Kid Millions (1934), recently out on DVD-R from Warner Archive, is a delightful product of its time, with Eddie Cantor front and center in one of his relatively few feature films. The famous vaudevillian, who had hugely successful careers on Broadway and in radio, had turned down the lead role in The Jazz Singer (1927) (as had George Jessel), paving the way for Al Jolson, but Cantor soon scored a hit of his own in 1930's Whoopee! (also newly out from Warner Archive). After that, he made a handful of musical comedy films in the '30s and a few more in the '40s, squeezed in among his other endeavors.

Often movies featuring early vaudeville stars and gags tend to be soft on plot and character, making for tedious going for modern audiences. But Kid Millions is a happy exception, not only with Cantor's farcical brand of comedy still hilarious on its face, but with a strong (albeit ridiculous) story holding things together. In fact, the movie gets funnier as it goes along. A famous archeologist has died and left behind a $77 million fortune, which a pair of lawyers has determined belongs to a penniless young man (Eddie Cantor) living on a Brooklyn barge. After some comic misunderstandings, Cantor is put on an ocean liner to Egypt to collect his dough. Meanwhile, a couple of shysters (Ethel Merman and Warren Hymer) hone in on the fortune themselves, convincing Cantor that they are his mother and "uncle Louie." A southern colonel and his daughter (Ann Sothern) are around, too, also claiming a piece of the pie, and George Murphy is on hand to romance Sothern.

The original screenplay, credited to Arthur Sheekman, Nat Perrin and Nunnally Johnson, is constructed into three distinct sections, with the first act set in New York, the second on the ocean liner, and the third in Alexandria, Egypt, where Cantor gets hilariously involved with a sheik's daughter (comedienne Eve Sully) and the sheik himself (Paul Harvey, excellent). Sheekman and Perrin had worked on several Marx Brothers movies at Paramount -- experience much in evidence here -- and Johnson was at the beginning of an already-illustrious career, having penned The House of Rothschild (1934) and Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934). (Still to come were such greats as The Prisoner of Shark Island [1936], The Grapes of Wrath [1940] and The Woman in the Window [1944], to cite just a few.) Presumably Sheekman and Perrin supplied the comic gags, while Johnson held it all together with the underlying plotline.

Helping immensely is a wonderful score, with songs by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn, as well as Burton Lane and Harold Adamson. There's also one extravagant number written by Irving Berlin, "Mandy," in which Cantor (in blackface) shares the dance stage with the Nicholas Brothers in their first feature film. (They had previously appeared in short subjects.) The brothers are very young here -- little brother Harold looks especially tiny -- but their dancing, as usual, rivets the attention and blows everyone else away. All Cantor can do is watch, something that is treated as a gag. Ethel Merman gets the movie off to a rousing start with a peppy rendition of "An Earful of Music," and Sothern and Murphy later perform a lovely duet, "Your Head on My Shoulder." This being a Samuel Goldwyn musical, the famed Goldwyn Girls also make plenty of appearances, and among the gorgeous faces and legs one can find Lucille Ball and (supposedly) Paulette Goddard.

Director Roy Del Ruth is remembered for snappy 1930s comedies and melodramas like Taxi! (1932) and Employees' Entrance (1933), and Kid Millions is just as well-paced. Huge kudos are also in order to cinematographer Ray June, whose crisp black-and-white work cuts to vibrant three-strip Technicolor for the final seven minutes of the picture. In that sequence, Cantor has returned home with his fortune and opened a giant, fantastical ice cream factory to hordes of kids. It's a marvel of color, and an experiment in three-strip that worked well for Goldwyn. (It would be months before the first full-length three-strip Technicolor film was released: Becky Sharp [1935].) The ice cream fantasy sequence, with bizarre sets, women workers moving around on roller skates, and imaginative musical riffs, is an amazing achievement for 1934 and seems to have heavily influenced Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).

Several members of the Our Gang troupe appear in the early scenes on the Brooklyn barge and in the final ice cream sequence.

Warner Archive's disc of Kid Millions has fine picture and sound and is highly recommended.

By Jeremy Arnold