by Joel Bocko
This entry consists of an essay and a video piece (not just a scene from the movie intended as an addendum, but something I actually created as an important part of my contribution to the countdown). You can take it any order, but I open with the video to highlight its relevance to this entry. It shows through juxtaposition and structure what I am saying in the essay itself, and maybe makes my point better than words can do.
The five-minute video opens with dialogue from the film, follows with a rehearsal montage set to “Getting to Be a Habit With Me” (showing the progression from casting call to finished production), and closes with the dance sequence of “Young and Healthy” in its entirety, just to show what the film was building up to. Altogether the video demonstrates how the raw and often frustrated urges of the characters for sex and power are sublimated and transmuted into the discipline of a creative act, and then shows the end result in all its glory. The essay pursues the same theme.
And don’t worry – they’re both fun!
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42nd Street (1933/United States/directed by Lloyd Bacon & choreographed by Busby Berkeley)
stars Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Ginger Rogers
written by Rian James, James Seymour and Whitney Bolton from Bradford Ropes’ novel • photographed by Sol Polito • designed by Jack Oakey • music by Al Dubin & Harry Warren • edited by Thomas Pratt & Frank Ware
The Story: Determined to direct a hit show, even if it kills him, Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) struggles with romantic entanglements, last-minute injuries, and a nervous ingenue named Peggy (Ruby Keeler). Will the curtain open or come crashing down on “Pretty Lady”?
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“Pretty Lady” – the stage extravaganza at the center of 42nd Street – owes its existence solely to sex. Well, don’t we all? Some musicals present themselves as good, clean fun but 42nd Street, God bless its dirty face, is not one of those musicals. At the root of its massive appeal, kinetic energy, and increasingly exciting narrative and musical structure are three simple motivating factors: sex, sex, and sex. Well, a fourth too: money – and in this film the two are wound around each other like the two strands of DNA.
As Chaos Theory holds that a butterfly need just flap its wings to spawn a typhoon halfway around the world, so Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) has only to spread her legs. Thus is birthed a larger-than-life production, upon which the career of a broken, possibly dying director relies, through which a naïve young ingénue will become the biggest name on Broadway, and from which two hundred hustling, horny, hungry human beings will draw their daily bread (and dreams of glory). Dirty old man, sugar daddy, and cuckold Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) tells Dorothy he’ll do something for her (finance the show she wants to star in) if she’ll do something for him (guess what?). And with that, we’re off!
Yet the film proceeds to remind us that the whole operation is too complex for one man to hold all the strings; as already noted, Dorothy is playing Abner behind his back, hooking up with an old flame, a burnt-old vaudevillian named Pat Denning (George Brent) who once made her and now lets her make him. The cast and crew tease Abner, and then cajole and flatter him into sticking around – by the end he seems less like a power broker and more like another body caught up in the whirlwind, bigger than any one person yet keyed in to the energy of them all.
Through wearying hardbitten rehearsals, spitfire dialogue, and little tantalizing tastes of catchy songs (“Getting to Be a Habit With Me” alone must play a dozen times as background music), 42nd Street works us up into a state of nearly feverish anticipation that seems insatiable. In the more than capable Lloyd Bacon’s hands, the backstage drama and cynical comedy serve their purpose, and then in from the wings sweeps Busby Berkeley, the great lover-turned-choreographer, to give the film the orgasm it so yearns for – three big ones, just for good measure.
So many movies about creative types coyly keep their characters’ actual achievements offscreen, as if they would disappoint after all the talking-up. 42nd Street goes in the opposite direction – giving us musical sequences so outlandish, memorable, and exciting, that they make us wonder how those down-to-earth, skeptical, weary actors and directors we’ve been watching for ninety minutes managed to create something so outstanding.
No film better captures the transfiguration of blood, sweat, and tears into transcendent entertainment. Of the three classic Busby Berkeley films released by Warner Brothers in 1933, Footlight Parade has the most astonishing numbers and Gold Diggers of 1933 probably has the best story (axe the music and you’d still have a comedic gem – only who the hell would want to axe the music?!). But it’s 42nd Street that best fuses story and song, so that the two are indispensable to one another.
As with any Berkeley musical, it’s rather an absurdity that the climactic, uber-cinematic spectacles could arise from the situation developed in the plot. Where to begin? (spoilers in this paragraph)The day before, at the dress rehearsal, the performance disappoints the director – “not good, not bad.” A day later everyone’s, well, in a Busby Berkeley movie, flawlessly executing complicated movements. But that’s not all. The very lady dancing her heart out is a last-minute replacement, and we’re expected to believe that in a few hours she mastered all the dialogue, songs, and dance steps (we also wonder why they didn’t already have an understudy in place). These turns are improbable if still remotely in the realm of possibility.
Then there’s the numbers themselves. They only make sense if conceived for the silver screen, not from a theatrical standpoint, even if one was able to pull off the complex engineering and arrangement (in a show that can’t even make a Broadway opening, relegated to Philadelphia!). Yet as Berkeley enjoys reminding us, we aren’t watching a play, we’re watching a movie. And so the unreality escalates – first a train splits down the middle and opens wide, so we can see the inside. Then we’re observing small props and subtle facial expressions, impossible for a theatrical spectator to perceive. Before long, dancers are swiveling their legs in patterns revealed only when viewed overhead (this aspect actually was solved for stage audiences when 42nd Street was revived as a Broadway musical – a mirror was placed at an angle behind the proscenium so that audiences could enjoy the full spectacle).
Finally comes the capper: the camera glides through the open legs of numerous chorus girls, coming to rest on an extreme close-up of the two leads. By the time we get to the title number, the camera and the editors’ scissors are completely dictating our point of view, surprising us by placing Ruby Keeler on a car top (and then pulling out to reveal a street full of jiving giants and midgets), shifting tone gracefully by swooping upwards to catch Dick Powell in a window (after following a no-good dame in a suicidal swan dive, from which she is saved and then stabbed in the street below), and climbing a trick-angle skyscraper painting so that we really seem to be gliding up towards the stars – an apt metaphor for the journey 42nd Street takes us on.
If the numbers don’t make logical sense, they make perfect emotional sense, because after the windup we’ve undergone, only something this explosive could give us what we came for. A true climax.
In order to give you a taste of the sustained anticipation and release this great film provides, I’ve created a video piece (see above), using “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me” as the baseline over which the dialogue, action, and eventually dances escalate – before concluding with a whole number from the film (maybe its best, though it’s really hard to say). Enjoy – and then seek out the film if you haven’t yet. The full film must be seen, savored, and celebrated. Afterwards, you may want a cigarette.
How 42nd Street made the “Elite 70”
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Writers/Founders
Wonders in the Dark 
There’s a strong sense of unity between the characters, and an ongoing vitality in the film that I see as the best of the Depression era musicals. I think you have captured in clips and prose the allure of this film. It is an American classic that can never be emulated. Novel approach.
Thanks Peter, and I might agree though it has tough competition from some others – personally I would take the Depression musicals I’ve seen over just about anything else though the 40s and early 50s had some strong contenders too.
A great review and choice of pictures, and I really enjoyed the video you have put together, Joel, which made me want to see the whole film again asap! This is definitely my favourite of the three great Busby Berkeley movies from 1933 – I agree with you that the story and songs are better welded together in this than in Footlight Parade, although FP has even more spectacular numbers.
Another reason I love this film is that Warner Baxter is one of my favourite actors from the 1930s and in this drama his exhausted, lonely director is utterly compelling. That still you have chosen of him smoking and looking down really gets the essence of the character. It’s such a shame that quite a few of Baxter’s best roles have been lost, including the silent version of ‘The Great Gatsby’ with him in the title role – probably top of my list of lost films I’d love someone to find in one of those archives full of rotting treasures.
“I really enjoyed the video you have put together, Joel, which made me want to see the whole film again asap!”
Good, that’s the idea!
I had no idea Baxter was Gatsby. I’d love to see that as well – much more than the upcoming Luhrman to be honest.
Yeah, I’m sure I’ll go out and see the Lurhmann, but I’m not holding my breath. Fitzgerald himself was involved with the silent – such a pity that no prints survive.
Actually, cancel that, I just had a look at the imdb and someone there says that Fitzgerald hated the movie. I’d still like to see it, though.
I wonder if he did have a hand and then still ended up hating it. Seems like a lot of authors do that.
You know, I’ve never seen the Alan Ladd version either. Have you, and if so how is it?
No, I haven’t seen the Ladd version either, but hope to do so before too long. I agree that authors often seem to be involved with films of their work but then end up hating them anyway.
PS, here is the trailer to the Baxter version – nice music but you can’t really see much.
Nice – I loved Georgia Hale in Gold Rush, thought she’d be Jordan Baker here but looks like she’s Myrtle Wilson. I like how they use the eyes of Dr. Eckleberg in their own advertising!
Looks like the Ladd version might be on You Tube, as one of the closing links is to a “Part 3” of that movie. What do you think of the 1974 version? It’s certainly no great shakes as an adaptation, totally misses the spirit of the book, but I’ll admit it’s pleasant to look at.
I liked the 1974 version a lot as far as I remember because it looked so beautiful, and Redford and Farrow seemed so glamorous. A long time since I’ve seen it though.
I REALLY enjoyed this essay and the audio/visual accompaniment that went along with it. This is a prime example of how the net goes beyond just written words to allow the viewer a full-bodied experience that illustates every aspect of the film being analyzed.
As for the film, well, I have to side with PETER here and also re-emphasize in praise what JOEL has brought to the heart of the matter. This is one of those immovable, referencing examples that defines a time, style and genre that rarely sees this kind of perfection today. The music, the choreography, the big set pieces and inspiration of 42ND STREET can not be underestimated and it’s still influencing the screen musical even now… A great film and, easily, one that deserves the high position it takes here on this tremendous count-down!!!
Three cheers for Joel on a great piece!!!!!!
Thanks Dennis. I agree with your comment yesterday on On the Town (though I’m shamefaced to admit I still haven’t seen that film!) that now we’re headed into the real meat of the countdown in terms of the selections. Having had a sneak peek at the master list so as I could choose my entries, I’m quite excited for the next couple weeks.
“It shows through juxtaposition and structure what I am saying in the essay itself, and maybe makes my point better than words can do.”
Indeed Joel, and it works magnificently. In a countdown of numerous approaches, you have gone in a new direction in projecting to the readers the whole experience of the film under consideration. The video clip isn’t the ordinary segment of the film, but rather an originally composed presentation that sheds light on your stupendous prose (and vice versa) Not only is this a 4nd STREET for Beginners, but it’s for the established fans who have long come to regard this as one of the most stylish musicals from the Golden Age. Berkeley often gets all the credit, but it’s clear enough director Bacon is a major creative force here. There is some strong audience (emotional) involvement in the characters that makes this film work on multiple levels.
Anyway, you need to take a bow here in true 42ND STREET style!
Thanks Sam, I hope you’re right as that was what I was going for – a great introduction to the film for people who haven’t seen it (it gives enough of the taste without giving it all away) but also a reminder for those who have. And yes, the more I watch the film the more I feel that, transcendent as the numbers are, it’s also the non-musical sequences that play a role in its greatness. Bacon did a good job with this and Footlight; I’m not sure what else I’ve seen by him.
This is an ingenius way to make people see, feel and think about this landmark musical. I guess I prefer “Goldiggers of 1933” but it’s close. I think this is Baxter’s best performance as opposed to the forgotten film he won his Oscar for. 4nd St. is a timeless extravaganza.
Frank, I also love Baxter in ‘The Prisoner of Shark Island’ and Hawks’ First World War film ‘The Road to Glory’ – but agree this may be his best, out of those I’ve seen so far anyway.
Thanks Frank. I go back & forth all the time as well between the first 3. I own GD ’35 but actually haven’t watched it yet! Dames was a disappointment; I’m not sure if it was post-Code or just barely pre- but it feels very post.
Though I’m not a huge fan of musicals (no other genre has supplied me with as many partial viewings of specific films), 42nd Street has always been one of my handful of essentials that I watch periodically with great delight. A perfect time capsule to a type of American moviemaking, that has noticeably vanished or become obsolete in modern times. I love how it still resonates, many years later, the effects and worries of the Depression in a concise entertaining manner. Sure the mood is handled in a mostly upbeat comedic style, but just below that very thin surface is the ever present and serious reminder of hardships that many people were going through. Escapism and bitter reality mixed together in a satisfying blend. Great piece Joel.
Bingo. I feel Gold Diggers ’33 does this as well, albeit in a more unusual way (the stage and “real-life” switch places as the film progresses; at first the actors are singing about being “in the money” while living just this side of the poorhouse, by the end they’ve all found sugar daddies but now their plays are about the Depression instead of their lives – see “Ballad of the Forgotten Man” – both GD’33 & 42nd St. are, among their other qualities, really fascinating structurally).
While I’m more tolerant of later musicals than you are – I love some from the 40s & early 50s and at least enjoy a few of the Broadway adaptations like West Side Story and Fiddler even if I wouldn’t call them great (there’s always something slightly stiff about them) – it seems like in what we really prefer we’re on the same page (same goes for the early horrors). I love the spitfire energy and worldweary wisdom of this film.
And as for the “type of filmmaking that’s become obsolete” – what I thought about, especially putting together the video, was how hard it is to imagine these actors actually on the set, being groomed with the lights being set up, there’s just such a wide, almost mythic gap between how our eyes perceive everyday reality and how an “old movie” looks – far more so than a contemporary film where the gap between on and offscreen is not so great. It’s not just the black-and-white but everything from the speech patterns to the mode of cutting and photography, even down to the faces themselves. It’s why some people can’t watch films older than, say, 1966 but others can’t get enough of them. It’s a very different experience.
I mean, I can’t picture Warner Baxter in color, just like you and me – he seems chiseled onto the screen, etched in b&w.
One of the coolest subversions of this perception I’ve ever seen is on a His Girl Friday DVD I once rented, where there’s a bonus feature of outtakes from 1940s film. It’s a real shock to see the actors flub their lines, curse, and laugh – they’re human beings after all!
Joel, your excellent presentation conveys so well not only the frenzied desperation of the Depression era and show biz, but, by virtue of your amazing video, the graceful presence still onstream, despite being hijacked by historical distemper.
I’m only a bit fond of this film as an entertainment (I have the same problem with Marx Brothers comedies). But it’s definitely a fascinating slice of contending with entropy.
“contending with entropy” – nice, though I’m embarrassed to admit that for some reason I had always thought “entropy” meant boredom (your usage made me look it up and realize the error of my ways, and also that I must have been sleeping through science classes). Another good analogy is alchemy, which also works for the old Hollywood production style (turning raw material of reality into something sleek and mythic in glossy stylized black-and-white; what Mark Cousins calls “closed romantic realism”) that I discuss with Maurizio above. So I guess you can see this process both onscreen and imagine it offscreen when watching 42nd St – it’s kind of meta that way.
Nicely done, Joel. I love the video clip, a fantastic job. All three of Warner’s 1933 musicals are loaded with sex but “42nd Street” may be the winner in this category. Those through the leg shots seem to be everywhere. Baxter is wonderful, one of his best performances. Admittedly, I still favor GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 but all three are unique and extremely entertaining. Nice!
I think this is the sexiest too – just stuffed with innuendos and manages to be both rubbing its hands over the salaciousness while also casting a clear, unjaundiced eye on the exploitation going on. I love the first three scenes in how quickly they set up the food chain – the vulgar financier pushing the little button to set 200 people in motion and forcing the actress into his arm (though in agreeing to do so, she also recognizes some power over him), then the director and the producers in their office – “my contract makes me Boss with a capital B” even as we see the pressure he’s under, then to the audition itself with all those eager yet cynical bodies onstage, finally with the actresses poking out their legs. As I note in the essay, it becomes a bit more complex as it goes along (with roles fluid and power dynamics working several ways at once) but in quick form, Bacon and the screenwriters set up the structures of the world in which 42nd Street will unfold.
Joel,
Tremendous work on summing up this masterpiece of a film. I only wish I could open up Youtube at work! Haha! I’ll save that for later but your words are very aptly put here. I always feel like this film gets a bit of the short end of the stick from this era, overshadowed by the praise given to Gold Diggers, but this seems undeserved. 42nd Street was really the first of the great Warner musicals, and retains a freshness, charm, and vitality that the ones that followed just don’t capture as well. I think the story and music, as you well noted, blend effortlessly together which separates this one from the pack for me. I think it’s one of the greatest of all musicals (top 10 for me) and if it weren’t for The Wizard of Oz, would take the crown for best of the 1930s.
As you have correctly addressed here, the storyline is quite fascinating and really pulls the viewer into the madness and chaos of the backstage. More than just about any other musical, this one SCREAMS of backstage musical and this would be my entry if someone were to ask what a Backstage Musical is all about. Although Gold Diggers is funnier, and Footlight Parade has the more outrageous numbers, neither of them are as good an all around film as 42nd Street. Like you said, “it’s 42nd Street that best fuses story and song, so that the two are indispensable to one another.” Nicely put in a masterful essay.
Glad to hear you’re on board too with this assessment of 42nd Street as the most well-rounded – I see the 3 Berkeleys as a sort of triangle, it’s hard to say which is best because each is strongest in a certain area. At the same time, of course, this is relative – all of them have involving stories and great characters, all offer insight into the creative process and the grueling work behind putting on a show, and of course all 3 have fantastically imaginative and kinetic dance sequences.
I’m wondering what people think of later Berkeleys – as I mentioned above, the only other one I’ve seen is Dames, which was a letdown though I also own Gold Diggers of ’35 and a compilation disc with, I believe, all of his numbers. I intended to watch those before putting this together but, well, shit happens.
Hmm Yeah I’m not sure as I’ve not really seen many later Berkeleys, so I probably can’t comment on that as much, but people generally just don’t mention them much. Not sure why.
I just watched your tremendous edited video Joel and I must say you did the film a great service and it really makes me want to see the whole thing again right this instant. I really had fun watching it.
Thanks, Jon! The movie certainly deserves that impulse, so I’m glad I’ve been able to provide it.
That was a great montage, Joel, and this is the first point in the countdown when I feel compelled to cry, “Too low!” 42nd Street is my favorite musical pretty much for all the reasons you mention. It’s amazing that Warner Baxter won an Oscar playing the Cisco Kid and not for this. That closing shot of him is a sublime anticlimax that grounds the film in a unique way. You also do a great job of clarifying how Berkeley’s fantasias define the film as a movie musical, whatever reservations anyone may have about backstagers. For me, one of Berkeley’s greatest moments comes here when he elects to get coy and mysterious; it’s when the dancers start mounting the stairs carrying who-knows-what with their backs to us, and by that point you’re wondering what kind of coup he’s got up his sleeve now. It actually proves to be a simple and very theatrical coup, but the buildup and revelation always get me. I suppose I also dig how 42nd Street has become a transcendent American myth — one that was stunningly re-enacted when Gower Champion played the Julian Marsh role in real life to a finish that Bacon and Berkeley would not have dared to stage.
True, but then the coup that tops the coup works especially well onscreen (the buildings turning into stars and then the stairway being a skyscraper, which the camera swoops up, adding to the effect).
And you piqued my interest, I looked up Gower Champion – wow. I jumped to the end of the wiki article and was amazed then I looked back up and realized he wasn’t just a director of a Broadway play who was diagnosed just like the character in the play and told not to work – he was the director of 42nd Street itself, and this was the play that led to his death – on opening night!. Uncanny, though then again depending on the timeline (it was a year and a half, apparently, between diagnosis and death – how early on was the show conceived?) perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence at all.
Even more incredible: David Merrick, the show’s producer, waits until the end of the opening night performance to step onstage and tell the audience that Champion had died that very day. Can you imagine the reaction? One moment it’s 42nd Street and the next it’s practically The Red Shoes!