Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano!: Dancing American Style

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  Louis Prima is a central figure in the film, yet never appears of course.  He may seem simply a convenient Italian singer to build the hopes of an Italian restaurant owner on his appeareance.  However, on closer scrutiny of his work and career, it's clear why he would appeal to the people of the time.  A quick survey of some of his songs reveals how a singer like Prima could trade on his “Italianness” in a way that was palatable to Americans of the time: "Felicia No Capicia," "Bacciagaloop (Makes Love on the Stoop)," and "Please No Squeeza Da Banana” (Huey; “The Man … The Legend.”  The mangled Italian (“Felicia No Capicia”) and stereotypic organ-grinder accent (“No Squeeza”) offered digestible bits of Italian culture for American tastes.  As Primo screams to Secondo—“this country is eating us alive!” 

The Mambo Italiano scene offers a similar instance of 1950s American interest in foreigness as comic fun.  In the film a male character mouths the words to the 1955 Rosemary Clooney hit.  In the shot we experience a comic disjunction between the male theatricality of the performer lip-syncing to the female voice and his extravagant dance moves.  The song delineates the essential situation of the brothers in the film: in it a “A girl went back to Napoli/Because she missed the scenery/ The native dances and the charming songs/But wait a minute, something's wrong/ Hey, mambo! Mambo italiano!/Hey, mambo! Mambo italiano/ Go, go, go you mixed up sicialiano
All you calabraise-a do the mambo like a crazy with a/ Hey mambo, don't wanna tarantella/ Hey mambo, no more a mozzarella/ Hey mambo! Mambo italiano!
Try an enchilada with da fish a bac a lab and then a/ Hey goombah, I love a how you dance a rhumbah.”

   The singer advises to get in the swing of things.  Enter the modern age.  Don’t be a square and return to your old rut—the place you came from: “But take a some advice paisano/ Learn how to mambo/If you gonna be a square/ You ain't a gonna go nowhere
Hey mambo! mambo italiano!/ Hey mambo! mambo italiano!/ Go, go, Joe, shake like a Giovanno/ Hello kess-a-deetch-a you getta happy in the feets a/ When you mambo italiano.”

In the song’s terms, Pascal has definitely learned to mambo and is having a grand old time of it; Secondo would like to join the dance, but doesn’t have the rhythm down—yet; Primo is like the girl in the first line who finds he can’t leave his country for the new American world.  The implied view of the song definitely holds up the more malleable Pascal-like ability to mambo with your identity whatever the distortions (“Try an enchilada with da fish a bac a lab and then a/ Hey goombah, I love a how you dance a rhumbah.”).  Returning to the Old World in the terms of the song is “square,” suggesting some significant lack in character, a feeling that Secondo seems to subscribe to when he derides Primo’s plan to return to Rome to work at his Uncle’s restaurant.  To survive in the modern world of 50s America, you have to get with the dance—or risk getting bumped from the mambo line.

Aside from the comedy of the male image lip-syncing to a female voice, the choice of Rosemary Clooney’s hit over Dean Martin’s hit of about the same time further shows how even non-Italians can get in on the act, trading on Italianness without being Italian.  American mass culture has a voracious appetite for the foreign—all too willing to digest and appropriate other cultures into a more manageable version, the very thing Primo cannot and finally will not stomach.