Wild People (1933) User Reviews

"Bring me a picture of the chef in tights"!

[classicsoncall · 4/10 · 2 April 2011]

Except for those movie travelogues in exotic locales, I can't think of another film short that I've seen in color. This one is described by MGM as a Colortone Musical, and it fills the bill on that score once a couple of reporters (Harry Jans and Harold Whalen) from The Globe Broadcasting Company make their way to a remote tropical island to interview talent for a radio show. Look, I'm only recounting what I saw in the picture, I didn't say it made any sense.

At least the performers were entertaining, with the bright orange coiffured MGM Dancing Girls the highlight of the effort. Along with Joyzelle Joyner, the Panther Lady, doing it up right in song and dance. I have to give some credit to those dancers who allowed themselves to be swung and thrown around the way they were here; one false move and their careers might have been over. Especially for the gal falling backwards over the cliff, very trusting of her.

I'm not sure if this film short fulfilled it's mission, going by the Globe president's declaration that 'an idea man has got to have ideas'. But who's to say, you don't get to see a cave man in a leopard skin belting out a tune very often.

Soaking Up Local Color

[wes-connors · 4/10 · 29 May 2011]

At the Globe Broadcasting Company, radio station "idea man" Harry Jans and former school chum Harold Whalen are assigned to broadcast from a tropical island. They bring members of a population of prehistoric "Wild People" to the microphone for songs and banter. After a couple of brief solos, the comedy team is joined by the "M.G.M. Dancing Girls" for a dance clad in cheeky costumes with bone necklaces and orange Afro wigs. Everyone is sure the musical is a big success, but a surprise ending limits the show's audience. "A Colortone Musical," this was, "Photographed by Technicolor Process."

**** Wild People (1932) Ray McCarey ~ Harry Jans, Harold Whalen, Joyzelle Joyner, Eddie Baker

Worth Watching for The Panther Lady

[wrbtu · 19 April 2005]

The comedy is routine, the acting is pretty bad, the plot can be summarized in six words or less, but it's worth watching anyway, for a rare glimpse of the best Hollywood dancer of the late 1920s & early 1930s, Joyzelle Joyner. Joyzelle is not exactly a household name today, & neither was she well-known even in her heyday. But if you like interpretive dancing, she's well worth the effort in trying to find any of her (rare) appearances. She was featured in DeMille's "Sign of the Cross," a much easier to find film. In that one, she played a lesbian dancer (Hollywood's first lesbian portrayal?). On some film stills, she's portrayed as an "Oriental dancer," but she's only "Oriental" if that's a word used to describe persons of American heritage born in Alabama! I rate this 7/10, & six of those points are for Joyzelle's all too brief appearance.

Cave men in the 20th century?! Huh??!!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 20 April 2017]

I recently bought several DVD collections of shorts from both Vitaphone (Warner Brothers) as well as MGM. I have been surprised at the quality difference in the two. While Warner/Vitaphone was a top studio, MGM was often called the 'Tiffany Studio'--the best of the best. Well, when it came to short, this certainly is NOT the case and most of the MGM shorts are pretty terrible...especially the comedies. MGM never did all that well with slapstick and goofy comedies and helped to wreck the careers of the Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton--mostly because they never had good gag writers. Never is this more evident than in the shorts...and most, like "Wild People" are just dumb.

The story begins with Jans and Whalen being sent from the radio station off to New Guinea, as the head of the station is apparently nuts! He wants a variety show broadcast all the way from this third world nation...why, I have no idea!

When the story switches to New Guinea, NONE of the people or sets look the least bit like New Guinea. Instead, you have lots of white people dressed up like a live action version of "The Flintstones". They then perform several acts that are just terrible and a Panther Woman dance that is highly reminiscent of Marlene Dietrich's "Hot Voodoo" number in "Blonde Venus" (also from 1932)....which, when you think about it, makes no sense because it's a RADIO broadcast.

The bottom line is that I never even came close to laughing even once and the film is just plain unfunny...period. The only mildly interesting thing about the film is its use of Two-Color Technicolor, but it's so badly faded you can barely tell it was once a color film.

silly comedy short from MGM - minor spoilers

[ksf-2 · 7/10 · 6 November 2013]

SPOILERS - Weird coloring in this early shortie from MGM. A youngish Ed Maxwell (although he would have been in his forties by now) is the president of the Globe Company, looking for new ideas and places to film to increase profits. He sends some of his company flunkies to Dutch new Guinea to film the locals. Some vaudeville-type slapstick humor in here, as they crack jokes, whack each other over the head with clubs, and such. There is a running gag about someone's husband dying, which is hardly cause for humor, but with all the three stooges style humor, I guess it all ties together. The "singer" speaks her way through a song about her dead husband, and some guy keeps dancing Eddie Baker off the stage whenever Baker sings "When the Blues of the Night Meet the Gold of the Day". The big finale is the Panther Lady song, with the MGM dancing girls wearing red Phyllis Diller wigs, and putting on a preposterous show. Too silly for words. At the end, there is a last minute surprise, and the two "stars" Jans and Whalen dance off the stage together. With all the comedy bits, I wonder if they had been a comedy team at some point, but it looks like they only made one other film together, another short. Directed by Ray McCarey, who had also directed Our Gang, Laurel & Hardy, and ( oddly enough ) the Three Stooges ! A fun bit, but it ain't Shakespeare.

Such glorious dancing, even a caveman would want to learn it!

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 13 October 2015]

This is a totally silly story which has real life cavemen being interviewed for radio program that results in a bunch of song and dance numbers that come out of the blue. The audience is supposed to assume that the radio reporters went back in a time machine or some such contraption. It really makes no sense in what little plot exists, if you could call it that, but the way it is presented is so delightfully silly that you can't help but enjoy it. Once again, MGM does wonders in their shorts department with a musical film during the time when feature musicals were few but the shorts from the major studios were coming out there is nobody that I was familiar with in the film, but that doesn't matter with all of the scantily clad MGM chorus girls and amusing character performances. Great costumes, energetic dancing and some enjoyable if forgettable songs make this a short a must. It was easy and cheap to produce these one and two reel shorts witch the audience would have to stay to watch because they had paid to see the feature. By the time it was made, film had made a lot of technical advances and the stagy looking camera photography of the early musicals was something that was now gone with the wind. Certainly this is massive camp and I had a good time both laughing at it and enjoying it.

A Great Swing-Jazz Two Tone Technicolor musical

[iamjasonwu · 10/10 · 2 January 2019]

This film shows two young men who want to host a radio show in New Zealand where the people adapted to the cave people lifestyles. They host it there in a cave, but forgot to plug the radio wire in. Later in the film, you will see that the cave people captured a bunch of panther ladies. Then they swing dance and have music playing in the background. This film is one of the most entertaining musicals shorts I've ever seen in my life. It is one of those shorts when you have a sad day, but when you watch this it will lighten you up. The best part is the music near the end and how the brown suit guy dances. Particularly, one of my favorites is the blonde women. I would not recommend liberals, silent/ baby boomer generation and liberals to watch this since it would offend them to pieces. This film is not their safe space I should say. This short film never aired on television in the 1950s-1960s because it wasn't meant to. These short films were meant to play before the main feature played in the theatre./

Decent Pre-Code Musical

[Michael_Elliott · 3 September 2010]

Wild People (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining short from MGM has a couple guys (Harry Jans, Harold Whalen) working for a radio company needing to find new talent. They travel to an unknown island where civilization hasn't changed much over the past thousand years and they find some weird tropical dancers and talented singers. This 17-minute short has a few interesting moments that make it worth viewing even if the actual songs are rather bland and boring. What makes this thing so interesting is that it was shot in 2-strip Technicolor and I'm sure there are many film buffs like myself who enjoy watching this early color process. The print shown on TCM was in pretty rough shape but there was enough detail to make your eyes melt into the screen and put a smile on your face. Another plus are some rather sexual pre-Code moments with the MGM Dancing Girls wearing some very short skirts and shaking their hips. It doesn't sound like much today but for 1932 it was pretty risky. The "comedy" from Jans and Whalen was pretty lame but I do wonderful about the underline notes of them two constantly dancing with each other and being more interested in each other than the actual girls on screen.