It’s hard to pick a favorite moment from the series The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, as it had nearly as many great bits as the prime seasons of The Simpsons.  But there’s one I couldn’t stop thinking of recently, and that’s the fake 1938 musical Daddy’s Boy, a clip of which cuts off in mid-song because the crew refused to continue working at that exact point.

What had brought this to mind was 1936’s Cheer Up!.  This musical comedy is heavy on the former and not so good on the latter.  It is also so preposterously upbeat that I’m surprised they didn’t make the title entirely upper case and added a couple more exclamation points to the end.

I went into this blindly, thinking it was only a comedy, which is my mistake.  I find it bizarre so many films of that era were compelled to have musical numbers.  There was hardly a genre at the time which was immune to this treatment.  I’m just glad the trend died out eventually; otherwise, The Exorcist likely would have had Linda Blair singing while she and other characters spun and danced in the air while she spewed pea soup.

The plot here concerns unemployed songwriters looking for a wealthy investor for the musical they’ve written.  The duo is played by Stanley Lupino and Roddy Hughes.  I was very surprised to learn Lupino was the father of Ida Lupino, the actress who went on to be one of Hollywood’s very few female directors of the time. 

These two are so poor that they are forever trying to use their talents to scam anything, even food.  This leads to a bizarre early scene where they propose, and rise to, a challenge to sing the menu of a restaurant.  This scene is a good example of why I’m not crazy about the genre and that is other diners in the place don’t bat an eye as these guys perform an ode to steak and kidney pudding.  In some musicals, everybody in the scene would get involved, and I can understand that better than this approach, as it is clear this does not take place in reality.  Here, however, there’s this bizarre and grandiose display in public and nobody reacts to it.

Lupino apparently spends each day trying to barge into the offices of various producers.  Unfortunately, the office of Bialystock and Bloom had not been established yet.  At one of these, he runs into, and is instantly smitten with, aspiring actress Sally Gray who plays…Sally Gray.  I am not making this up. 

She is desperate for work, and so answers an ad for a maid but goes to the wrong house.  This is the house of Wyn Weaver, a financial wizard fallen on hard times.  His wife (Marjorie Chard) is there in his absence and, despite them not having placed the ad nor having money to pay her, Chard hires Gray, regardless.  Concurrent with this, Lupino and Hughes have struck up a fast acquaintance with Weaver, unaware of his change in fortunes.

In the midst of all this, there’s Kenneth Kove as the fey son of a very wealthy man who is constantly disappointed in his son’s lack of manliness.  Still, Kove has deep pockets, and this will come into play when he accidentally takes a punch in a nightclub scene and is mistaken for defending Gray’s honor.  One of the few times I laughed at the film was over his response when the incredulous Lupino and Hughes say he couldn’t possibly the son of the famous man: “I only have the word of my father, and I trust him.” 

Kove’s performance instantly reminded me of the Terry Jones bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where he plays the son who doesn’t want to get married.  Instead, he…just…wants…to…SING!!!  I’m sure they could have found a place for a character like that in this.  There’s also a scene in this film that is almost Pythonian, where Lupino and Hughes deal with an adamant bill collector who won’t stop flipping over a table which appears to be their only possession one could do that to.

Cheer Up! concludes with the performance of Lupino and Hughes’s musical, as it has finally been funded.  This number is almost psychedelic, and even has a dancing mailbox.  It is a waaay too upbeat finale to a waaay too upbeat film.  This type of thing was doubtlessly popular in its time, but I found it tiring and excessively (and artificially) cheery.  As somebody who is more of a grey skies kind of person, I really wanted the cast of Cheer Up! to Shut Up!

Dir: Leo Mittler

Starring Stanley Lupino, Sally Gray, Roddy Hughes

Watched as part of Network UK’s Ealing Rarities Collection DVD box set (region 2)