• Gold Diggers of 1933

2/15/26 (Sun)

Mervyn LeRoy’s joyous musical celebration comes between two other Warner Bros backstage musicals the same year, 42nd Street and Footlight Parade, that pretty much define the era. The songs are performed as stage productions rather than character or narrative numbers and are essentially interchangeable, having nothing to do with the underlying story; the producers in fact switched out the final number for a new song with no effect at all on the narrative. The show is based on a stage farce from 1919 that already had two previous film treatments. This one apparently was supposed to be a drama as well but added musical numbers following the success of 42nd Street (they moved fast in those days). Its huge popularity spawned several sequels.

The rehearsal of a vast production number (“We’re in the Money”) is halted halfway when the creditors come, removing sets and ripping costumes off the performers. Four of the chorus girls are living together and bemoaning their fate (“It’s the depression, honey”, shrugs one) when the producer comes in talking up his next show – all he needs, he says, is the money. He overhears a melody being played in a nearby apartment and immediately offers the guy a job as songwriter (saying in a meta moment that he’ll get rid of Dubin and Warren, the film’s actual songwriters). That guy, already in a flirtatious relationship with one of the girls, not only accepts but hands over the cash to finance the show. The girls wonder how a man living in a tenement can get access to thousands of dollars so easily – they think at first he must have robbed a bank – but he turns out to be a scion of a prominent Boston family. His elder brother is shocked to learn that a family member is lowering himself to Broadway and is convinced that he has been seduced by a gold-digging chorus girl. He comes to rescue his brother, but mistakes the girl for one of the roommates. That prompts the girls to take their revenge.

All ends happily, of course, as the songwriter is united with his beau, his elder brother with the mistaken woman, and the elder lawyer with the comic character. Oddly, the final scene is an expressionistic production number revolving around WWI veterans struggling in the poor economy, “Remember My Forgotten Man”. I thought there would be a coda showing the happy couples, but the film stops on that down note.

The film belongs to the women, especially Joan Blondell and a sassy Aline MacMahon as women who decide to show the snooty rich men from Boston a thing or two. They get good help from innocent Ruby Keeler and an underused Ginger Rogers, who virtually disappears for most of the story after leading the astonishing opening number, including a verse in Pig Latin. (To be fair, she was supposed to sing another number that ended up on the cutting room floor. A shame. Nevertheless, it was quite a year for her – she did 42nd Street a few months earlier and her first film with Fred Astaire a few months later. Whew.) Warren William, who is somehow top-listed, and a vibrato-loving Dick Powell are rather wooden as the stiff brother and aspiring songwriter, but Ned Sparks and Guy Kibbee are great as the crusty producer and family lawyer.

The real star here was Busby Berkeley, who handled all three of Warner’s iconic musicals that year. He had a field day in this one. The justly famous “Money” is actually topped by “Pettin’ in the Park”, a substandard song that gets the production of its life. After shenanigans between the men and women, the latter are drenched in a rainstorm and go to dry off behind a translucent screen, where they appear to be totally naked. A leering baby, played by a dwarf (Billy Barty), mischievously raises the screen to get a peek. They emerge dressed in virtual armor, frustrating their male admirers; the baby passes one a can opener to extract the woman. A wild sequence.

“The Shadow Waltz” (used on Broadway in 42nd Street) features dozens of neon-lit violins that make spectacular patterns when the stage goes dark; I thought of Fosse’s glow-in-the-dark hands years later in “Magic to Do”. The final number, “Remember My Forgotten Man” (taken from a phrase popularized by FDR a year earlier), comes out of nowhere as a paean to the men who fought bravely for their country only to come home to a world that no longer needs them. The opening chorus is taken by Joan Blondell (who is dubbed), then switches to a black actress, Etta Moten, who gives a much more deeply felt rendition. Racial issues aren’t the point here; it emphasizes rather how the war and Depression have hit everyone. But the change in singing styles makes it a different song. The choreography reaches awesome new heights with the geometric pattern of numerous rows of moving bodies in the background.

The dialogue is strong and funny, and the story is nicely set up. I loved the exchange when the rich guy says to the complaining chorus girl, “Every time you say ‘cheap and vulgar,’ I’m going to kiss you” – and does so several times. While they don’t shy away from the economy’s woes – told by the producer that the show is about the Depression, one girl says drily, “We won’t have to rehearse that” – it shows a get-up-and-fight attitude that must have been resonated with audiences then. The jokes can be corny, but the film is surprisingly racy for its times, just a year before the unloved Hays Code came into effect and spoiled the party. It doesn’t need the songs to work – as noted, it wasn’t even supposed to be a musical, and still isn’t in the way we think of musicals today. I’m surprised it hasn’t been turned into a stage show at this point (the stage 42nd Street pilfered some of its numbers). A fun movie.