Gold Diggers of 1933 would be an inconsequential movie, and almost surely a forgotten one, were it not for the Busby Berkeley production numbers, which are among the most imaginative, bizarre, giddily entertaining sequences in all musical-comedy history. The film's centerpiece is perhaps the best job of work Berkeley ever did: it begins innocently enough, with Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell singing the bouncy tune "Pettin' in the Park," acting out the song's faintly naughty lyrics in literal enough fashion on a park bench, but it quickly escalates into a swirling, stream-of-consciousness collage involving ice skating cops, and a sudden rainstorm, and the linking device of a mischievous baby (played by Billy Barty, an infant-like midget who appeared in several Berkeley numbers) escaping from his carriage to launch spitballs, and behave in a precociously leering manner toward the bevy of Berkeley beauties, who become soaked by the rainstorm, and flee behind a screen to undress, and re-emerge clad in tin costumes, impervious now to the presumptuous petting of the males, Dick Powell included, who remedies the matter the only way he knows how - by whipping out a can-opener and beginning to peel away reluctant sweetheart Ruby Keeler's armor plating. Freudian connotations aside (and are there loads of them), the sequence is a supreme example of leg-fetishist Berkeley's art, his ability to begin with what appears to be a straight-forwardly staged number then take off free-associatively into a hallucinatory, pattern-obsessed netherworld where the human body becomes little more than an element in a frenzied composition, a petal on a swirling human flower. The sequence, and a later, lesser one involving neon-lit violins and a huge spiraling set, is an eruption of pure creativity in the midst of a film that is otherwise undistinguished. Indeed, the musical sequences, with the exception of the final, anti-climactic, Depression-themed "Forgotten Man" dirge, so out-class the surrounding material that in a way they destroy the movie. But destroy it in a good way, because why would anyone care otherwise about a routine comedy of show-girls on the make?
Well, maybe there are a FEW other reasons to care about Gold Diggers of 1933. There's Aline MacMahon for one, the accomplished character actress, who plays the shameless chiseler Trixie with a cheerful, street-smart crassness that almost overcomes her less-than-stellar lines. There's Joan Blondell, she of the big, batting eyes and killer gams, and there's a little of Ginger Rogers, who's unbelievably adorable in the opening "We're in the Money" sequence, which requires her to sing the lyrics in Pig Latin (try it and see how easy you think it is). There's Warren William doing his poor-man's-John-Barrymore best with the thankless role of J. Lawrence Bradford, a Boston Blue-Blood, who journeys to New York to rescue his younger brother Brad (Dick Powell, adequate if insufferable) from the clutches of sweet star-on-the-rise Polly (Ruby Keeler, smiling). The performers bring class to a project that without them, and Berkeley, would be at best an unconvincing "putting-on-a-show" exercise, a ramshackle step-child of 42nd Street. The comedy is, it's safe to say, sub-par; there's only so much you can squeeze out of such a thin plot as MacMahon misleading William by pretending to be Keeler, and soaking him for everything he's worth while deflecting his attention away from Powell, who's fled his aristocratic life to become a song-writer. There's a certain spinning-in-the-mud quality to a lot of the humor; and frankly the portrayal of what it was like to be show-people in the midst of the Depression is not what you would call smashingly successful, or even very credible. It's unlikely, I imagine, that even down-on-their-luck Broadway producers were hanging around the apartments of out-of-work show-girls as much as the producer does in this film; and it's equally unlikely that a song-writer of Brad's caliber would simply drop out of the sky, and furthermore be capable of starring in the very mega-production he was responsible for scoring...but there I go getting wrapped up in reality again. Don't I realize that where Busby Berkeley is concerned all notions of reality must be tossed out the window? If I'm not going to question the plausibility of musical numbers the like of Berkeley's being carried out within the confines of a normal-sized Broadway theater, as the film expects us to believe they are, then why should I question the credibility of the rest of it? Gold Diggers of 1933 requires above all a suspension of disbelief, not only in part but in total. The film is more than rewarding enough to warrant the effort.
Well, maybe there are a FEW other reasons to care about Gold Diggers of 1933. There's Aline MacMahon for one, the accomplished character actress, who plays the shameless chiseler Trixie with a cheerful, street-smart crassness that almost overcomes her less-than-stellar lines. There's Joan Blondell, she of the big, batting eyes and killer gams, and there's a little of Ginger Rogers, who's unbelievably adorable in the opening "We're in the Money" sequence, which requires her to sing the lyrics in Pig Latin (try it and see how easy you think it is). There's Warren William doing his poor-man's-John-Barrymore best with the thankless role of J. Lawrence Bradford, a Boston Blue-Blood, who journeys to New York to rescue his younger brother Brad (Dick Powell, adequate if insufferable) from the clutches of sweet star-on-the-rise Polly (Ruby Keeler, smiling). The performers bring class to a project that without them, and Berkeley, would be at best an unconvincing "putting-on-a-show" exercise, a ramshackle step-child of 42nd Street. The comedy is, it's safe to say, sub-par; there's only so much you can squeeze out of such a thin plot as MacMahon misleading William by pretending to be Keeler, and soaking him for everything he's worth while deflecting his attention away from Powell, who's fled his aristocratic life to become a song-writer. There's a certain spinning-in-the-mud quality to a lot of the humor; and frankly the portrayal of what it was like to be show-people in the midst of the Depression is not what you would call smashingly successful, or even very credible. It's unlikely, I imagine, that even down-on-their-luck Broadway producers were hanging around the apartments of out-of-work show-girls as much as the producer does in this film; and it's equally unlikely that a song-writer of Brad's caliber would simply drop out of the sky, and furthermore be capable of starring in the very mega-production he was responsible for scoring...but there I go getting wrapped up in reality again. Don't I realize that where Busby Berkeley is concerned all notions of reality must be tossed out the window? If I'm not going to question the plausibility of musical numbers the like of Berkeley's being carried out within the confines of a normal-sized Broadway theater, as the film expects us to believe they are, then why should I question the credibility of the rest of it? Gold Diggers of 1933 requires above all a suspension of disbelief, not only in part but in total. The film is more than rewarding enough to warrant the effort.