UMPA (1933) - Columbia Musical Novelty

[falsealarms]

If you've never had the experience of watching the Columbia Musical Novelty short UMPA (1933), let me tell you, you're in for a wild ride.

The dialogue is just insanely funny, in a weird/bizarre way, in certain spots. You just can't make these kind of exchanges up. The goal was for rhyming dialogue but still, this stuff is something else.

Examples:

Here we are, we're ready.
Ready?
The operation is through. He would have been a goner if I waited around for you.
But we couldn’t get here sooner.
What did you do, meet a crooner?

Doctor, doctor, there he goes again.
I'll be there right away, don't let him pass away!

Take off your coat
Take off your vest.
I'll put a stethoscope upon your chest!

One YouTuber opined "This makes "Woman Haters" (the 1934 Stooges musical novelty entry) seem like "West Side Story."

[FrankFay]

Oh God, I can't tell you just how much I needed a screen full of nurses in satin uniforms.

Hail Columbia.

[boblipton]

As they note at the beginning, "We Do Our Part".

Bob

[FrankFay]

I don't think the Columbia chorus girls ass-ets were ever better displayed.

[Dave Pitts]

Daffy and delightful. I saw this on the second night of Capitolfest 4 (8/12/2006), and thought there was a good chance I'd never see it again. It was a pet film of the man who introduced it. Richard Finegan wrote the program notes on this title, so he might have been the speaker. Whoever it was, he challenged us to count how many times "UMPA" is said by the actors. I forget the correct answer, and anyone who cares is truly uber-umpa.
UMPA is the first of Columbia's Musical Novelties shorts (first in production, second in release.)
BTW, does anyone else think the title should be spelled Oompah? Not only does Oompah have a musical connotation, but "UMPA" looks like it stands for United Magazine Publishers Assoc., or something. Maybe some other studio had the rights to Oompah for a title.
Fun to see this thing again -- thanks for posting it.

[barry byrne]

Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean!

Just what we needed and perhaps made better by the ropey dancing!
Those chorus girls, not just double jobbing as nurses and police but turning into the wedding attendants also.

Thanks for posting.

[FrankFay]

What we need now is a disc of hospital themed musical shorts

[Fred M. Stevens]

Osterman Variety Gags.............................And Obit






Jack Osterman- fresh out of Broadway- might have had a longer film career if they’d cut Um-Pa’s title tune, and a longer life if not for a weakness for alcohol.

Um-Pa’s better song, re-worked.

[FrankFay]

That whole opening scene in the park has a strange tacked on feeling- and the line delivery from that kid suggests it was the third take & they decided things weren't going to get better.

Osterman is fun - but there isn't much about him that would make me wish to see more.

BTW- a little over a decade after his death his widow died falling from a 12th story window. I wonder how THAT happened.

[sethb]

Watching the three clips from WOMEN HATERS that were posted of "My Life, My Love, My All," I now see that Larry Fine was the true classic clown among the Stooges. His body movements, his eyes, the way he parodies the tune as he sings it --- just marvelous.

Moe and Curly usually got all the attention, but Larry was definitely special. And co-star Marjorie White was no slouch in the farce department, either. Tragically, she was killed in a car accident in 1935; WOMAN HATERS was her final film role. SETH

[FrankFay]

Watching the three clips from WOMEN HATERS that were posted of "My Life, My Love, My All," I now see that Larry Fine was the true classic clown among the Stooges. His body movements, his eyes, the way he parodies the tune as he sings it --- just marvelous.

Moe and Curly usually got all the attention, but Larry was definitely special. And co-star Marjorie White was no slouch in the farce department, either. Tragically, she was killed in a car accident in 1935; WOMAN HATERS was her final film role. SETH

Larry steals the show in PLANE NUTS - no mean feat. When asked my Favorite Stooge I reply "Larry - the smartass"

[brendangcarroll]

This one I had never seen before - wow!

Buzz Berkeley's influence was TOTAL - quite remarkable.

Thankyou for sharing.

[zigguraticus]

This is inspired absurdity in which even the misfires like the lame line readings by the little kid in the park work perfectly in context. Nothing is off the table here - anything goes and most of it is delightful. I am glad Columbia recycled the tune which is also sung in the Stooges' "Women Haters" with different lyrics.

[JimmieFan]

I think Larry’s personality had a lot to do with his abilities as a performer. Granted, he has the most natural ability of anyone in the team, but by all accounts he was also an amiable free spirit off-camera who enjoyed his life and his success and this laid-back nonchalance comes across in his performances. Larry never stressed about anything. By contrast, methinks all three of Jennie’s boys were wrapped a bit too tightly in real life and therefore had to put more sweat equity into their careers, with Moe’s early experience on stage molding him the most “actorish” of the group and Curly and Shemp paying their dues in small time gigs and with Healy in order to find and refine their comic personas and learn how to make with the improv.

And, I agree about Marjorie White; she was special. She is a bright light in every film I’ve been able to see her in; with that cotton-candy hair and megawatt smile, she simply glows, and she's got comic chops all day. And when as youngster I found out why she disappeared from the screen after Woman Haters I was both shocked and aggrieved. Her early loss is one of those holes left in the history of screen comedy, like the ones left by Robert Williams and Thelma Todd and Dorothy Dell. All that talent and potential, gone...just tragic. RIP.

And, speaking of the weird mini-musicals that were all the rage in the early talkie era, check out MGM's Pre-Code Technicolor box of bon bons Over The Counter, in which Emerson Treacy plays the scion of a department store who puts his “new ideas” into play to the consternation of his conservative dad, including a “husband-sitting” service for female shoppers (featuring undie-clad chorus-girl man-sitters!!). Lots of innuendo comes in the window, and there is pulchritude galore, and for those who like this sort of thing you will like this sort of thing.

[MoviecollectorOH]

Very nice! A keeper!!