Flying down to Rio 1933 - Historically important for its star making pairing of Astaire & Rogers

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 6,8

Director: Thornton Freeland
Main Cast: Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire

"The top-billed stars in the extravagant RKO musical Flying Down to Rio are Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond. Forget all that: this is the movie that first teamed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. We're supposed to care about the romantic triangle between aviator/bandleader Raymond, Brazilian heiress Del Rio and her wealthy fiance Raul Roulien, but the moment Fred and Ginger dance to a minute's worth of 'The Carioca', the film is theirs forever. Other musical highlights include Rogers' opening piece 'Music Makes Me' and tenor Roulien's lush rendition of 'Orchids in the Moonlight'. Then there's the title number. The plot has it that Del Rio' uncle has been prohibited from having a floor show at his lavish hotel because of a Rio city ordinance. Astaire and Raymond save the day by staging the climactic 'Flying Down to Rio' number thousands of feet in the air, with hundreds of chorus girls shimmying and swaying while strapped to the wings of a fleet of airplanes. It is one of the most outrageously brilliant numbers in movie musical history, and one that never fails to incite a big round of applause from the audience - no matter what the date is. Together with King Kong, Flying Down to Rio saved the fledgling RKO Radio studios from bankruptcy in 1933. The film was a smash everywhere it played, encouraging the studio to concoct future teamings of those two stalwart supporting players Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Whoopee! 1930 - An old fashioned musical but with a lot of fun

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021549/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Thornton Freeland
Main Cast: Eddie Cantor, Ethel Shutta, Paul Gregory, Eleanor Hunt, Jack Rutherford

Adapted from Owen Davis's stage comedy The Nervous Wreck (itself filmed in 1927), Flo Ziegfeld's musical spectacular Whoopee! was one of the solid hits of the 1928-29 Broadway season, thanks largely to the irrepressible Eddie Cantor. Filmed for a then eye-popping $1.5 million, Whoopee! is an example of the old fashioned star comic musical film. It features the cinematic debut of choreographer Busby Berkeley. While none of the numbers are shot entirely in the now-recognizable Berkeley style, many have touches that foreshadow that style, such as the use of an overhead shot in 'Cowboy' and the use of close-ups on beautiful chorus girls in 'Stetson'. There's an emphasis on the spectacular throughout, which helps to smooth over some of the rough patches in the script. Much of the humor seems tired by modern standards, and the use of blackface in 'My Baby Just Cares for Me' is off-putting, especially as Cantor is so otherwise appealing. He does here what he always does, playing a nervous wreck who happily can't seem to stay out of trouble. Cantor's vulnerability is leavened by his underlying rambunctiousness, and his talent was one of a kind. While Whoopee! is clearly his show, he does get some valuable support from Ethel Shutta, and the score is attractive.
Featured among the Goldwyn Girls are such future stars as Claire Dodd, Virginia Bruce, and 14-year-old Betty Grable, who energetically performs the very first chorus of the very first song in the film. Lensed in eye-pleasing early Technicolor, Whoopee was a success, launching a long and fruitful cinematic collaboration between Eddie Cantor and Sam Goldwyn. It was remade by Goldwyn in 1944 as Up in Arms, a showcase for the producer's 'new Cantor' Danny Kaye. - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/whoopee%21-v54440/

DVD links: