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| Images courtesy of Warner Brothers |
The curious thing about the 1933 pre-code psychedelic musical
extravaganza 42nd Street largely remembered for its dazzling choreography
and staging by Busby Berkeley featuring stunning ensemble song and dance
numbers is that it helped save not only the studio producing it from bankruptcy
but the musical subgenre itself from vanishing into oblivion.
One of three major films for Warner Brothers
that year, all Vitaphone varieties featuring vaudeville performers through the
1920s with spectacular sensory escapism which begin grounded in real world woes
before ascending to a kind of heightened reality that can only ever exist in
the movies, the musical film was on thin ice with audiences at the time thanks
to poorly staged productions with limited camera movement. However with the emergence of Busby Berkeley
who would block all of the still astonishing musical numbers in everything from
Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dames and The
Gang’s All Here, the musical survived if not flourished into all kinds of
fantastical audiovisual imaginings while also cementing the show-within-a-show
format so many behind-the-scenes musical showbiz tales would follow.
Based on Bradford Ropes’ 1932 novel of the same name with
script revisions by Rian James and James Seymour, the film concerns a cast and
crew of a Broadway show intensely rehearsing for a forthcoming program to be
staged amid the Great Depression.
Following two Broadway producers seeking to stage a production of Pretty
Lady, stage director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) down on his luck
following the 1929 Stock Market Crash is tasked with overseeing the show
against doctor’s orders avoiding a high stress work environment.
With five weeks to choreograph and rehearse amid personal
tensions flaring between the show’s star Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) and the
show’s financial backer Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) over romantic relations with
her old vaudeville costar Pat Denning (George Brent), the stage is set for inexperienced
but talented newcomer Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) to try her hand at not only
landing a role in the show but also the lead itself. As the clock is ticking towards impending
showtime, told between kaleidoscopic montages of whirling superimpositions and
rotating camera effects and closeups of legs fiercely tapdancing their feet
off, it eventually blossoms into an overwhelming explosion of sensory excess
featuring a wide variety of stunningly staged numbers.
Featuring musical numbers written by Harry Warren with
lyrics by Al Dubin including several songs sung by Bebe Daniels, Ruby Keeler
and Dick Powell, arresting luminescent silver nitrate camerawork by eventual The
Adventures of Robin Hood cinematographer Sol Polito, brilliant editing by
Thomas Pratt and Frank Ware and increasingly outlandish art direction by Jack
Okey including a rotating set piece that most certainly inspired Michel Gondry’s
video for Daft Punk’s Around the World, 42nd Street while
an occasionally naughty if not dated pre-code romp nevertheless is one of three
musicals that rescued the film subgenre and kept Warner Brothers from going
belly up.
Made around $439,000 at a breakneck speed of twenty-eight
days and including many notable supporting talents including an early turn from
Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell, Una Merkel and Ruby Keeler, the briskly paced show-within-a-show
film finds a curious intersection between the gritty street realities of
mounting a musical revue during economic collapse and the floaty glittering
fantasies being accomplished by the ensemble cast and crew’s hard work. Special mention goes to Warner Baxter as the
tough theater director trapped between a rock and a hard place scrambling to
keep his show on track and deliver on schedule while navigating the unexpected
problems developing on the way. Of
course while the movie centers around innocent newcomer Peggy Sawyer played
with gusto by Ruby Keeler, it is the cast of dancers doling out fancy footwork
with high kicks and elaborate spins who are the real stars of this show playing
out Busby Berkeley’s choreography to a finely tuned tee.
Opening in 1933 at the Strand Theater in Times Square, New
York City which was owned by Warner Brothers at the time before going into
general wide release, 42nd Street was one of a triptych of
blockbusters for the studio which all but turned their reputation around as a
true moviemaking powerhouse. Amassing
some $2.3 million at the box office, the film went on to receive Academy Award
nominations for Best Picture as well as Best Sound and almost a century later
it ranked in at number thirteen in the American Film Institute’s Greatest Movie
Musicals.
In 1980, a Broadway stage musical adaptation inspired by the
film came about which won two Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best
Choreography, further cementing the film’s status as an integral stepping-stone
in the annals of escapist entertainment.
Though yes the plot and characterizations are thin and many of the more
overtly sexist tropes are somewhat outdated in today’s age, as the frontrunner
of the musical subgenre which inarguably is the reason why it thrives so
strongly today 42nd Street is an indelible offering in a
breathtaking series of showbiz pictures that stand tall as beacons of the Golden
Age of Hollywood and a testament to the artistic brilliance of choreographer
Busby Berkeley.
--Andrew Kotwicki
