Post by phantomparticle on Aug 22, 2020 2:15:18 GMT
42nd Street
Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Choreography by Busby Berkeley
42nd Street, which has been called the Granddaddy of Hollywood musicals, set the precedent for the Broadway centered films of the thirties and forties. Nearly all of the clichés can be traced back to this Warner Bros classic, but none of them matched this film in its realistic treatment of working class show people during the first years of the Depression.
The movie must have been a revelation to audiences of rural America in 1933 who read the gossip magazines about the “private lives” of movie and theatre stars, but had no knowledge of the difficulties in mounting a professional Broadway production and the pain suffered by the hundreds of chorus dancers who worked long hours under insufferable conditions and starvation wages. Many of the dark themes are covered with humor, but always with the underlying tension that this job is the only thing standing between a rented room and living on the street.
Warner Baxter is Julian Marsh, the director or the show. Ill with a heart condition, he has taken the job in order to sock enough money away to last him the rest of his live. Marsh drives himself as relentlessly as his cast. Baxter had a long career in Hollywood from 1918 to 1950 but was never a household name. An excellent actor, he is forgotten today, despite winning an Oscar as the Cisco Kid (In Old Arizona, 1930) and starring in the low budget Crime Doctor series in the forties.
Tired and ill, Marsh asks his dance director to spend the night with him. It is the movie’s most overt reference to a probable homosexual relationship. According to the IMDB trivia page, in the original novel, Marsh and Billy Lawler (Dick Powell) are lovers.
In her prime, Ruby Keeler was a vivacious gamin, cute and energetic without becoming as rambunctious or obnoxious as Betty Hutton. Mention Keeler’s name today and you will get blank stares from anyone under the age of 50. Classics film fans know her as the wife of Al Jolson, a mediocre actress and singer and that, in the words of one critic, “she danced like an elephant.” A tarnished legacy, as if she didn’t have enough to contend with as Jolson’s spouse.
Keeler faints during one grueling rehearsal and is taken backstage. The elderly gentleman at the right is Henry B. Walthall, who played the Little Colonel in Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and horror movie fans will recognize as the crazed convict/scientist in The Devil Doll. According to the IMDB trivia page, Walthall had a much bigger role and a death scene on the stage. His scenes were entirely cut, with the exception of this brief moment.
One of the most famous lines in movie history, and one that is almost always misquoted: “Sawyer, you’re going out there a youngster but you’re coming back a star.” The actual line is “Sawyer, you’re going out there a youngster but you’ve got to come back a star.” Marsh offers no guarantee of success.
Dick Powell was one of Hollywood’s great success stories, constantly reinventing himself. Powell began as a crooner in the thirties, switched to noir crime thrillers in the forties and finally as a director of feature films and television shows in the fifties.
Una Merkel, one of the most popular comedians of the thirties, gets the lion’s share of comedy lines. “You’ve got the busiest hands,” she complains to her rehearsal partners
In a pre-code movie with some amazing, risqué lines, this exchange between Merkel and a dance partner is a jaw-dropper, even today.
Partner: Hey! Where ya sittin’?
Merkel: On a flag pole, honey. On a flag pole.
The film is a who’s who of terrific character actors who get plenty of chances break out of the crowd. Allen Jenkins and George E. Stone
Ginger Rogers as Anytime Annie
Guy Kibbe as the shows lascivious backer: “After four weeks of this a leg is just something to stand on.”
The eternally grouchy Ned Sparks may have been physically incapable of smiling.
The show is a major hit, new Broadway stars are heralded, the girls in the chorus are assured several months of work and Julian Marsh, the man behind all their successes is forgotten and dying in the alley beside the theatre. The dark conclusion is unique to musicals of the thirties that tied up all the plot strings with a grand finale and a fade out kiss for the stars.
42nd Street rescued Warner Bros from bankruptcy. They quickly followed it with Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade (1933) and Dames (1934) before the audience tired of the format and turned to Astaire and Rogers at RKO.
Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Choreography by Busby Berkeley
42nd Street, which has been called the Granddaddy of Hollywood musicals, set the precedent for the Broadway centered films of the thirties and forties. Nearly all of the clichés can be traced back to this Warner Bros classic, but none of them matched this film in its realistic treatment of working class show people during the first years of the Depression.
The movie must have been a revelation to audiences of rural America in 1933 who read the gossip magazines about the “private lives” of movie and theatre stars, but had no knowledge of the difficulties in mounting a professional Broadway production and the pain suffered by the hundreds of chorus dancers who worked long hours under insufferable conditions and starvation wages. Many of the dark themes are covered with humor, but always with the underlying tension that this job is the only thing standing between a rented room and living on the street.
Warner Baxter is Julian Marsh, the director or the show. Ill with a heart condition, he has taken the job in order to sock enough money away to last him the rest of his live. Marsh drives himself as relentlessly as his cast. Baxter had a long career in Hollywood from 1918 to 1950 but was never a household name. An excellent actor, he is forgotten today, despite winning an Oscar as the Cisco Kid (In Old Arizona, 1930) and starring in the low budget Crime Doctor series in the forties.
Tired and ill, Marsh asks his dance director to spend the night with him. It is the movie’s most overt reference to a probable homosexual relationship. According to the IMDB trivia page, in the original novel, Marsh and Billy Lawler (Dick Powell) are lovers.
In her prime, Ruby Keeler was a vivacious gamin, cute and energetic without becoming as rambunctious or obnoxious as Betty Hutton. Mention Keeler’s name today and you will get blank stares from anyone under the age of 50. Classics film fans know her as the wife of Al Jolson, a mediocre actress and singer and that, in the words of one critic, “she danced like an elephant.” A tarnished legacy, as if she didn’t have enough to contend with as Jolson’s spouse.
Keeler faints during one grueling rehearsal and is taken backstage. The elderly gentleman at the right is Henry B. Walthall, who played the Little Colonel in Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation and horror movie fans will recognize as the crazed convict/scientist in The Devil Doll. According to the IMDB trivia page, Walthall had a much bigger role and a death scene on the stage. His scenes were entirely cut, with the exception of this brief moment.
One of the most famous lines in movie history, and one that is almost always misquoted: “Sawyer, you’re going out there a youngster but you’re coming back a star.” The actual line is “Sawyer, you’re going out there a youngster but you’ve got to come back a star.” Marsh offers no guarantee of success.
Dick Powell was one of Hollywood’s great success stories, constantly reinventing himself. Powell began as a crooner in the thirties, switched to noir crime thrillers in the forties and finally as a director of feature films and television shows in the fifties.
Una Merkel, one of the most popular comedians of the thirties, gets the lion’s share of comedy lines. “You’ve got the busiest hands,” she complains to her rehearsal partners
In a pre-code movie with some amazing, risqué lines, this exchange between Merkel and a dance partner is a jaw-dropper, even today.
Partner: Hey! Where ya sittin’?
Merkel: On a flag pole, honey. On a flag pole.
The film is a who’s who of terrific character actors who get plenty of chances break out of the crowd. Allen Jenkins and George E. Stone
Ginger Rogers as Anytime Annie
Guy Kibbe as the shows lascivious backer: “After four weeks of this a leg is just something to stand on.”
The eternally grouchy Ned Sparks may have been physically incapable of smiling.
The show is a major hit, new Broadway stars are heralded, the girls in the chorus are assured several months of work and Julian Marsh, the man behind all their successes is forgotten and dying in the alley beside the theatre. The dark conclusion is unique to musicals of the thirties that tied up all the plot strings with a grand finale and a fade out kiss for the stars.
42nd Street rescued Warner Bros from bankruptcy. They quickly followed it with Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade (1933) and Dames (1934) before the audience tired of the format and turned to Astaire and Rogers at RKO.