Life:Bacon was born in San Jose California, the son of actor Frank Bacon, later the co-author and star of the long running Broadway show 'Lightnin' , and Jennie Bacon. He was not related to actor Irving Bacon whom he...

 with musical numbers created by Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns...

. It stars Al Jolson

Al Jolson

Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....

, Kay Francis

Kay Francis

Kay Francis was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio, and the highest paid American film actress...

, Dolores del Río

Dolores del Río

Dolores del Río was a Mexican film actress. She was a star of Hollywood films during the silent era and in the Golden Age of Hollywood...

, Ricardo Cortez

Ricardo Cortez

Jacob Krantz , known by his stage name Ricardo Cortez, was an American film actor who began his career during the silent era.-Life and career:...

, Dick Powell

Dick Powell

Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss.Despite the same last name he was not related to William Powell, Eleanor Powell or Jane Powell.-Biography:...

, Guy Kibbee

Guy Kibbee

Guy Bridges Kibbee was an American stage and film actor.Born in El Paso, Texas, Kibbee began his entertainment career on Mississippi riverboats and eventually became a successful Broadway actor...

, Ruth Donnelly

Ruth Donnelly

Ruth Donnelly was an American stage and film actress. Her father was the mayor of Trenton, New Jersey....

, Hugh Herbert

Hugh Herbert

Hugh Herbert was a motion picture comedian. He began his career in vaudeville, and wrote more than 150 plays and sketches.-Career:...

, Louise Fazenda

Louise Fazenda

Louise Fazenda was an American film actress, appearing chiefly in silent comedy films.-Early life:Of Portuguese ancestry, she was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Her father, Joseph Fazenda, was a merchandise broker. After moving west Louise attended Los Angeles High School and St. Mary's Convent...

, Fifi D'Orsay

Fifi D'Orsay

-Biography:Born Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier in Montreal, Quebec, as a young typist, filled with the desire to become an actress, she went to New York City. There, she found work in The Greenwich Village Follies after an audition in which she sang the song "Yes, We Have No Bananas' in French...

, Merna Kennedy

Merna Kennedy

Merna Kennedy was an American actress of the late silent era.-Short career:Kennedy was best-known during her brief career for her role opposite Charlie Chaplin in the silent film The Circus .Kennedy was brought to the attention of Chaplin by her friend Lita Grey, who became Chaplin's second wife...

, Henry O'Neill

Henry O'Neill

Henry O'Neill was a film actor known for playing gray-haired fathers, lawyers, and similarly dignified roles during the 1930s and 1940s.-Life and career:...

, Robert Barrat

Robert Barrat

Robert Harriot Barrat was an American stage, motion picture, and television character actor.-Career:Born in New York, Barrat's theatrical debut was in a stock company in Springfield, Massachusetts...

, Henry Kolker

Henry Kolker

Henry Kolker was an American stage and film actor and director...

, and Spencer Charters

Spencer Charters

Spencer Charters was an American film actor. He appeared in over 220 films between 1920 and 1943.He was born in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, and died in Hollywood, California by suicide, from a mix of sleeping pills and carbon monoxide poisoning.His first stage work soon after leaving school was a...

 in the main roles. For its time, Wonder Bar was considered risqué, barely passing the censors at the Hays Office.

Plot

Wonder Bar is set in a Parisian nightclub, with the stars playing the ‘regulars’ to the club. The movie revolves around two main story points, a romance and a more serious conflict with death, and several minor plots. All of the stories are enlivened from time to time by extravagant musical numbers. The more serious story revolves around Captain Von Ferring (Robert Barrat), a German military officer. Ferring has gambled on the stock market and lost, now broke after dozens of failed investments, and is now at the Wonder Bar to try and pull a one night stand before killing himself the following day. Al Wonder (Al Jolson) knows about Ferring's plan.

Meanwhile, an elaborate romance is unfolding. The bar's central attraction is the Latin lounge dancing group led by Inez (Dolores del Río). Al Wonder has a secret attraction to Inez, who has a burning passion for Harry (Ricardo Cortez). However, Harry is two-timing her with Liane (Kay Francis), who is married to the famous French banker Renaud (Henry Kolker). The story comes to a climax when Inez finds out that Harry and Liane plan to run away together and head to the United States. Inez, in a haze of jealousy, kills Harry.

Subplots are much more light in nature. They involve several drunken routines by two businessmen (Hugh Herbert and an uncredited Hobart Cavanaugh) and Al Wonder's various narrations as emcee of the floor show and manager of the club.

Music and controversy

The various scenes of Wonder Bar are permeated by musical numbers which were designed and directed by Busby Berkeley. The music was first written for the Broadway stage by Geza Herczeg, Karl Farkas, and Robert Katscher, and was adapted for the big screen by Earl Baldwin. Most of the musical numbers were typically 1930s; big-band led by an entertaining band director (Al), with lavish costumes packed with showgirls (the trailers promised ‘over 250 of the world's most beautiful women’). Two scenes stand above the rest. One was the blackface

Blackface

Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...

 minstrel show

Minstrel show

The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....

 finale, "Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule" (featuring Jolson and Hal Le Roy

Hal Le Roy

Hal Le Roy was a dancer, actor and singer appearing on stage, in film and on television.-Career:Le Roy was born John LeRoy Schotte in Cincinnati in 1913. He broke into New York theater as a dancer, and quickly worked his way into Broadway roles where his dance style created a sensation in the 1931...

), full of racial stereotypes. The other involved a handsome man asking a dancing couple if he could cut in. The female partner, expecting his attention, agreed, only to see him dance with her male partner. Jolson then flaps his wrist and says, "Boys will be boys! Woo!" This scene almost caused the Production Code

Production Code

The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...

 to reject the film, and was featured in the 1995 documentary The Celluloid Closet

The Celluloid Closet

The Celluloid Closet is a 1996 American documentary film directed and written by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The film is based on the 1981 book of the same name written by Vito Russo, and on previous lecture and film clip presentations given in person by Russo 1972–82.Russo researched the...

.

See also

• Busby Berkeley using alternate takes to circumvent censorship

External links

• Wonder Bar at Moviefone
  Moviefone
  Moviefone is an American-based movie listing and information service. Moviegoers can obtain local showtimes, theatre information, film reviews, or advance tickets...