American performers Will Mahoney and his wife Evie Hayes were very popular in Australia, where I was raised: they were slightly before my time, but I've met several old-time Aussies who spoke very fondly of seeing Mahoney or Hayes (or both) in live performances.
Will Mahoney had some success in vaudeville as an eccentric dancer. His speciality was his dazzlingly proficient nerve taps, done with his right foot only. I'm not aware of anyone who did better nerve taps than Mahoney until Ann Miller came along: she could do nerve taps with BOTH feet, and she contrasted these with her sex appeal. Mahoney, lacking sex appeal, had to integrate his nerve taps with comedy material similar to Ray Bolger's, in which he pretends to miss a step and loses his balance. But Ray Bolger would skilfully recover his balance and go on to the next part of his routine (a much more impressive recovery), whilst Mahoney (as seen in this film) would do a clumsy pratfall, losing the pace of his routine while he got up and started dancing again.
This is one of those mini-musicals with a vague attempt at a plot. In 1934, the vogue for hillbilly musicians was ending and the vogue for Hawaiian musicians was starting, so I laughed at a gag here featuring a hillbilly ensemble called the Mountain Melodeers. Told that Hawaiian musicians are more popular, they start playing their bass and banjo on the high frets to sound like ukeleles.
I could have altogether done without the Five Spirits of Harmony, a quintet of annoying little black children who sing a-capella and talk in annoying "darky" dialect. One of them keeps kissing a boy who clearly doesn't want to be kissed.
Elsewhere, we briefly see two blonde girls who dance time steps on roller skates and do hitch kicks and airplane steps without the skates. I wanted to see more of their act, instead of all the screen time given to those black "chillun".
Al Christie's Educational studio was bottom of the barrel, so I was intrigued by an attempt here to dress up some stock footage of ocean liners with a series of optical-wipe transitions, with the wipes oddly in the shape of an inverted triangle.
The stupid plot has Mahoney stealing another man's name, then -- when the other man turns out to be a wanted criminal -- he has to prove he's no phony-baloney Mahoney by doing his vaudeville act. This all turns out to be part of his excessively Jewish agent's scheme to get him to perform on a cruise. Oy vey! My rating for this one: 6 out of 10, and Mahoney is especially endearing while performing the title song (although he swallows his lyrics). In a small role, Marion Martin is just a wee bit too sexy to be plausible.
Will Mahoney had some success in vaudeville as an eccentric dancer. His speciality was his dazzlingly proficient nerve taps, done with his right foot only. I'm not aware of anyone who did better nerve taps than Mahoney until Ann Miller came along: she could do nerve taps with BOTH feet, and she contrasted these with her sex appeal. Mahoney, lacking sex appeal, had to integrate his nerve taps with comedy material similar to Ray Bolger's, in which he pretends to miss a step and loses his balance. But Ray Bolger would skilfully recover his balance and go on to the next part of his routine (a much more impressive recovery), whilst Mahoney (as seen in this film) would do a clumsy pratfall, losing the pace of his routine while he got up and started dancing again.
This is one of those mini-musicals with a vague attempt at a plot. In 1934, the vogue for hillbilly musicians was ending and the vogue for Hawaiian musicians was starting, so I laughed at a gag here featuring a hillbilly ensemble called the Mountain Melodeers. Told that Hawaiian musicians are more popular, they start playing their bass and banjo on the high frets to sound like ukeleles.
I could have altogether done without the Five Spirits of Harmony, a quintet of annoying little black children who sing a-capella and talk in annoying "darky" dialect. One of them keeps kissing a boy who clearly doesn't want to be kissed.
Elsewhere, we briefly see two blonde girls who dance time steps on roller skates and do hitch kicks and airplane steps without the skates. I wanted to see more of their act, instead of all the screen time given to those black "chillun".
Al Christie's Educational studio was bottom of the barrel, so I was intrigued by an attempt here to dress up some stock footage of ocean liners with a series of optical-wipe transitions, with the wipes oddly in the shape of an inverted triangle.
The stupid plot has Mahoney stealing another man's name, then -- when the other man turns out to be a wanted criminal -- he has to prove he's no phony-baloney Mahoney by doing his vaudeville act. This all turns out to be part of his excessively Jewish agent's scheme to get him to perform on a cruise. Oy vey! My rating for this one: 6 out of 10, and Mahoney is especially endearing while performing the title song (although he swallows his lyrics). In a small role, Marion Martin is just a wee bit too sexy to be plausible.
