Wonder Bar (1934) on Netflix
NR19341h 24mCrimeDramaMusicRomance
At the Paris nightclub Wonder Bar, dancer Inez loves Harry, who is courting Liane, wife of the banker Renaud. The club's manager Al Wonder and the singer Tommy both love Inez.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.4/10809 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
The Wonder Bar is a Paris nightclub where Al Wonder runs the floor show, with Inez leading the dancing group that draws the crowd. Al keeps a secret attraction to Inez, who is in love with Harry, while Tommy, the singer and conductor, is in love with her too. Harry is seeing Liane, the wife of the wealthy banker Renaud. Captain Hugo Von Ferring, a German officer who has lost his money on the stock market, is at the club for one night before he plans to end his life the next day, and Al knows his plan. Henry Simpson and Corey Pratt, two businessmen, drink through the evening between the musical numbers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wonder Bar (1934)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the number "Don't Say Goodnight", Busby Berkeley had sixty tall white movable columns built on separate, electrically controlled tracks and used a hundred dancers, who ended up replaced by a forest of silver trees and a white reindeer. He then built an octagon of mirrors, each 28 feet high and 12 feet wide, around a revolving platform 24 feet in diameter.
- To shoot the mirror sequence, Berkeley had a hole dug in the stage floor and the camera mounted on a pipe; the operator lay flat on his stomach underneath the stage and crawled around slowly as the camera turned.
- A huge indoor set covering an area equal to two city blocks was built for Busby Berkeley's chorus scenes, and iron-workers laid an iron track near the roof of the soundstage to carry the derricks, machinery, camera and sound equipment for his "top shots".
- In 1934 choreographer Larry Ceballos sued Warner Bros. and Busby Berkeley for $100,000, alleging Berkeley had "poached a dance idea" using mirrors to create a mise-en-abyme effect for Wonder Bar. Ceballos lost the lawsuit on both claims.
- James Wingate, who helped enforce the Hays Code, demanded thirteen script changes, including removal of the "irregular sex relationship" between Dolores del Río and Ricardo Cortez, who whips her. Producer Hal Wallis made a few of the changes, sent them back to Wingate, then ignored him.
- The film's finale, "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule", was a minstrel-show parody of Marc Connelly's 1930 play The Green Pastures and the largest minstrel show ever produced, with over 200 performers. Warner Bros. made it the centerpiece of its advertising campaign.
- When Warner Bros. announced the film, listed potential stars included Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Pat O'Brien and Warren William, but several of them bowed out because they felt it was "a case of playing second fiddle to Al Jolson".
