Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, George E. Stone
George Brent, Bebe Daniels, Ruby Keeler, Warner Baxter, George Irving
Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, George E. Stone, George Brent, Ginger Rogers
It was in its musical portions that 42nd Street racked up the most decisive achievements. The music and lyrics of Harry Warren and Al Dubin were catchy, boisterous, and, for the title song, as driven and riveting as anything in the script. For Busby Berkeley, who had been in Hollywood since Whoopee! in 1930, this would be a defining moment. From the outset, his style had strayed visibly from the conventions of filmed song and dance: mass formations that were almost militaristic in their precision, dynamic and sometimes startling camera movements, and that voyeur’s appreciation for the faces and figures of beautiful women. His work in 42nd Street is sometimes conventional (“Shuffle Off to Buffalo”) and more often audacious, as in “Young and Healthy” with the camera going overhead to shoot geometrical formations, then coming back down to push its way through a tunnel of chorus girls’ legs. Irresistible as they are, Berkeley’s numbers can stand alone yet also fit snugly into a production whose concise eighty-nine minutes manage to cover every base.
As with its studio’s gangster yarns and low-life sagas, 42nd Street was made with an eye less toward art than to timeliness and profit. No one envisioned its huge success, let alone that it would revive and reinvent an entire genre, make Busby Berkeley the most imitated director in Hollywood, make stars of Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, and put Warner Bros. back in the black. All this, essentially, because of one outstanding film, for reasons that are vividly clear every time anyone sees it.
Warner Baxter
WHAT’S MORE
The success of 42nd Street was in a way as much political as artistic and financial. Unlike other film moguls, the Warners were Democrats, and decided to time the release of 42nd Street with the incoming presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. The ad campaign borrowed a Roosevelt phrase to herald the film as “A NEW DEAL in Entertainment,” and a star-packed train called “The 42nd Street Special” traveled from city to city for deluxe premieres. The trip culminated in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day itself, March 3, 1933, thus creating a synergy that made the new movie seem as fresh and triumphant as the new administration. Both were instant hits, and the entire stunt remains one of the more ingenious and successful promotional campaigns in movie history.
Although this was Ruby Keeler’s feature film debut, she was hardly unknown. She had starred on Broadway in the Gershwins’ Show Girl and was, famously, Mrs. Al Jolson. Being married to Mr. Show Biz required considerable fortitude, and things grew shaky when, after 42nd Street, her fame began to exceed his. An ego the size of Jolson’s can cast a long, exhausting shadow and, long after the marriage ended, Keeler refused to have her name used in the hit biopic The Jolson Story.
MUSICALLY SPEAKING
As the first of the Busby Berkeley Warner Bros. extravaganzas, 42nd Street shows the dance director in especially good form in the title number. As cued by Warren and Dubin’s nervy melody and lyrics, Berkeley presents a bustling and sometimes sordid urban landscape with pushcart vendors, speakeasies, and a phalanx of tap-dancing prostitutes with their johns, as well as an attempted rape that ends in a stabbing. In Berkeley’s particular kind of genius, a dark side was definitely part of the whole package.
“Young and Healthy”: Busby Berkeley (upper center) lining up an overhead shot of Toby Wing and Dick Powell
On the set. From left: director Lloyd Bacon, George Brent, Warner Baxter, Ned Sparks, Bebe Daniels, Allen Jenkins, Ginger Rogers, Edward J. Nugent, Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, unknown, cinematographer Sol Polito, Robert McWade, George E. Stone, Dick Powell