Kid Boots (1926)

If you don’t know Eddie Cantor, you should. He has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—one for films, one for television, and one for radio. He also was a huge stage star (vaudeville, reviews and Broadway musicals) and wrote several books. And then, in his spare time, he created and named The March of Dimes when he asked his radio listeners to send a dime to President Roosevelt for polio research (FDR received nearly three million dimes), and he co-wrote the song “Merrily We Roll Along”(“Merrily we roll along, my honey and me. Verily there’s no one half as happy as we”), which became the theme for Warner Bros.’ Merrie Melodies.

I wish we could devote more time to his career here but he came late to movies, making only two silents, Kid Boots and Special Delivery. Kid Boots was sort-of based on the Broadway musical of the same name, but the two entertainments are more distant cousins than kissing kin.

In the film, Cantor is Sam Boots, nicknamed Kid. He’s a salesman in a tailor’s shop who’s just been fired when a muscular and unpleasant customer comes in to buy a suit. In an attempt to save his job, Sam cons him into taking one that doesn’t fit and makes the guy look ridiculous. Fleeing from the angry man (Malcolm Waite), Sam runs into the guy’s girlfriend (Clara Bow): “Clara McCoy,” the titles tell us “responsible for many accidents by making men look where they’re not going.” She is “a girl with Missouri legs—the kind that have to be shown.”

Sam then bumps into Tom Sterling (Lawrence Gray), an amiable man about town whose divorce from Carmen, a woman who no longer loves him (Natalie Kingston) is stalled because he is due to inherit three million dollars. Sam and Tom become pals, and when Tom escapes from the city to hide out at a resort, masquerading as a golf pro, Sam tags along as caddy. 

And what would a romantic farce be if Tom didn’t meet a lovely young woman to fall in love with (Billie Dove), while the resort's swimming instructors turn out to be Clara and the infuriated customer from the tailor’s shop, whose sole ambition seems to be pounding Sam into a lump. Cantor was short and slight, almost delicate looking, but his looks belie a surprising athleticism. In fact, during a scene in which his rival crashes him around (supposedly a massage), Cantor displays his physicality and ability to get laughs using his body as a prop.

  

Bow and Dove fill the standard girlfriend rolls, but Bow works especially well with Cantor. Waite doesn’t get to do much but be a bully while the real villainy is carried out by Carmen, the duplicitous divorcee-to-be.

Directed by Frank Tuttle and produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky for Paramount, the picture is swift and funny with a race to the altar finale that’s among the best of ‘em.