{"id":30226,"date":"2019-01-25T08:02:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T13:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=30226"},"modified":"2019-01-25T08:20:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T13:20:59","slug":"the-bootleg-files-so-this-is-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/25\/the-bootleg-files-so-this-is-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: So This is Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 670:<\/strong> \u201cSo This is Africa\u201d (1933 comedy starring Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> No perceived commercial value.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Not likely at this time.<\/p>\n

It is a common misconception that the Pre-Code Hollywood era was a period when almost anything was possible on the screen. And while the implementation of the 1934 establishment of the Production Code Administration brought a heavy-handed degree of censorship to film production, there was plenty of censorship going on at both a national, state and city level.
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One of the most infamous examples of Pre-Code censorship involved an inane 1933 comedy film called \u201cSo This is Africa,\u201d starring the team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. The original film clocked in at 90 minutes, but after the censors were done \u201cSo This is Africa\u201d reached theaters in a 64-minute state. And considering that the release print included gags involving cross-dressing, homosexuality, bestiality and nymphomania, it is difficult to imagine the presentation within the original uncut offering.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo This is Africa\u201d came about in a convoluted manner. Wheeler and Woolsey were vaudeville performers who were teamed as the comedy relief in the 1927 Broadway extravaganza \u201cRio Rita.\u201d When RKO Radio Pictures bought the film rights to the show, Wheeler and Woolsey came to Hollywood to reprise their stage roles. Although they were strictly in supporting roles, they managed to capture the attention of the critics and audiences, and RKO signed them for a series of feature-length comedies. By 1932, the duo and the studio ran into a contract dispute, and the funnymen grabbed an offer for a one-shot comedy film to be made at rival Columbia Pictures. Adventure films based in the African jungles were popular at the time, so Columbia decided to put the team into a spoof of this hoary genre.<\/p>\n

Wheeler and Woolsey specialized in humor that trafficked heavily in double-entendres and puns, and the original title of their Columbia film, \u201cBottoms Up,\u201d carried a risqu\u00e9 double meaning. The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, which enforced Hollywood\u2019s production code, approved the script with requests for only a few minor changes \u2013 although the title was later switched by the studio to \u201cThat\u2019s Africa\u201d and then to \u201cSo This is Africa.\u201d <\/p>\n

The film opens with a board meeting of Ultimate Pictures, which is in a panic because the celebrated African explorer Mrs. Johnson-Martini \u2013 her name was a riff on the then-famous explorer Martin Johnson \u2013 had returned from the Dark Continent without footage. Her explanation: she is afraid of animals. An office clerk who is present for this board meeting suggests hiring a pair of vaudevillians who have a trained lion act and taking them to Africa to shoot a jungle picture.<\/p>\n

However, the men with the lion act \u2013 the too-trusting Wilbur (Wheeler) and smart-ass Alexander (Woolsey) \u2013 have been fired from their stage engagement and are holed up with their feeble lions in a hotel where they have not paid their bills. Wilbur and Alexander practice jumping from a window ledge for a double suicide, but they never quite get around to making the fatal leap. A doctor arrives at their suite, assuming one of the men is ill, but the physician is informed the problem is with the lions. The doctor gives a quick examination and insists the lions be put on a horse meat diet.<\/p>\n

Wilbur and Alexander decide to go hunting in the streets for a horse. But their hotel elevator malfunctions and goes crashing down at great speed. When they finally hit bottom and the door opens, they are greeted by quizzical Chinese \u2013 the men wonder if they went through the planet and over into China, but it\u2019s actually the staff of the hotel\u2019s basement laundry. Wilbur and Alexander then seek out a horse, but that\u2019s hard to find in a modern motorized city \u2013 and their efforts to steal a donkey pulling a cart backfire when Alexander calls the animal a \u201cjackass\u201d and it starts chasing them through the streets.<\/p>\n

Back at their hotel, Wilbur and Alexander are greeted by Mrs. Martini-Johnson and a squad of African natives with spears and shields. Despite Wilbur\u2019s initial hesitation, the men agree to go to Africa and then launch into an elaborate song and dance number in the hotel lobby with the African warriors and accompanying squad of female African dancers. (The warriors are played by African-American men, but the female dancers are wearing large wigs and very heavy make-up, and it appears they are actually white women in blackface.)<\/p>\n

Once in Africa, the film gets sillier. There is some blue humor \u2013 when told the foliage consists of \u201cvirgin trees,\u201d Alexander remarks, \u201cThey look pretty wild to me.\u201d There is a rhinoceros running backwards, locusts that eat the clothing off Wilbur and Alexander, a giant mosquito with a power drill for a stinger, and a bear (don\u2019t ask) who licks Wilbur’s bare foot.<\/p>\n

Apparently, Wilbur and Alexander arrived in a section of Africa populated with a tribe of white Amazons. One of them abducts the sleepwalking Wilbur, and when he wakes up they go into a kissing frenzy. He dubs her \u201cMiss More\u201d because the only word she understands is \u201cMore,\u201d which she says after their kissing. Miss More has a pet gorilla named Josephine, who tries to kiss Alexander. Wilbur and Alexander are taken captive by the Amazon tribe, and they use them as an audience for a song-and-dance number that borrows heavily from the popular tune \u201cMinnie the Moocher.\u201d The men try to escape by dressing in drag and passing themselves off as Amazons, but that backfires when a tribe of oversexed Tarzans arrive to grab themselves Amazonian brides \u2013 and two brawny Tarzans mistake the cross-dressing Wilbur and Alexander for women and carry them off. What\u2019s their fate? Well, I won\u2019t give that away \u2013 it is the most startling gag in the film.<\/p>\n

Marx Brothers fans like to point out that two of the leading ladies from that act\u2019s classics are in \u201cSo This is Africa\u201d: Esther Muir as Mrs. Johnson-Martine and Raquel Torres as Miss More. Muir and Torres are actually funnier with Wheeler and Woolsey than with the Marx Brothers \u2013 Muir holds her own with the team in an unexpected spoof of the inner monologue concept from the drama \u201cStrange Interlude\u201d (which the Marx Brothers also spoofed in \u201cAnimal Crackers\u201d) while Torres is sexy and funny as the love-struck Amazon. Whereas Muir and Torres were the decorative butts of the Marx Brothers\u2019 jokes, with Wheeler and Woolsey they were equal partners in the mayhem.<\/p>\n

As for Wheeler and Woolsey, \u201cSo This is Africa\u201d finds them in a mixed bag. Some of the earlier segments are contrived, particularly with the Three Stooges-style hunting of the donkey \u2013 slapstick was never the forte of this duo. The two musical numbers are so wonderfully eccentric that it is a shame there weren\u2019t more song-and-dance interludes. There is one striking scene when Wheeler is in Amazon drag and Woolsey is still in his male clothing \u2013 they wind up being married in a pagan ceremony and are instructed to begin a honeymoon. \u201cWhat constitutes a honeymoon?\u201d asks Woolsey, to which the irritated Wheeler responds, \u201cHow should I know? You\u2019re my first husband.\u201d<\/p>\n

Production on \u201cSo This is Africa\u201d took five weeks, and by the end of 1932 the duo had settled their problem with RKO and returned to their old studio. Columbia received approval from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association to release the film in early 1933, but the studio faced an unexpected wave of outrage from the National Board of Review, a New York-based film censorship organization, which stated the comedy \u201coutrages every common standard of decency\u201d The Motion Picture Division of the Education Board of New York State, which served as the censorship board for New York, also found the film offensive and demanded dialogue and scenes be edited. Censorship boards in other states and several municipal censorship offices added their two cents, requesting cuts before the film could play in their local theaters. <\/p>\n

What raised such ire? Lines such as \u201cHe\u2019s not that type of a boy\u201d and \u201cI told you they\u2019re getting ready for their passion dance\u201d were among the dialogue that the censors loathed, and the level of kissing in the jungle was also too much. Since Wheeler and Woolsey were back at RKO, they were not available to shoot new scenes, so Columbia was forced to cut a half-hour to appease the censors. But all of this turned out favorably for the studio \u2013 the film had gained a reputation for being dirty, and curious moviegoers flocked to see what the hubbub was about. Columbia profited on \u201cSo This is Africa,\u201d but the studio\u2019s creative accounting neglected to share the wealth with Wheeler and Woolsey, who were supposed to receive a percentage of the box office but never got a dime.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo This is Africa\u201d has never been released on VHS or DVD. While the team\u2019s RKO films have been made available on home entertainment formats, their sole Columbia film remains off the market due to a perceived lack of commercial appeal with today\u2019s movie lovers. Mercifully, a decent print is on YouTube<\/a>, and this unauthorized posting allows us to enjoy the vintage jungle nonsense that aggravated yesteryear\u2019s censors.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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\nListen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall<\/a>\u201d on SoundCloud, now in its third season.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 670: \u201cSo This is Africa\u201d (1933 comedy starring Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey). LAST SEEN: On YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: No perceived commercial value. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely at this time. It is a common misconception that the Pre-Code Hollywood era was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":30227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[219,2171,1588,2172,1606,2170],"class_list":["post-30226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-comedy","tag-esther-muir","tag-pre-code","tag-raquel-torres","tag-rko-radio-pictures","tag-wheeler-and-woolsey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30226"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30229,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30226\/revisions\/30229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}