Movie Song of the Week: “By a Waterfall”

From 1933's Footlight Parade, it's one of the most memorable Busby Berkeley numbers ever committed to celluloid. The musical number without which poor Esther Williams would never have had a career.

And who knew that Ruby Keeler could be so daring?

Besides, it's too darn hot to post anything that has less water.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Movie Song of the Week: “Honeymoon Hotel”

It's been over a year since my breakup with my former bride-to-be and theoretically I should be staying away from songs like this. But it's the humor of songs like this that helped me get over that breakup so I'll go ahead and post this anyway.

“Honeymoon Hotel” is from one of my favorite movies -- 1933's Footlight Parade -- and while I can't say it's my absolute favorite song from that movie (that title would go to “Shanghai Lil”), it is my absolute second favorite. And not necessarily for the reason you think.

There's a lot I can say about this number but I don't wish to post any spoilers. However, I can't resist noting how many double entendres this number gets away with. Apparently those people in the 1930s weren't as prudish as we like to think they were. But then this is from a pre-Code movie.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Movie Song of the Week: “42nd Street”

How odd that I started developing this weird obsession with the movies of the 1930s just before people on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C., started doing their damnest to bring back the 1930s. Perhaps it's just a coincidence. I would like to think that all this talk about the oncoming Depression is mere wishful thinking on the part of some pessimists. But I could be wrong.

Just in case, I prefer to relive the best of the 1930s, starting with the title song of one of my favorite movies, 1933's 42nd Street. I first got obsessed with this movie when I started wondered why the title character in John Sayles's The Lady in Red was obsessed with this flick. Once I saw a glimpse of the title number on YouTube, I was hooked and eventually I ended up watching the whole film on DVD. Busby Berkeley's musical vision is not for everyone and some on the Net have even hinted that his songs are in bad taste. If so, most modern musicals should have such tastes.

Now return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when young women thought nothing about dancing on car tops and one never knew when one was going to run into a parade of tap-dancers. When life was so lyrical that even the wooden Indians danced and even domestic disturbances were choreographed. Okay, I doubt it was like that in real life, but in this movie number...

Well, please feel free to see for yourself. And I hope you enjoy it.

I Love a Footlight Parade But I'm Not So Sure About Those Dames

I have always considered 1933's Footlight Parade to be the last of my personal holy trinity of Busby Berkeley movies (the first two being, of course, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933). I fell in love with it the first time I watched it and my affection for it has grown with subsequent viewings.

I never realized how well Jimmy Cagney could dance until I saw this movie. For that matter, I never really appreciated how funny he can be. Joan Blondell plays his Girl Friday, Ruby Keeler plays the usual girl-next-door-who-goes-out-there-and-becomes-a-star, and Frank McHugh plays a director whose inevitable response to almost any situation -- “It can't be done, Mr. Kent, it can't be done” -- gets funnier and funnier every time.

The movie is not quite as politically correct as it could be (there is some acting in yellowface as well as a Jewish stereotype) but then again there are signs that it could have been worse. At one point, the Cagney character talks quite seriously about staging a blackface number but fortunately, we never see it. And when one black character appears in the final musical number, “Shanghai Lil,” he actually speaks in a normal voice instead of the stereotypical Amos and Andy style of speaking that was so often forced upon black actors of this period.

Hugh Herbert also appears as a nepotistic censor and I got the feeling that his character was meant to be a not so subtle negative comment on censorship. Of course, that still does not change the fact that Herbert comes across as the same poor man's Edward Everett Horton that he plays in most of his movies, but it was an interesting point. (As you might guess, I do not think a lot of Herbert, and I tend to like the movies in which he appears in spite of him.)

Anyway, I can watch this film over and over again. And I just might do so again tonight.

Busby Berkeley's 1934 followup, Dames, however, is a film I am not quite so fond of. Not only do we get a lot more of the would-be-funny-but-more-often-just-annoying Hugh Herbert (this time playing a moralizing millionaire) but we also get a surprisingly bad musical number by Joan Blondell called “Girl By the Ironing Board.” To be fair, there are two musical numbers in this movie that I liked: the title number and “I Only Have Eyes for You.” But I do not quite have the same affection for this movie that I do for Footlight Parade.

Escapist Quotes from Gold Diggers of 1933

Because, of course, people of the 1930s knew nothing of real problems:

I was down on Times Square watching those men in the breadline... standing there in the rain, waiting there for coffee and doughnuts. Men out of a job, around the soup kitchen.
--Dick Powell, Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

That's it! That's what this show's about! The Depression, men marching, marching in the rain. Doughnuts and crullers, men marching, marching... jobs, jobs, and in the background, Carol, spirit of the Depression. A blue song. No, not a blue song but a wailing. A wailing. And this gorgeous woman singing this song that'll tear their hearts out. The big parade. The big parade of tears.
--Ned Sparks, Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

I hate starving in bed.
--Ruby Keeler, Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

It isn't smart to make gags when girls are starving.
--Aline MacMahon, Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

If you don't, God knows what will happen to those kids. They'll have to do things I wouldn't want on my conscience and it will be on yours.
--Aline MacMahon, Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Remember my forgotten man.
You put a rifle in his hand.
You sent him far away.
You shouted, “Hip, hooray!”
But look at him today.
--Joan Blondell, “Remember My Forgotten Man” from Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

The Road to Stardom Starts at 42nd Street as Well

Oh. My. God.

42nd Street is the first Busby Berkeley musical I've seen and it is as addictive as anything. I can't resist watching and rewatching that scene in which little Ruby Keeler sings the title song. Or for that matter, watching and rewatching the big dance number that follows that song. Or for that matter, watching and rewatching the really really really BIG dance number that follows that number. And here I was thinking that I could never see myself ever voluntarily watching a Busby Berkeley musical.

Maybe it's the “old and quaint” element that works for it, but then Shirley Temple movies are old and quaint and I get the heebies jeebies just thinking about watching one of them.

So what makes this so addictive for me?

Could it be the delightful tap dancing of little Ruby Keeler?

The equally delightful performance of a pre-Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers?

The shamelessly over-the-top choreography of the aforementioned Busby Berkeley?

That silly Irish accent used by Dick Powell toward the end of the movie?

Or that final melancholy scene toward the end in which director Julian Marsh (played by Warner Baxter), having worked his heart out to produce one last success and having delivered that most classic of lines about Peggy Sawyer (the Ruby Keeler character) going out a youngster and coming back a star, hangs out backstage to “enjoy” his success in a way that makes All That Jazz's Joe Gideon seem like a happy-go-lucky person?

Whatever the reason, it seems obvious why this picture went on to become successful enough back in 1933 to financially rescue the studio that made it.

And why writer John Sayles had his character Polly Franklin adoring this movie in his 1979 gangster film The Lady in Red.

All movie musicals should be this good.