Those dancing feet… ’42nd Street’ (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

” Jones and Barry are doing a show! “

” You’re telling me? “

When I first saw 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), its appeal didn’t quite strike me, and, aside from the final musical number, it left me indifferent. I remember renting the film at Montreal’s National Library, watching it and being disappointed. I had seen beautiful pictures of scenes and also loved the title, which I thought was very cool. I was still pretty young during that first viewing (15 or 16), and it’s not that I completely hated it, but it felt like one film among many. I stayed with that opinion for several years before watching it again a second time. It was part of a mini DVD box set with Busby Berkeley musicals (I mostly bought it because DAMES was on it), so I had no choice but to give it a second chance. And I guess magic operated because I then ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. I don’t know what made this drastic change of opinion, but I guess both maturity and a better understanding of the wonders of pre-code cinema. Anyway, I was watching it that second time, and I didn’t want it to end. I’ve watched it many times since (including just before writing that article), and it became a huge favourite. I once put it on a top 40 list of my favourite films. It should be updated one day, but it gives you a good idea of my appreciation for the film.

I’ve discussed 42nd Street a little before in an article on my favourite Busby Berkeley dance numbers. I’m back to discuss it today because Rebecca from Taking Up Room is back with her Broadway Bound Blogathon for a 7th edition! The idea is to go with one of these topics:

• Films made by actors, writers, directors, songwriters, etc. who have worked in both Broadway and Hollywood,

• Biopics of Broadway performers,

• Movies made about Broadway,

• Movies made of Broadway shows,

• Movies made into Broadway shows.

In 42nd Street‘s case, we shall explore the last option because, yes, as crazy as it sounds, 42nd Street was a film before being a Broadway show! The fun part is that I’ll be able to discuss both the film and the musical because I saw the stage adaptation at the Royal Drury Lane in London in 2018, with no one else than the iconic Lulu in the role of Miss Dorothy Brock (embodied by Bebe Daniels in the film). One of the best shows I’ve ever seen if you want my opinion. But we’ll come back to that later.

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But before even being a film, 42nd Street was, first and foremost, a novel by Bradford Ropes. Rian James and an uncredited James Seymour adapted it for the screen. Lloyd Bacon directed. Harry Warren composed the music, Al Dubin wrote the lyrics, and, of course, Busby Berkeley mastered those psychedelic and kaleidoscopic choreographies, which became his ultimate signature style.

But what is 42nd Street about? Like many Busby Berkeley musicals, it takes place during the Great Depression. It has been announced that a show produced by Jones and Barry, Pretty Lady, is being made with acclaimed director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) and famous actress Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels). The problems seem to begin as the story starts for several reasons. First, Marsh pressures himself and the cast and crew constantly because this show MUST be a hit, especially in this financial crisis. His doctor has ordered him to take a break, but he’s stubborn. Second, Dorothy Brock is involved with the wealthy Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee), and she’s the main only reason he finances the show. In his back, she is having a love affair with vaudeville actor Pat Denning (George Brent), which might be problematic if discovered by the production, especially Dillon.

On their side, different actors and dancers are chosen to make the show. There’s the newcomer Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler). She makes it, thanks to various circumstances. She’s not necessarily a good actress or singer. However, she can tap dance. On the audition day, she meets Ann “Anytime Anny” Lowel (Ginger Rogers) and her friend Lorraine Fleming (Una Merkel). The latter has favourable connections with the dance director Andy Lee (George E. Stone). So, thanks to that, the three of them get to be cast. Peggy also meets the charming Billy Lawyer (Dick Powell), another cast member, on the same occasion.

All things end up in a pretty unpredictable way, especially after Peggy and Pat meet each other.

But as Freddie Mercury once sang, the show must go on.

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When you think of it, 42nd Street was a pretty impressive production, considering it was made when you had to be careful with your money. Its development and musical numbers show a splendid sense of creativity, and it defined the way of filming Broadway shows. I mean, when you see a play or a musical, you only have one point of view. But by combining their intelligent craft, cinematographer Sol Polito and editors Thomas Pratt and Frank Ware managed to take us at the heart of these musical numbers and give us each glimpse of Berkeley’s choreographies. So, that’s the magic of cinema because you cannot have the same effect in a stage production. The budget for the film was around 440 000 $, which is about 10 million today. And it made 2.3 million, which is equivalent to 55.5 million today. Needless to say, it was a success and a well-deserved one.

Interestingly, the cast is a big and small one at the same time. There are actors like Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels and George Brent, who were well-established since the silence era. We suspect they probably got top billing. As for Ruby Keeler, that was her first credited film, and Ginger Rogers had been in the industry since 1930. Dick Powell had been in the business since 1932. So, he was also pretty much a newcomer. As for Una Merkel, although she made her first film in the early 1920s, she never became a huge star and was more considered a character actress and more often played supporting parts. HOWEVER, although Baxter, Daniels and Brent were probably the biggest stars, aside from Brent, their names never really evolved in the rest of cinema history. None of the films Baxter made after 42nd Street are very well-remembered today. As for Bebe Daniels, her film career was pretty busy during the silent era, and 42nd Street proved a brilliant transition towards the talkies, but she pretty much remained active until 1935. After that, she only did a few pictures here. On George Brent’s side, it was a bit different. I feel his career grew even bigger post 42nd Street with films like Jezebel, The Spiral Staircase, and Dark Victory. Those titles resonate more in the spirit of classic film fans nowadays.  

But don’t get me wrong. It’s not because Daniels and Baxter’s names didn’t stand the test of time that they aren’t any good in their parts. Au contraire! And it’s a shame we don’t remember them more today. Warner Baxter is excellent as the washed-up director and embodies the notion of someone being overwhelmed by work with brio. He transposes a lot of intensity to his character, but it’s necessary to understand the pressure he goes through and why he acts this way. However, it’s never too exaggerated and in balance with a depiction of tiredness towards the end. On her side, Bebe Daniels plays the diva who has to get things her way because she is the star. She shows a lot of self-confidence, but we discover she has weaker points and shows more sensibility and emotions after a turning point in the film. There’s this scene where she has a serious discussion with Peggy and proves she can be an understanding person with feelings and emotions. Her character perhaps has the best evolution, along with Ginger Rogers’s. She finally understands that she can get her way and be happier by being agreeable.

Interestingly, it’s first and foremost with George Brent, who plays her lover, that she first shows her lovely nature. He understands her, they are in love, and she doesn’t have to put on a mask. She doesn’t have to act tough as she probably did to pierce into the business, full of ambitions. She can be herself a little more because she knows Pat gets her. George Brent is enjoyable in his acting. He doesn’t have a role that necessarily allows him to develop ground-breaking acting skills, but he is in good company, morphs himself well to the rest of the cast and has lots of chemistry with Daniels. Honestly, his character is fun, and we understand the interest Dorothy Brock has in him as a lover and Peggy Sawyer as a friend. The two of them, Peggy and Pat, are very fun together, and you feel they get along but more like good chums than lovers. At some point, we understand Pat wants to go further with her, but she doesn’t feel that way, which he respects.

Anyway, Peggy has someone else in her sights: the charming Billy embodied by Dick Powell. 42nd Street was the first film they made together, and their pairing became an iconic one of the 30s musicals. They acted together in six other pictures: Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Dames, Flirtation Walk, Shipmates Forever and Colleen. They were enchanting together and incarnated the perfect boy and girl-next-door couple. You simply want things to go well for them. However, although they were well-known for their musicals, neither of them were necessarily excellent actors nor singers (Powell wasn’t that bad, to be honest, and put a lot of power in his voice). I don’t think the focus is much on Powell’s dancing in those films. As for Keeler, she was a capable tap dancer, certainly more than I am, but in my opinion, she lacked the grace and elegance of her contemporaries like Eleanor Powell or Fred Astaire. But something made them an essential ingredient of the film and all the Busby Berkeley musicals they were involved with. I don’t think those would have been the same without them. It’s probably the fact that they embodied more ordinary and everyday people that resonated with the audience at the time. We can identify with them.

Of course, we can not leave the actors’s chapter without discussing Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel a little more. Of all the people in this cast, Roger undeniably became the biggest star. Here, she has a secondary role, and, interestingly, we don’t see her dancing a lot, although that’s one of the reasons she’s mostly remembered for. She also adopts a fancy attitude, but without being a big star like Dorothy Brock, and her friend Lorraine knows her too well. So, it becomes a joke in the film. If Powell and Keeler embody the fun couple, Merkel and Rogers embody the perfect girl friendship. As said before, they have supportive parts, but each time they are there, they steal the spotlight, and you feel you’d just be cool to be part of their gang. Ann (Rogers), although she puts on an act pretty much for the whole duration of the film, does something quite noble towards the end, and that’s when her character takes a lot of significance because it’s thanks to her that things end the way they do.

42nd Street remains an essential musical of the early Hollywood talking era for various factors. Not only did it put some of the previously mentioned actors on the map, but with Busby Berkeley’s arrival, it paved the way for it to be a well-celebrated genre. Of course, Hollywood produced more musical comedies before, which we remember for various reasons. Think of 1929’s The Broadway Melody, the second film to receive the Best Picture Oscar. His main trademark was to be the first entirely speaking and singing movie, but, as a musical, there was still a long way to go. The same song, the title song, is sung ad-nauseam, and none of the musical numbers are particularly memorable. I’ve always liked that film, mostly because of Bessie Love, who’s phenomenal. As a musical, it’s far from being the best one I’ve seen. However, it set the tone for the type of musicals that were more popular in the 30s, backstage musicals. And then, four years later, 42nd Street made its entrance.

Busby Berkeley had choreographed a few films before. However, it’s Lloyd Bacon’s picture that gave him a status of respect and where he developed an exciting technique to incorporate dance into the film medium. There was an impressive precision to his dance numbers in which the dancers acted as a whole and had to work in perfect symbiosis to create the desired visual effect. Serving as a soldier during World War 1 inspired by this precision. The film made a great impression, and Warner Brothers, the producing studio, gave Berkeley a term contract. Berkeley’s choreographies are the highlights, especially since they are pretty much all revealed in the last act for the grand finale. It’s a clever way to show that all this work and sweat wasn’t in vain. This final sequence with the musical numbers take us to all sorts of universes. We don’t really understand the story of Pretty Lady, but we don’t care because we only need to remember the choreographies and the songs. These aren’t necessarily the most catchy we ever heard in a musical, but they certainly stay stuck in your head and don’t overshadow the masterwork of Berkeley. I feel this film was much more about the magnificent dance numbers than the music, which was more of a supportive medium to the choreographies. You also have to remember that, being a backstage musical, these aren’t songs that make the film advance narratively. Pretty Girl, yes (I guess). So, the people in the play can pretty much sing about anything, and the songs are there for choreographies to be created.

The musical numbers are all unique and showcase different filming techniques and incorporation of various elements. With “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”, the act takes place aboard a train and is filmed as if we saw it in a transversal cut. It allows us to take a glimpse at all the passengers. We first see the newlywed couple embodied by Keeler and Clarence Nordstrom outside the back car, going away from us. But then, that back car magically splits in half, which allows us to see this internal horizontal point of view of the train.

Then, “Young and Healthy”, in which Dick Powell sings, is perhaps the one number that shows a lot of military precision and maybe the most “Berkeley” number of them all. It uses kaleidoscopic effects, and dancers dressed alike and moving in synchronicity, creating perfect patterns. The famous image on the film poster of all the legs in perfect alignment is from this number. In this scene, the camera travels under the legs to finally end up on Toby Wing and Dick Powell’s faces. I’m not sure how it was filmed, but it’s one of those camera movements that remain impressive even by today’s standards, similar to the famous travelling above the coffee tables in Wings.

As for the final number, “42nd Street”, it’s one of large scale and the one showing how Berkeley went above what we see on stage. As it says in the title, it takes place in New York, in the surroundings of 42nd Street, and you almost feel as if they put the city of New York on the stage. It’s so big. It begins soberly with Ruby Keeler dancing and singing solo on stage, but as soon as she leaves with a cab, a whole world of city action is revealed to us. What strikes me the most is that peculiar moment when we see real cars under a bridge (either the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge). There’s the smoke from the engines, and it feels above us. In other words, something you couldn’t see on a theatre stage. That’s the magic of cinema.

What also makes all these musical numbers so relevant is their integration into a simple setting, imagined by art director Jack Oakey. So, there’s sort of a classiness and sophistication added to that military setting. Add to that the fancy costumes by Orry-Kelly, and you have the perfect ingredients for something pleasing to the eyes. It’s interesting to think that, on one side, Warner Bros was producing more down-to-earth gangster films and, on another side, those visually dreamy musicals. They found their star for each type of film. Ginger Rogers on one side, James Cagney on the other. When we think of the golden age of musicals, I feel the bigger ones were mostly produced by MGM (I mean, they produced Broadway Melody, after all…) But other than that, think of their films in glorious Technicolor, such as The Wizard of Oz, Oklahoma!, Meet Me in St. Louis and Singin’ in the Rain. However, Warner proved to be brilliant in glorious black and white.

As said before, when 42nd Street was released, it was an undeniable financial success. It became a top film at the box office, thus saving Warner Bros from bankruptcy. The film premiered on March 9, 1933, at the Strand Theatre in New York and also encountered a critical success. Critics recognized the story as pretty conventional but focused on its technical qualities and the liveliness of its musical numbers. At the Oscars, it received nominations for Best Picture (lost it to Cavalcade) and Best Sound Recording (lost it to A Farewell to Arms). Today, we still remember its quality, and it holds an estimated rating of 96 % on Rotten Tomatoes.

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The legacy of 42nd Street is undeniable, so much so that it inspired a musical. Yes, we’re finally reaching that point. As said before, I was lucky enough to see it in London, and it was a beautiful experience. I have to say that I managed to get very cheap tickets for excellent places, which were worth 60 pounds and more. I paid around 25. The musical was developed in the 80s and, like Phantom of the Opera, became a long-running classic. However, the stage production went above 42nd Street, as it also incorporated numbers from other musical films. Think Gold Diggers of 1933 with its iconic “We’re in the Money”. Since it incorporates musical numbers from films of a similar time and era, it works well and adds flavour to the plot. In other words, it’s a musical you won’t be bored with. I enjoyed every minute, and it was definitely one of the highlights of my journey in London.

I know you wonder how they made the Busby Berkeley kaleidoscopic effects. Well, you have to put yourself in the place of someone seeing 42nd Street as a stage production instead of a film. But how they created the illusion was quite clever. The dancers did their business on the floor, and it was reflected on a giant mirror, allowing us to have the view we would have had on the screen. Of course, it was not a crystal clear vision like in the film version, but still, it worked very well. It was overall very exhilarating. If you ever have the chance to see it, I 100 % recommend it. It also was a success among awards and was nominated for several Tonys. It won for Best Musical and Best Choreographies. As I said previously, although there’s more singing in the stage version, 42nd Street is very much a musical of choreographies. So that was very well-deserved.

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42nd Street is a film that deserves to be seen over and over and analysed from different perspectives. Although I saw its magnificent stage production, I would love to see the film version on the big screen. I’m sure it’s 100 % worth it, especially for its musical numbers. It’s also a film I feel people who don’t like musicals might enjoy as the music doesn’t take a lot of place, but when it does, it’s unforgettable.

A huge thanks to Rebecca for bringing back this blogathon! Make sure not to miss any of the entries. You can read them here.

See you!

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Sources

•  “42nd Street (film)”. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Street_(film)

• “42nd Street (musical)”. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Street_(musical)

• “42nd Street : Trivia”. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024034/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv.

• Kenrick, John. “History of Musical Film, 1930s Part II”. Musicals101.com, 2004, accessed May 17, 2010