Alex da Silva We have a musical that starts well but then fades until you are finally glad that it has come to an end. The cast are fine when it comes to singing and dancing especially in the first half of the film – some great songs and sequences. However, the lead character as played by George Murphy isn't nice to his girlfriend Nancy Kelly from the start and so the audience aren't really on his side from the beginning. In fact, none of the relationships make sense – his other alliance with Constance Moore is totally confusing. She divorces him, then wants him back – it never makes sense. The film suffers because it chooses to follow this unrealistic love triangle story that would just never be there. Eddie Cantor and Joan Davis provide the comedy partnership and deliver their lines well, but you have to be a Cantor fan to enjoy his schtick.There are moments of humour and good songs but why perform "It Had to Be You" three times? It was good on the first occasion but then becomes corny. The film gets boring, I'm sad to say.

vincentlynch-moonoi Want to know what vaudeville was like? This film will probably give you a pretty good idea.I watched it because one of the stars is the great Eddie Cantor. It's sort of an ensemble picture, so you can't say that Cantor was THE star here, but let's face it, he was one of the truly greats. If there's a problem with Cantor here it's that he's playing a young fellow when he was 52! But he pulls it off...sorta. The gem of the picture is when he sings one of his standards -- "Makin' Whoopee". And, BTW, one of our other reviewers suggests that Cantor's character was clearly gay in this film. Bull toddy. Apparently wishful thinking.I didn't watch this film because of George Murphy. I've never sat down to watch a Murphy film, but sometimes ran into him when he was also in a cast. Here I was quite impressed. A pretty smooth hoofer, and decent in the acting department. I may have to watch a few other films of his and re-evaluate.Joan Davis never quite made it to the top, and was probably better suited for television than films (and she did later go into television; "I Married Joae"). She usually played a goof ball, as she does here, and she was pretty good at slapstick.The surprise for me here was Nancy Kelly. I guess I've seen her in films before and not paid much attention. She is very good here.Constance Moore...no more, please.The plot here is...well, not thin, but typical. Boy meets girl, boy wins girl, couple lose baby, boy loses girl, boy becomes alcoholic, but eventually they live happily ever after. Nothing new, but nicely done.

bkoganbing Any film that gets Eddie Cantor to revive Making Whoopee and I Don't Want To Get Well is one worth seeing even with the skimpy plot.Show Business is the story of a vaudeville act, how they got together and their trials and tribulations from the turn of the last century until the Twenties. It was right after talking pictures came in that vaudeville began slowly to decline.This was an era that Eddie Cantor knew well, it was the kind of Show Business he cut his performing teeth with before hitting the big time on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies. The quartet is Cantor, George Murphy, Constance Moore, and Joan Davis.Davis chases Cantor through out the film which is ironic because she got him in the real life. It was on this film that they had a discreet affair that was well known in performing circles, but the public never found out about lest Cantor's family image be ruined. Davis's comedy here and elsewhere was the physical sort of stuff that Lucille Ball so popularized on television. Davis too had her biggest success in her television series I Married Joan. She died way too young.Murphy and Moore have an on, off, and on again romance with Nancy Kelly doing her best to break them up. Murphy's big number is the old standard It Had To Be You which at the time was enjoying a revival with a best selling duet record by Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest.No original music for Show Business, just some good old standards. Unfortunately there is a blackface number that all four of the leads are involved in. Cantor did blackface though it never was THE centerpiece of his stage persona like it was for rival Al Jolson.Show Business is a pleasant afternoon's diversion about the days of vaudeville. And what days they were.

Esther And wit like you would never see nowadays.The story of a four person act, two men Eddie Martin (Eddie Cantor) and George Doane (George Murphy) and two women Joan Mason (Joan Davis) and Constance Ford (Constance Moore) (lot of thought evidently went into those names), their lives, their loves, their highs, their lows and some very entertaining performances. Particularly from Joan Davis who gets all the fabulous one-liners.There a some classic songs in there too, "Making Whoopee" and "It Had To Be You." All in all, a very entertaining way to spend a slow Saturday afternoon.