Word: cancan
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Zaza (Paramount). This ancient tearjerker, about a French cancan dancer whose fun is spoilt when she learns that her lover is married, has a noteworthy history. It was first produced in Paris in 1890, as a vehicle for Gabrielle Réjane. Eight years later, David Belasco used it to further the fabulous career of red-headed Mrs. Leslie Carter. In 1920, Zaza became an opera for Geraldine Farrar. In 1923, Gloria Swanson was Zaza in a silent picture. A favorite item in the repertory of stock-company leading ladies the world over, Zaza has been running off & on ever...
...current version of Zaza, directed by George Cukor, acted by Claudette Colbert and Herbert Marshall, and equipped with dialogue consisting principally of "Ah, zut!" conforms to tradition so perfectly that, presumably from force of long habit, censors even objected to the cancan dances. Climactic shot: Comedian Bert Lahr, playing a straight role for the first time in his career, as Zaza's vaudeville partner, conveying the scandalous news that he has seen her lover drinking chocolate with a lady not his mistress...
...dancing, vivid staging. In a ballet school, with costumes after Degas, begins the luckless romance of the ballerina (Kitty Carlisle) and Count Rudolph (Michael Bartlett). In Paris of 1900 the same pair appear as another ill-starred couple, with the ballet converted into Toulouse-Lautrec girls doing a violent cancan. At last, in a contemporary cinema studio, the lovers, as descendants of their former selves, find their happy ending...
...Stevens platform designed to implement this "cancan" motto and get the votes of everybody except Canadian businessmen was a masterpiece of New Deal paternalism. To workers it promised wage-&-hour laws; to farmers. Govern-ment markets for farm products; to the unemployed, a huge public works program. Finally Mr. Stevens promised not only to pay for all this but to pay off Canada's entire national debt in 25 years by Govern-ment exploitation of gold mines and other natural resources...
...loses money, new car and spouse to the all-powerful Man of God. The book reaches a tropical heat-wave climax with Sunday's revival meeting in the schoolhouse, where the inhabitants of Rocky Comfort roll on the floor, beat their heads against the walls and dance the cancan in order to get close...