Trav S.D.’s Guide to the “Mexican Spitfire” Comedies

Today is the birthday of Lupe Velez (read more about the talented and gorgeous Latin star here). A fitting day, we think to do this little post on her last (and today, best known) career phase, her “Mexican Spitfire” comedies.

While worth watching as historical curiosities, to the modern sensibility these films seem both sexist and racist. The Spitfire character is a sort of combination of Lucy and Desi, hot tempered, fast talking, and trouble prone, like some sort of wild animal. The only way you would be prone to find it amusing is if you were by default poised to laugh at the idiocy of women and Mexicans. Leon Errol as Uncle Matt (and his alter ego Lord Epping) is a bit of welcome relief. Essentially these are cheapie B pictures on every level, forgettable, disposable, and very much representative of the times.

The Girl from Mexico (1939)

The first “Mexican Spitfire” movie, although no one knew at the time that a series of films would transpire. Lupe Velez plays an unknown singer in a small Mexican village brought north of the border by a radio scout (Donald Woods) who is affianced to a scheming phony. Lupe will of course win him for her own.

Mexican Spitfire (1940)

The first official one in the series. They settle into the formula. The couple are now married and its all about the culture clash of being a Latina in America. The comedy is much broader than in the previous one. This also introduces the recurring motif of the British distiller Lord Epping, played also by Leon Erroll. So Uncle Matt (also Errol) has several bits where he goes in disguise as the English gentleman (this was one of Errol’s stage specialties, in addition to his famous drunk routine).

Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940)

This one doesn’t quite deliver what the title promises.  It’s not a western comedy. Carmelita goes to Reno to pretend to be seeking a divorce from her boring husband because she thinks he is being unfaithful (someone turned on the radio to a peppy station while they were on the phone). And Lord Epping returns. So there is an irritating subplot of Dennis (the husband) having to outscheme some rivals for the attentions of Lord Epping, who is sometimes Uncle Matt in disguise. But the main question is “Who cares”? Who cares whether he has a coup at work or if their marriage breaks up?” On the positive side,  Tom Kennedy has a funny bit as a cab driver.

Mexican Spitfire’s Baby (1941)

The title of this film so badly makes me want to do a comedy mash-up sketch of this and the Mia Farrow/ Roman Polanski horror picture. The production values in this one seem to have improved over the previous one a little. The anonymous Donald Woods is now replaced by Buddy Rogers as Carmelita’s husband and he is much better at playing comedy than his soporific predecessor. Velez now sports a fashionable 40s haircut.  And Zasu Pitts is in the cast as prissy hotel manager Miss Emily Pepper, and Fritz Feld does his patented Frenchman routine. This improved cast makes it a vastly more watchable movie, even if the script is as tedious as the previous ones.  It opens on an anniversary party at a fancy night club. Dennis and Carmelita are still troubled. Uncle Matt suggests they adopt a “baby”. Unfortunately Dennis gets a “baby” – a gorgeous blonde French girl named “Fifi” whom he somehow has to host for work. Much misunderstanding and yelling in Spanish ensues.

Mexican Spitfire at Sea (1942)

The couple takes a ship to Honolulu to get away from work and have a second honeymoon. And who’s on board but Fifi and Miss Emily Pepper from the previous film? And Uncle Matt and his snobby wife? And it all becomes about Uncle Matt masquerading as Lord Epping to help Dennis land a business deal with a gent who is traveling on the same tub. Endless permutations of the various characters having conversations in different staterooms or on deck. Can there by anything more disposable?

Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942)

The inevitable spook comedy. The Carmelita character gets even more demeaning in this one. When we first see her she is having fun riding a painters scaffolding apparatus on the outside of a skyscraper oblivious to her safety. Dennis and his aunt go to Lord Epping’s country mansion to go hunting (for business reasons). They leave Carmelita behind because she lacks class; Uncle Matt takes her to a boxing match. But they show up anyway…after all they are the stars of the film.and it’s a good thing too. Lord Epping doesn’t arrive to clinch the business deal so Uncle Matt masquerades as him for the umpteenth time. Unfortunately the house is also haunted! (Naturally the explanation is the usual thing—crooks are hiding in the basement making explosives, and are faking the ghosts to scare them off.) One of the other guests is the irritating Donald McBride (the “jumping butterballs” guy from Room Service. And naturally the servants are Mantan Moreland and Lillian Randolph. It wouldn’t be a ghost comedy without some stereotyped eye popping and superstition.

Mexican Spitfire’s Elephant (1942)

We are initially disappointed to learn it’s not a circus elephant, but a statuette carved out of a gem (much like the titular rock in The Pink Panther). Lyle Talbot is the crook who is smuggling it. But thanks to a misunderstanding of Carmelita’s we do eventually get our live elephant. As if to provedthat the character of Dennis is a tedious cog, the actor playing him has been replaced yet again, this time by the mustachioed Walter Reed, who’s so unappealing he looks precisely like the sort of guys who normally play villains in movies like this . This one is also burdened with wartime propaganda nonsense…Uncle Matt is working for civil defense on air raid drills etc.

 Mexican Spitfire’s Blessed Event (1943)

This one, the last in the series, achieves new levels of inconsequentiality. Confusingly, unlike Mexican Spitfire Out West, this one actually has a “western” setting and theme. It’s set at an Arizona resort. When we first see Carmelita she is dressed in a little cowgirl outfit. The main plot of the film is actually similar toMexican Spitfire’s Baby. Dennis thinks Carmelita is pregnant but in reality its just that her cat is going to have kittens (apparently this is a world where even married people can’t have sex – particularly sex with Mexicans). The usual boring shit about business deals with Lord Epping, now with a bunch of guys in army uniforms running around, shoving the war down our throats. Hugh Beaumont and Alan Carney play minor roles.

The following year, Velez would be expecting her own “blessed event”. Unmarried at the the time, she took her own life rather than suffer the public humiliation of such a predicament given the mores of that day. Whether there would have been more Spitfire movies after that is academic. The popularity of the series had begun to wane, and she had resumed making other sorts of films.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy don’t miss my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

La Carpa, the Mexican Vaudeville

Just a few days ago, we wrote a little appreciation of Mexican influence on American culture. Today being the holiday of  Cinco de Mayo we thought we would again celebrate a particular manifestation of Mexican culture, one that overlaps with the customary themes of this blog in a more obvious way, the Carpa, or Mexican tent show.

Carpa means “tent” in Spanish, and readers of this blog know that America has long been home to all manner of traveling tent shows, particularly during the 19th and earth 20th centuries. Black vaudeville, medicine shows, circuses, religious revivals, and the peculiar midwestern phenomenon known as the Toby Show are all examples. The Carpa sprang up in the years following the Mexican Revolution (ca. 1910-1920), reaching a peak during the 1920s and 1930s, and lasting into the 1940s. Its precursor was a tradition of presenting plays in the religious season between the Day of the Dead (November 1) and Christmas beginning in the 1870s.

The carpa promised family entertainment and usually featured clowns (often portraying certain stock characters, not unlike commedia), acrobats, magic, puppets, music, dance, and in later years, movies. They presented their shows all over Mexico, but also in the American Southwest. Famous shows included Carpa Valentina (a Russian circus family which had fled the Russian revolution and Civil War), Carpa Garcia (a large family concern whose territory included California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas), Carpa Azcapotzalco, Carpa Cubana, and Carpa Monsavias.

For much more on the carpa, this article provides much excellent flavor and detail.

To find out more about  the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever books are sold.

Why “Hamilton” is the Best Show Ever

Well, as predicted, Hamilton was nominated for a gazillion Tonys yesterday, and I would say “well deserved” except I never follow the Tonys, I know nothing of the other nominees, and I have not seen Hamilton live. But the announcement does give me an occasion to gather together stray thoughts I’ve been germinating about the show for a couple of weeks. I haven’t done so yet because a) I haven’t seen it, I’ve only done like millions of people around the world have done, and how I did with many shows as a teenager — played the cast album (and watched the occasional video clip); and 2) I didn’t listen to the album until rather recently, and I’m so behind the curve in this case that I feared my gushing would only embarrass both of us. It is particularly embarrassing because my praise for it is as immoderate as everyone else’s, and this too puts me behind the curve. I am not accustomed to agreeing with everyone else. After all, everyone else seemed to love Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and I walked out of that show after ten minutes. It was rubbish, and the sycophantic audience at the Public combined the worst qualities of Restoration bubble-heads mixed with the mob at the Roman coliseum (yes, I review audiences along with productions). Finding myself in agreement with the sickening masses of humanity disorients me and makes me want to bury that knowledge in a deep hole. However, my love is much better than your love — at least I can have that consolation.

Since I was a teenager I have periodically penned little rants and manifestos and essays and blogs about how things (theatre, plays, musicals) ought to be. In fact, I was about to do another this month, along with a series of other serious, thinky posts that began with this one on May 1. But my encounter with Hamilton pre-empted it. Headed it off at the pass. Hamilton is so great an accomplishment, and so aligned with what I have been seeking from the theatre my entire life, that I no longer have any complaints. Granted, I am not satisfied with most everything else (including my own attempts to attain my own ideal). But for the rest of my life, I will be able to say, I have been satisfied — so much more than satisfied — by this. Forgive me, but I have a personal mental checklist…and every box was checked. And normally almost none of them are. An American theme. Check! A historical theme! Check! An American history theme! Check check check!!! An American history theme that represents the outsider and talks about our problematic history with issues of class and difference!!!! Check!!! A quasi-Shakespearean tragic hero!!!! Check check!! Populist in both spirit and aesthetic while NOT dumbing down to the audience or pandering to the lowest common denominator!!! Quntillion checks!!!! Poetical genius in the literary sense!!!! Formal brilliance!!!! Quintillion checks to the 10th power!!!! Contemporary music that talks to our own culture and reaches past the normal self-imposed musical theatre ghetto that has made most live theatre culturally irrelevant for the past 75 years! Quintillion checks to the the quintillionth power!!!!! Created by an individual as opposed to a committee! (Unmeasurable!!!) An individual who is essentially a rock star as a performer, comparable in his way to Elvis (Unmeasurable to the gazillionth power).

The Mad Marchioness put it best — Lin-Manuel Miranda is like the George M. Cohan of our time. But in some ways, he’s even better. Cohan wrote indelible, timeless popular songs, and was a terrific stage star. But as a playwright he never wrought anything as complex or as masterful as Hamilton. Is Miranda the Second Coming of Jesus? Well, I suppose only his next show will be able to tell whether he will hold this exalted status for the rest of his life. But you know what? As far as I’m concerned, he never has to do anything else as long as he lives. He never does.

Eddie Cantor in “The Kid from Spain”

 

Today is the anniversary of the release date of the Eddie Cantor comedy The Kid from Spain (1932), written by Kalmar and Ruby, directed by Leo McCarey, featuring Lyda Roberti, and the Goldwyn Girls, choreographed by Busby Berkley! Is that team or is that a team?! And it’s just as terrific as you would expect. All of these artists are at their peak here. Delectable stuff: hilarious jokes, extremely witty songs…

It starts out with a very funny, sexy musical number set at a college starring an enormous number of pre-code co-eds. Eddie is discovered in one of their beds and expelled, along with his dashing Mexican room-mate (Robert Young!) Young tries to get Eddie to come with him to Mexico but Eddie decides to stay…and then ends up going to Mexico anyway. While parked outside a bank, he is mistaken for the getaway driver of a robbery, and has to drive the escaping gang to their hideout. To avoid capture, he goes to Mexico, where he instantly bumps into Robert Young, who must have been loitering around the border checkpoint. But a detective has followed Eddie across the border. Through Young’s instigation, Eddie masquerades as a famous Spanish bullfighter, the son of one of a famous hero of the ring. (This is one of those films where a bad Spanish accent allows you to communicate with native Spanish speakers). The climax of the film is of course the cowardly Eddie having to do a bullfight. The romantic subplot concerns Robert Young’s trysts with a girl who is affianced to some turkey though an arranged marriage.

Great Kalmar and Ruby songs. “Look, What You’ve Done” reminds me of “Why Am I So Romantic?” from Animal Crackers. “In the Moonlight” reminds me of “Everyone Says I Love You” from Horse Feathers. This being a Cantor movie, there is also unfortunately a blackface number: “What a Perfect Combination”.

 

In the end, Eddie is vindicated by a telegram. And it turns out the detective knew the truth all long—he just wanted to see Eddie fight the bull!

To learn more about comedy film history please check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

To learn about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

On the Brief Co-Stardom of Anita Page

Today is the birthday of MGM star Anita Page (Anita Pomares, 1910-2008).

Fair hair notwithstanding Page was actually a Latina, of Salvadoran origin. She grew up in Flushing, Queens and, based on a submitted photo, got screen tested for Paramount at the Kaufman Astoria studio. This led to a screen test with MGM and a contract with the latter studio, which lasted until 1933. Her career bridged the last years of silents and the earliest years of talkies.

While she appeared in over three dozen movies, a few will be of especial interest to our readers:

* Our Dancing Daughters (1928): Page, Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastian play a trio of wayward flapper friends, each of whom gets into varying degrees of trouble. Page gets to play the really nasty one — but she pays for it in the end. The film was a hit and boosted the careers of all three of its co-stars. Interestingly, both Page and Sebastian would later co-star with Buster Keaton; and Crawford had earlier co-starred with Harry Langdon. 

* Broadway Melody (1929): One of the very first Hollywood musicals and an absolute must-see for lovers of show biz and vaudeville history. Page and Bessie Love play a vaudeville sister act, who of course get separated by career and romance. The film was another smash, and won the Best Picture Oscar.

* Free and Easy (1930) and Sidewalks of New York (1931). These are the films in which she co-stars with Keaton. In the first she plays a country girl who comes to Hollywood to be a star, accompanied by her mother and her bumbling admirer (Keaton). In the second, she plays a poor girl who converts millionaire Keaton to a life of philanthropy.

For some reason, by 1933 Page (who at one point got more fan mail than any other star at MGM) had lost popularity, and she was let out of her contract. She married MGM songwriter Nacio Herb Brown the following year (he’d written songs for several of her movies) but they broke up within months. In 1937 she retired for good and settled down to marry a naval officer. In the 1990s she re-emerged from retirement to take parts in several low budget horror movies. Ain’t that always the way?

Now check it out! Here she is being interviewed during her twilight comeback in 1993:

For more on early film history don’t miss my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etcFor more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Olga San Juan, “The Puerto Rican Pepperpot”

Today is the birthday of the lovely singer-dancer-actress Olga San Juan (1927-2009).

Born in Brooklyn and raised in both Puerto Rico and New York’s Spanish Harlem, San Juan began dancing at age three and performed in nightclubs throughout her childhood. Gradually the venues grew more prestigious (the Copacabanna and the El Morocco) and she was hired by The King of Latin Music, Tito Puente. Eventually she formed Olga San Juan and her Rumba Band and began to be heard on radio as much as in nightclubs.

In 1943, at the height of the Latin craze, Paramount hired her and she began to appear in pictures, most of them musicals. She was in Blue Skies (1946) with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, the all-star Variety Girl (1947), with Ava Gardner in One Touch of Venus (1948), and with Sonja Henie in The Countess of Monte Crisco (1948). Her last major film role was in the late Preston Sturges comedy The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend (1949), which I watched recently and first brought her to my attention. While San Juan often played Lupe Velez and Carmen Miranda type broad-stroke Latin characters, in Beautiful Blonde, she downplays that element, radiating taste, wit and intelligence rather than crude dialect humor. It made me sit up and take notice.

Unfortunately, that was her last opportunity to do that in film. That year she also married the actor Edmund O’Brien, and she retired to raise their children. She had one more major role on Broadway, in the original production of Paint Your Wagon (1951-52). After this a couple of bit roles in the films, and that was it. She and O’Brien divorced in 1976.

For more on show biz history, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.For more on comedy film history see my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc

 

 

José Ferrer: The Definitive Cyrano

Today is the birthday of the distinguished actor and director José Ferrer (José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón, 1912-1992). Ferrer possessed a natural dignity, intelligence and command that made him ideally suited for playing stuffy, overbearing and pompous pedants, doctors, lawyers, and professors and such, as he often did in his later years. But it was always rewarding when he went outside that box. His signature role for example was the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac, which Ferrer played twice on Broadway, and in two different movies. The part is humorous, vulnerable and macho all at the same time. Only the very greatest actors can play it, and (so far) Ferrer has come to own it for all time.

The son of a San Juan lawyer, Ferrer graduated Princeton in 1938, the same year he married actress (and later acting teacher) Uta Hagen (the first of his four wives. He would later be married to singer Rosemary Clooney). He was a constant fixture on Broadway throughout the 1940s and 50s in plays like Cyrano, Charley’s Aunt, Othello (he played Iago to Paul Robeson’s Othello in Broadway’s longest ever running Shakespeare production), The Shrike (which he also directed) and many others.

He started out strong in films in the the 50s, winning the best actor Oscar for Cyrano ,in 1950 and playing prestige parts in films like John Houston’s Moulin Rouge, and The Caine Mutiny. His niche was to be a character actor however, and while he did sometimes enjoy the occasional lead in such stuff as The Return of Captain Nemo (1978), he was more often to be seen as parts of ensembles in schlock such as The Swarm, released that same year. Still, great stuff continued to come along and we much relished his turns in Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982), Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not to Be (1983) and David Lynch’s Dune (1984). Some of his last work was on the soap opera Another World. 

 

To learn more about show business history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold. For more on silent film history don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc