The Kid from Spain

Eddie Cantor musical where a jittery simpleton is forced to cross the border to Mexico and pretend he is a matador. It's nothing special all told. Some of the jokes are funny, yes, but the whole is thin and I'm sure recycled from previous film and radio work.

What is of some interest, is that Busby Berkeley is here with his crafty engineering. Oh, both of his numbers feel tacky and have nothing to do with anything, which is more proof of zero vision behind this. Yet both numbers impress. Both are in that voluptuous mode he would cultivate in coming years: sexual tease, sparkle and shadowplay, the female body as the fulcrum of a continuously shifting erotic landscape. Eddie in blackface among Busby's radiant troupe feels crude and out of place.

He would be on to 42nd Street and history the next year.