Moonlight Over Whattapoppalie

In any discussion on the merits of the past decade's film musicals, I am always the first to acknowledge the general excellence of An American in Paris, It's Always Fair Weather, Les Girls, Gigi, Singing in the Rain, et al.

Yet I can't help feeling that during its evolutionary course, the American screen musical has lost, never again to regain, a certain endearing quality. For want of a better word (actually I have many better words, but why squander them on an introduction?) I call it "simple-mindedness." This quality was most admirably embodied in the Movie Musical of the Thirties: a phenomenon composed chiefly of one part college shenanigans, one part Dick. Powell-Ruby Keeler, and one part Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers. Aside from an occasional crumb tossed us by the Late Show, this treasure chest might lie buried forever.

So on the outside chance that the recent upheaval in the TV ranks may engender a new wave of intellectualism that will destroy forever even these remaining morsels, I would like to reassemble the three aforementioned parts into one final grand whole – and then crawl back gracefully into the woodwork of my memories.

• • •

Fade in on the Campus Sweet Shoppe of Whattapoppalie College, in Whattapoppalie, North Dakota. Seated at a table sipping sodas, strumming ukes, and stealing smooches are Dixie Dunbar, Tom Brown, Donna Drake, Pinky Tomlin, June Preiser and Jack Oakie. The latter admittedly (continued on page 98) Whattapoppalie(continued from page 62)looks a bit too old to be wearing a freshman beanie, but no one seems to mind.

Brown

Ok, kids, fun is fun, but it's time now for business. How are we going to raise funds for a new campus biplane?

Preiser

I have it, kids! Let's put on a show!

All

(Deliriously happy) A Show! That's It! A show!

Enter Johnny "Scat" Davis and his trumpet to lead them in a snake dance out the Shoppe, across the campus, and over the football field, picking up the rest of the student body and the lovable Swedish custodian (El Brendel) en route. Cut back to Sweet Shoppe.

Dunbar

Kids, I move that Sally asks the college president for permission to put on the show. She's the prettiest, the smartest, and the most popular kid on campus.

Tomlin

She's also the only kid on campus who's the president's daughter.

All

Great idea! the nuts! peachie!

Cut to Sally(Donna Drake)and her father (George Barbier) in president's office.Barbier.purpling with rage, is splintering his desk with his fist.

Barbier

A show? With dancing and jazz music? In my school? Never! Never! It's indecent, that's what it is!

Drake

(Defiantly) I suppose it doesn't matter to you, Dad, that we kids have to travel around in the same old campus biplane year after year. Dad, I hate to say this, but you're an old fuddy-dud . . . and ... A party-pooper! (She storms out) Cut to campus. As Sally walks sadly toward the Sweet Shoppe.Johnny Downs,in a white sweater and blue"W,"is coming from the other direction. He accidentally bumps her, knocking her uke out of her hand.

Downs

Sorry, I... Say, aren't you Sally, the president's daughter?

Drake

And you must be Freddie, the big football hero.

Downs

Correct. May I ... may I carry your uke for you?

She reddens and nods. He picks up the uke and they walk across the campus, discovering each other. From out of nowhere they are joined by fortyseven strolling choristers (Fred waring's pennsylvaniansandThe yacht club boys) singing "Moonlight Over Whattapoppalie." After ten choruses and four encores the choristers leave – some reluctantly.SallyandFreddiesit down on a bench. Close-up of her quivering lip-rouged mouth. Close-up of his quivering lip-rouged mouth. They gaze at each other silently. Then he quickly sprays kisses on his shoulders, his elbows, his wrists, the backs of his hands, and on each of his fingers.

Drake

(Rising coldly) Now I know why I've avoided you, Freddie. You may be a big football hero. But you're conceited!

Cut back to Sweet Shoppe. Same group as in opening scene.

Brown

I don't care what Sally's dad said! Remember when he forbade us from putting on a show last month to raise funds for a new gymnasium? And the month before he said no show to help raise money for a new ski lift. Well, that didn't stop us.

Oakie

You mean ...?

Brown

I mean we put on a show anyway.

All

Hoorah! a show! a show!

At this cueJohnny "Scat" Davisleaps to his feet, his trumpet poised. But nobody wants to snake dance. So he swallows two goldfish and walks out in a fit of pique.

Brown

Now then, what celebrities were stranded at the Whattapoppalie railroad station today, while en route to the Coast?

Tomlin

Let's see. Paul Whiteman is stranded there. Also Rudy Vallee, Russ Columbo, the Happiness Boys, and the Ipana Troubadours.

Brown

Oh, darn! We've used them before. Say kids, you know what I'd like for this show? Two things. A real Broadway musical troupe, with girls, production numbers and the works. And also a real smart ballroom dancing team. Both of these are bound to be stranded at the station some day soon. So keep your eyes open and ...

Fade and cut to Broadway rehearsal stage. Pianist (Allen Jenkins) is battering the keys while the chorus captain (Frank mc hugh) is leading two hundred girls in tights through a rhythmic, kicking dance number.

Enter producer (Warner Baxter). Mc hugh stops the rehearsal.

Baxter

(To mc hugh) Eddie, didn't I fire you on Thursday?

Mc Hugh

Yeah, chief, but you rehired me on Friday.

Baxter

But then I fired you again on Saturday.

Mc Hugh

I know, but you took me back again on Monday.

Baxter

Well, you're fired again. But I need you so you're rehired. Eddie. I'm in a spot. Fift ran out on me. Here I am with two hundred chorus girls, one hundred boys, a male vocalist, fifty-five flower-trellised swings, twenty-seven water tanks, seventy-six moon props, and no female star!

Baxtersignals for the rehearsal to resume and he walks slowly up and down the line examining the girls. Suddenly he stops and points.

Baxter

You, in the third row! Step out!

The music ceases and Ruby Keeler comes forward timorously.

>Keeler

Me?

Baxter

Yes, you! Do you think you can learn fourteen songs, twelve dances, and a hundred and twenty-five stage cues in twenty minutes? Come on, speak up!

She collapses.

Another chorus girl (Wisecracking Joan blondell) quickly kneels by her side and starts slapping her face and hands.

Wisecracking Joan Blondell

Poor kid. She fainted. The last thing she ate was a peanut butter sandwich three weeks ago Wednesday.

Enter male vocalist(Dick Powell)with wide, confident grin. Perspiration glistens on his face and his lip-rouge is slightly smeared.

Powell

(To Baxter) Let me take her under my wing, sir. I promise you she'll be ready when you need her.

Fade. Kaleidoscopic shots:Powellfeedingkeelersandwiches;Keelerdancing and singing;Powellshaking his head;keelerfainting;powellgiving her coffee;keelerdancing and singing;Powellsmiling;Baxtersmiling;Baxterhiringkeeler; BaxterfiringMc Hugh.Fade.

Cut topowellat a piano in backstage room. Enter keeler.

Keeler

Hi, Tommy. What's that you're playing?

Powell

Oh, this? Just a new song I wrote. It isn't very good.

Keeler

Please play it for me.

Powell

All right, but you won't like it.

As he plays she begins swaying to the rhythm, snapping her fingers and tapping her feet. She picks up the lyrics from the top of the piano, looks at them for two and a half seconds, then puts them down.

Keeler

(Singing softly) Come and hear ... those tapping feet ... on the boulevard I'm takin' you to ... Fancy Dance-y Delancey Street ...

She dances and sings seventeen choruses without once missing a note, a word or a beat, accompanied bypowelland a hidden forty-piece orchestra.

Powell

(With a final keyboard flourish) Did you like it, Nancy?

Keeler

Like it? Tommy, That's the title song for our show!

For good measure she then sings five additional choruses, whichPowellhadn't planned to write until later that evening.

Cut to speeding train wheels. Cut to happy troupers inside the train. Train suddenly comes to a screeching stop. Luggage flies in all directions. Enter conductor(Grant Mitchell).

Mitchell

Sorry, folks, the train's derailed. I'm afraid we're stuck in this town for a few days.

Baxter

What lousy luck! Where the heck are we?

Wisecracking Joan Blondell

(Looking out the window) Whattapoppalie.

Baxter

Wisecracks! Will you stop already with the wisecracks!

Cut to sumptuous lobby of La Reine Hotel, in Paris. Pan camera on crystal chandeliers, palatial staircase, plush rugs, Louis XIV couches and potted palms. Enter Ginger Rogers, twenty-five pieces of luggage and a Russian wolfhound. She is dressed in a popular Depression-era ensemble: a $5000 Chanel tailleur with silver-fox toque and muff.

Cut to Fred Astaire and Edward Everett horton crossing the lobby on their way to breakfast. They are bedecked in typical breakfast finery of the Thirties: top hat, white tie, tails and walking stick.

Astaire

Henry, who is that ravishing creature over there?

Horton

That? Oh, that must be Sheilah Martin, the New York typist.

Astaire

I think I'll ask her to marry me.

Horton

Good, good, Jerry, why don't...(Indulging in his first of two dozen doubletakes) You think you'll what?

Cut back to Rogers

Rogers

(Looking over the lobby) Too bad the only decent hotel in Paris is filled. But I suppose this dump will have to do.

Cut to Astaire dancing gracefully but frantically up and down the walls and tables in his room. It is midafternoon, and he is dressed casually: white tie, dress shirt, formal trousers (no tails).

Cut to Rogers' suite: a symphony in white. White walls, white rugs, white sculpture, white furniture. She paces the floor in white satin pajamas smoking a white cigarette. She is obviously annoyed by the noise in the room above.

Fade and cut to Rogers, in $1500 black-velvet robe, standing in the hallway pounding on Astaire's door. Door opens. Astaire appears.

Rogers

(Slapping his face) How dare you annoy me with that horrid dancing. I'm leaving for Venice immediately.

Astaire

(Rubbing his cheek as she disappears) She loves me!

Cut to the outdoor café of the Grand Canal Hotel in Venice. Astaire and Horton are seated at a canal-side table, attired in white dinner jackets. Rogers, in evening dress that was the rage among New York working girls in the Thirties – an $8200 silver lamé gown and white ermine cape – is seated several tables away, studiously ignoring them. The other tables are filled with bejeweled dowagers and elderly men. Papier-mâché gondolas sail by on the canal, traveling to the end of the set and then returning.

Enter Armondo Brazini (Erik Rhodes)

Astaire

Henry, look who just walked in – Brazini, the great dance impresario. This is my big chance to get a job.

He rises and skips lithely to Rogers' table. She slaps his face.

Astaire

Please dance with me.

Rogers

Dance with you? I hate you! Besides, I can't dance.

Astaire

Don't worry about that! We'll do The Confidential. It's a dance I created in my room fifteen minutes ago. You'll like it.

In an amazing display of extrasensory perception, the orchestra breaks into The Confidential, forgetting in the excitement of the moment that they have never played it before and don't even have the music. Astaire and Rogers (the latter an unusually deft pupil) swirl and tap all over the floor, while the dowagers and elderly men sing the still unreleased lyrics in remarkably young voices.

The dance ends to crashing applause. Rogers slaps Astaire's face, after which he leads her to his table.

Horton

(On his feet, a semi-smirk on his face) Jerry, guess what? Brazini loved the dance! He's booking the two of you for a tour of the States. Hurry, pack your things. We leave tonight.

Astaire

Wonderful, Henry! Did the others like the dance too?

Hortonpoints to the dance floor, where one hundred and twenty people, who have lost from twenty to thirty-five years of age apiece, have left their tables and are engaged in the intricacies of The Confidential. Not one of them misses a step or a beat.

Cut to speeding train wheels. Cut to Astaire, Rogers, Horton and Rhodes intrain. Train comes to a screeching stop. Luggage flies in all directions. Enter conductor (Grant Mitchell).

Mitchell

The train's derailed, folks. I'm sorry, but we're going to be held up in this town for a few days.

Horton

Town? What town?

Mitchell

Whattapoppalie, sir.

Horton

Good, Good . . .(Double-take) Whattapoppa – what?

Cut to Tom Brown in front of the closed curtain on Whattapoppalie auditorium stage. Shouts, jeers and catcalls from the audience.

Brown

Please bear with us, kids. Doesn't it stand to reason that a Broadway troupe and a ballroom dancing team Must be stranded at our railroad station One of these days? Well, it may very well be tonight. So please be patient. I'm sure we'll have a show tonight.

Audience

We want our money back! we want our money back!

Cut to rear auditorium door. EnterBaxter, Blondell, Powell, Keeler, Astaire, Rogers, Horton, Rhodes,two hundred chorus girls, one hundred boys, stage hands, and a long train of scenery and props.

Baxter

Excuse us for breaking in on you like this, folks. I'm a producer. My famous Broadway troupe and this famous ballroom dancing team were just stranded in your railroad station. Would you mind if we put on a show for you right now at no charge whatsoever?

Cheers. Cut to Dixie Dunbar embracing Tom Brown on stage.

Dunbar

We're saved! The show will go on after all!

Brown

(Sadly) I can't understand why they arrived so late!

Fade. Curtain rises. The Whattapoppalie stage miraculously becomes twenty times its original size. Cut to overhead shot looking down on large swinging tandem of kicking chorus girls. Cut to girls in bathing suits sliding down ponds into huge water tanks. Cut to Powell and Keeler between two tanks, singing "Beside a babbling brook my heart met its Waterloo-hoo-hoo-hoo." Cut to high overhead shot looking down on water ballet. Girls floating on backs in huge circles, first clockwise, then counterclock-wise. They pair off and breast-stroke slowly toward the camera smiling broadly, some savoring their big moment by swimming slower and smiling broader than others.

Fade. Cut to Rogers and Astaire dancing to the exciting, erotic Latin-American rhythm of The Caramba.

Fade. Cut to park scene. Fifty girls sitting on half-moon props, one hundred boys and fifty girls soaring high over the audience on flower-trellised swings, while Powell and Keeler, their faces two inches apart, dance to the Vague Waltz and sing, "May I thrust my face in yours and sings. . . like a bird on the wing . . . to you."

Fade. The roof of the auditorium magically parts and a formation of twenty monoplanes comes zooming in low, ten shimmying chorus girls tethered to the wings of each plane. They sing, "Monnnntevi Dayo … Montevideo by the bay-o … Flying to Montevideo, Uruguay-o . . . What a Wonderful way-o to go." The planes dip their wings, then soar skyward.

Kaleidoscopic shots of "Wishing You Well By a Wishing Well," "Gray Spats, Pink Champagne, and White Lies," "Get Along to Happy Ho Ho Ho Ho-broken," and the title song, "Fancy Dance-y Delancey Street."

Cut into finale. The entire cast, plus Baxter, Horton, Rhodes, the girls back from Montevideo, the pilots, and several nervy – stage hands, all dressed as sailors, do fifteen minutes of close order drill on a simulated ship deck, while singing the stirring "Only Rats Give Up a Ship." Huge American flag is unfurled on the backdrop. Flag disappears and is replaced by a large N.R.A. Blue Eagle. This in turn is replaced by a mammoth picture of Franklin Roosevelt circled by smaller pictures of John Garner, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins and Cordell Hull.

Fireworks go off, followed by the release of five thousand balloons. Then curtain.

Thunderous applause. Cut to Tom Brown in front of the curtain.

Brown

Guess what, kids? We not only took in enough money for the campus biplane. We also have enough for a swimming pool!

Cheers. Then cut back to auditorium which has been miraculously transformed into a dance floor.

Cut to Powell and Keeler dancing.

Keeler

What's that you're humming, darling?

Powell

Oh, it's nothing. I'm just making up a song as we dance.

He breaks into "A kiss pays your bill on Honeymoon Hill . . ." She magically picks up the lyrics in the second chorus and he never gets rid of her.

Cut to Astaire and Rogers dancing.

Astaire

Martin is an awfully dull last name. I know a simple way for you to change it.

She slaps his face, but this time her heart isn't in it.

Cut to Johnny Downs and Donna Drake.

Downs

So, anyway, Sally, I finally realized that just because I'm a husky, handsome football player with brown wavy hair and a cleft in my chin is no reason for me to be conceited. Will you marry me?

Drake

I'd love to, Freddie. But I'll have to ask Dad first. Speaking of Dad, I wonder if he's been told about this show. You know how he feels about dancing and jazz music. He's so stuffy.

Downs

(Chuckling) Why don't you speak to him now. There he is.

A few feet away from them is the president (George Barbier). He is wearing a rakishly askew freshman beanie and is dancing merrily.

Barbier

Hi Sally, Hi Freddie. Say, I'm having loads of fun!(He shuffles off, slicing the air with an upraised index finger). . .

A-truckin' on down the avenue... A-truckin' on down the avenue...

Shrieking gaily, everyone in the auditorium forms a huge caravan. Led by Johnny "scat" Davis and his trumpet, they snake dance out the door, across the campus, over the football field, and up, up, up to a sacred corner somewhere in Cinema Heaven.

• • •

Wherever you are now, old buddies, sleep cool. You may be gone, but even on the darkest nights a Whattapoppalie moon still shines. Not on everyone, of course. Only on those of us who are pure of heart, noble of spirit, and simple of mind.