Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Cult Flops - Golden Dawn

Warner Bros, 1930
Starring Vivienne Segal, Walter Woolf King, Wallace Beery, and Alice Gentle
Directed by Ray Enright
Music and Lyrics by various

Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I give you one of the worst film musicals ever made. It's in such jaw-dropping bad taste, it was a monumental flop even in its time. Having had success with their 1929 version of The Desert Song, Warners committed to making more operettas. Unfortunately, they didn't always commit to making them good. Golden Dawn is considered to be the rotten apple in a mostly bad batch. Just how terrible is this romantic action tale of a white goddess among natives and English and German soldiers in Dutch East Africa? Let's head to a camp, where Dawn's mother Mooda (Gentle) describes her daughter's marriage to the local god, and find out...

The Story: Dawn (Segal) is fair-skinned native girl who is in love with British rubber planter and prisoner of war Tom Allen (King), but is promised to the tribal god Muuglu. Big Shep Keyes (Beery), the black leader of the tribes, wants Dawn for himself. The Germans aren't overly thrilled with Tom chasing after a girl they believe to be half-native and send him back to England. That only works until the British retake Dutch East Africa. Keyes incites the tribe against Dawn, claiming she's angry he loves a white man. Tom needs to find some proof that Dawn isn't as "native" as her mother claims, before she's turned over to their gods as a sacrifice.

The Song and Dance: Well...you can't say this isn't original. Warner Bros does have a point with the blurb on the back of the DVD case that it's about as far from the backstage stories and weepy Al Jolson sob-stories of the early sound era as you can get. Beery's heavy, booming bass more than matches his insane performance. Cracking his whip and beating up anyone who gets in his way, his black makeup melting onto his white shirt, with an inappropriate southern accent, he's a like an action film villain from Marilyn Manson's fever dreams. Other cast members have more fun, including British comic Lupino Lane and his amazing rubber-limbed dance routine, feisty Marion Byron as the only other woman at the camp, and Lee Moran as the guy she's after. 

Favorite Number: We kick off with Mooda, singing about the changes to her homeland and how "Africa Smiles No More." Dawn tells the soldiers in the camp how she feels about "My Bwana," her Tom, in a lovely waltz. Beery booms a homage to "My Whip" that makes macho villains in 80's action films look tame by comparison. Joanna describes how she wants the man she loves to be "A Tiger" who treats her rough. Her man Blink claims he's looking for the same...but then she does actually push him around! Lupino Lane sings about what happens "In a Jungle Bungalow" and does an incredibly acrobatic dance, with some crazy splits and flinging around.

Trivia: This was originally filmed in color. Only black and white prints are currently available. A short fragment of the original color film was discovered in England in 2014. 

Golden Dawn premiered on Broadway in 1927, where it ran for three months, actually pretty decent for the time. Needless to say, it's never been heard from again, not even by light opera companies that specialize in older operetta. It's only surviving vestiges are a script, lobby cards and Playbils, and this film.

Wallace Beery's singing was so praised, he actually recorded "My Whip" for Brunswick. 

If Woolf King looks and sounds familiar to Marx Brothers fans, he'd do far better five years later as the villainous Italian singer who tries to push around them around in Night at the Opera

What I Don't Like: Hoooo boy. Where to begin? How about that flagrantly racist plot and all the hoopla over whether Dawn is white or light-skinned black? Or the white and British-skewered colonialism that claims the natives were in "peaceful subjunction." Or Joanna and Blink throwing each other around in a way that today would be considered domestic violence? Or there being no explanation for what two very obvious Americans are doing in the middle of Dutch East Africa in the first place. Or how stiff King is, and how laughably awkward his dialogue in particular comes off. 

There's also the terrible makeup and obvious sweating from the hot Technicolor lights on everyone, most obviously on Beery. Or the cheap sets and silly Muuglu totem that more closely resemble a kid's toy than a fearsome god. How about Lupino Lane not really having much to do besides his "Jungle Bungalow" dance and a few gags with King, or the dull choreography on the big native dance. 

The Big Finale: Everyone should have one incredibly, flagrantly, amazingly so-bad-it's-hysterical movie in their collection. This is mine. It may be terrible filmmaking and even worse racial politics, but you certainly can't say it's dull. It even has a few fans who enjoy the Viennese-style music and ignore the story. I say, mildly recommended only for historians of the early sound era, operetta fans, or those who want to see just how wildly off-the-rails a bad movie musical can get.

Home Media: DVD only as one of the earliest Warner Archives titles.

No comments:

Post a Comment