WONDER BAR: the not so wonderful side of Warner Brothers

Murder, suicide, racism, theft, and infidelity - WONDER BAR has a funny way of trying to make its audience feel good.

This 1934 musical trades heavily on the enormous success Warner Bros had enjoyed over the previous two years with backstage musicals like '42nd Street', 'Footlight Parade' and 'Gold Diggers of 1933.' But while WONDER BAR reunites director Lloyd Bacon with master choreographer Busby Berkeley, leading man Dick Powell and comedy foils Guy Kibbee and Hugh Herbert it lacks all of the magic of those previous productions.
By 1934 Warner Bros had developed a reputation for producing films that unashamedly acknowledged the tough times of the Depression. They pulled fewer punches than any of the other studios when it came to depicting the poverty and the sense of hopelessness inflicted on a large majority of the US population, but even by Warner's tough standards WONDER BAR is disturbingly hard and cynical in its portrayal of the human condition. The film skirts perilously close to condoning murder and suicide, and is ambivalent at best in its attitude to adultery. There's a real sense that in these tough times the survival of the fittest trumps all moral considerations.
What's most surprising is the role that the film's star, Al Jolson plays in all this. On the surface he's tough but kind-hearted businessman, Al Wonder. The Wonder Bar is his nightclub where he not only manages the place but also greets the guests and headlines the floor show. Behind the glad handing razzle-dazzle there's a coldness in his treatment of his star dance team Harry (Ricardo Cortez) and Inez (Dolores Del Rio), driven by his secret crush on Inez and his consequent desire to exploit their unhappiness so as to split them up. Jolson's Wonder takes a sternly moralistic view of Harry's attempts to sell a diamond necklace he's cajoled from his secret lover, but has no qualms about saving Inez from the police after she murders one of the other main characters.
One wonders whether Jolson really perceived the truth depth of his character's moral ambivalence when he read the script, but I suspect he was more interested in the opportunities it gave him to hog the screen. His performance is borderline ham and it's all he can do not to roll his eyes as he schmoozes the customers and participates in some obviously over-rehearsed comedy routines. The main attraction for Jolson, I'm sure, were

the big musical numbers and in particular the very long fantasy sequence which forms the film's climax and sees the great entertainer in blackface playing a poor farmer who goes to heaven on a mule and discovers "de promised land" in an afterlife peopled entirely by other white actors in blackface. It's a deeply disturbing piece of cinema that's impossible to watch today without being shocked and appalled at its patronising, condescending, exploitative and stereotypical portrayal of African Americans. I struggled to try and imagine how unshocking and normal many 1934 audiences would have found this, and failed. I recognise that my initial reaction of 'why didn't they just hire African American actors to play the African American parts?' just barely grazes the surface of the dominant attitude toward African Americans at that time.
The result is an extremely unpleasant taste in the mouth that is difficult to wash away, and which colours (absolutely no pun intended) my already less than stellar opinion of the film to that point. Even Busby Berkeley's trademark dance sequence with its dozens of perfectly choreographed blonde showgirls, gliding pillars and mirrors stretching - seemingly - to infinity - fail to salvage the viewing experience.