The musical magic of Gold Diggers of 1933 at 90 | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

The musi­cal mag­ic of Gold Dig­gers of 1933 at 90

27 May 2023

Words by Julia Mueller

A woman in a yellow sequinned dress and feather boa, standing in front of a black and white background with a large yellow circle behind her.
A woman in a yellow sequinned dress and feather boa, standing in front of a black and white background with a large yellow circle behind her.
Mervyn LeRoy and Bus­by Berke­ley’s clas­sic pre-Code musi­cal still delights almost a cen­tu­ry lat­er – and its suc­cess is down to a key change in how the sto­ry was bookended.

Like the oth­er two leg­endary 1933 back­stage musi­cals from Warn­er Bros (42nd Street and Foot­light Parade) Gold Dig­gers of 1933 is a charmed con­ver­gence of indi­vid­ual tal­ents, campy songs, elab­o­rate spec­ta­cle and snap­py dia­logue. In all three, Bus­by Berke­ley directs the musi­cal num­bers, with songs by Har­ry War­ren and Al Dubin. The stars and char­ac­ter actors – many appear­ing in all three – ani­mate scripts root­ed in peri­od details, and cru­cial­ly, remain fun­ny to this day. In Gold Dig­gers, I’m par­tial to Aline MacMa­hon as the unsen­ti­men­tal com­ic Trix­ie Lor­raine and Ned Sparks as the hilar­i­ous­ly seri­ous pro­duc­er Bar­ney Hopkins.

Yet what makes Gold Dig­gers more than time­less enter­tain­ment, turn­ing 90 and fresh as a daisy in 2023, doesn’t appear in the offi­cial screen­play. The film was set to end with the schmaltzy Shad­ow Waltz’ rel­e­gat­ing the rad­i­cal Remem­ber My For­got­ten Man’ to the mid­dle. The screen­play also stip­u­lates a final, dimin­ish­ing reprise of the brazen satir­i­cal open­ing num­ber We’re in the Mon­ey’. Instead, We’re in the Mon­ey’ opens the film in a state of dis­ar­ray, its brassy opu­lence rude­ly inter­rupt­ed by the harsh real­i­ty of the Depres­sion. Remem­ber My For­got­ten Man’ becomes the finale to answer such an open­ing, a dif­fer­ent kind of spec­ta­cle wise to harsh real­i­ty, erupt­ing onto the scene just when you might think it’s all over.

We’re in the Mon­ey’ is a num­ber designed to be inter­rupt­ed: cops storm the the­ater, clos­ing the show dur­ing dress rehearsal since Bar­ney can’t pay his cred­i­tors. For the film, the spec­ta­cle is tri­umphant. Cut­ting it short takes head-on the fan­tas­tic, hope­less excess with which our dreams might com­pen­sate for impov­er­ished dai­ly life. The num­ber fea­tures cos­tumes made appar­ent­ly of noth­ing but giant coins, placed with bawdy expe­di­ence – a cho­rus of cap­i­tal­ist Eves, lit­er­al­iz­ing an idiom: these dames are indeed in” the mon­ey. As the film’s title sug­gests, this is a com­e­dy of gold dig­gers” and it fea­tures a group of sassy chorines, all work­ing women who find love in the upper classes.

Yet these women play imp­ish­ly off the stereo­type. They long for the things mon­ey can buy, but not at any price. Inter­est­ing­ly, Gin­ger Rogers’ Fay is the one main female char­ac­ter who doesn’t find a match, and she’s the one who opens the film as soloist in this cheeky gold-dig­ging num­ber. She looks right into the cam­era, enun­ci­at­ing so we can­not pos­si­bly miss her gist even singing in pig Latin, in con­fronta­tion­al close-up. Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, Berke­ley goes far over the top, not just deliv­er­ing a fan­ta­sy, but expos­ing one car­ried to the point of absur­di­ty. The under­ly­ing dis­ci­pline of this art brings us face to face with some­thing stub­born­ly and strange­ly real. Rogers clos­es the scene, dri­ly: It’s the Depres­sion, dearie.”

Because of its pro­duc­tion his­to­ry, and because the plot wraps up neat­ly before For­got­ten Man’, some crit­ics have con­sid­ered the final num­ber an after­thought. Yet its anar­chic ener­gy is what puts it over. We’ve heard it dis­cussed at its con­cep­tion – rhap­sod­i­cal­ly, in the show-girls’ apart­ment where Bar­ney recounts his vision. Bar­ney asks the com­pos­er Brad (a goofy young Dick Pow­ell) if he’s got some­thing with a sort of march effect, march rhythm to it?” Does he ever.

Monochrome image of dancers in flowing white gowns on a raised stage, with a curved backdrop and lights.

It’s some­thing about a for­got­ten man.” As Brad starts to play, Bar­ney, elec­tri­fied, dis­charges a stark poem in his spe­cial com­ic style: Stop!…Go on…That’s it! That’s what this show’s about! – The Depres­sion – men march­ing – march­ing in the rain – dough­nuts and crullers – men march­ing – march­ing – jobs – jobs – and in the back­ground, Car­ol – spir­it of the Depres­sion – a blue song – no, not a blue song – but a wail­ing – a wailing! …”

In the event, Blondell, not a singer, gives the open­ing in speech-singing or recita­tive. She’s a pros­ti­tute, pick­ing up on a line ear­li­er in the film, when Brad ini­tial­ly refus­es to replace the show’s lead juve­nile” (strick­en with lum­ba­go). Brad has his rea­sons, and that dra­ma pro­pels the roman­tic plot, but Trix­ie doesn’t care what his rea­sons are. If he lets those girls down, they’ll lose their jobs: They’ll have to do things I wouldn’t want on my con­science.” How oth­er peo­ple get on one’s con­science may be an unlike­ly pre­oc­cu­pa­tion for musi­cal com­e­dy, but it becomes cen­tral to the film, lead­ing up to and includ­ing the final number.

Just how con­science can have a sense of humor comes up in that con­ver­sa­tion in the show-girls’ apart­ment. Trix­ie press­es Bar­ney on where she, as com­ic, fits into this alarm­ing­ly seri­ous pic­ture: Isn’t there going to be any com­e­dy in this show?” Plen­ty,” he says. The gay side, the hard-boiled side, the cyn­i­cal and fun­ny side of the Depres­sion. I’ll make them laugh at you starv­ing to death, hon­ey. Be the fun­ni­est thing you ever did.” To laugh at such things is either cal­lous, or it is humane in a way that couldn’t have been fore­seen, and goes to the heart of what makes this film tick. The fun­ny thing about Bar­ney is that, like Buster Keaton, he nev­er laughs, but he sees where laugh­ter is possible.

The final num­ber in itself might be fatal­ly seri­ous or hilar­i­ous­ly dat­ed” (as Pauline Kael found it by 1961), tak­en out of con­text. You don’t get from it the cyn­i­cal and fun­ny side of the Depres­sion” unless you see it in sequence, and in the way it bal­ances and com­pletes the open­ing num­ber, We’re in the Mon­ey’. A For­got­ten Man” hadn’t just been mis­laid, but betrayed. The phrase came to mean what it means in Gold Dig­gers – a WWI vet­er­an neglect­ed by his coun­try – with a 1932 speech by FDR, before his pres­i­den­cy, while the Bonus Army was prepar­ing to march on Wash­ing­ton. The song’s imper­a­tive is Remem­ber” yet the pol­i­tics of remem­brance are inde­ter­mi­nate. Carol’s open­ing lines dis­pense with any plea for pity: I don’t know if he deserves a bit of sym­pa­thy. For­get your sym­pa­thy, that’s alright with me…” This won’t be a song of idealism.

In the open­ing sequence of this num­ber, the cam­era pans to women in win­dows: one wor­ried with a baby, look­ing like she’s walked out of a Dorothea Lange pho­to­graph; one white-haired in a rock­ing chair, wring­ing a hand­ker­chief. One is Etta Moten, the Black singer whose rich con­tral­to picks up where Blondell leaves off, lift­ing speech into song. In an era when Black per­form­ers were cast almost exclu­sive­ly as ser­vants or clowns, there’s pow­er in the calm author­i­ty she brings to this rel­a­tive­ly brief appear­ance – Moten’s pres­ence, uncred­it­ed but not token, is a qui­et explosion.

Plain­clothes cos­tumes play against the out­ra­geous bling of We’re in the Mon­ey’. The stage approx­i­mat­ing his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty – from the parade send­ing men off to war; to the march­ing in the rain” Bar­ney promised (with bay­o­net­ed rifles); to abject sol­diers march­ing back from the war in the same rain; to bread­lines of the film’s present day – plays against Berkeley’s trade­mark fantasia.

Blondell’s close-up echoes Rogers’ from the open­ing, the steadi­ness of her gaze as if she’s dar­ing us to blink first, and Moten’s singing con­veys sor­row and a fiery, dry-eyed resilience. The song retains its pow­er today through these per­for­mances, and because of the per­sis­tence in mod­ern life of peo­ple relied upon and betrayed. Vet­er­ans of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq may be the obvi­ous 21st-cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lents of for­got­ten men” but the cor­re­spon­dence doesn’t end there – these are the exploit­ed mul­ti­tudes, impli­cat­ed at every lev­el of first-world life.

The ele­ment of chance that brought the film togeth­er, mak­ing it whole, primed it to meet a 21st-cen­tu­ry need for just this quiv­er­ing bal­ance between lev­i­ty and fury. Framed by We’re in the Mon­ey’ and Remem­ber My For­got­ten Man’ this sparkling com­e­dy of con­science remains a ton­ic for dark times. Mak­ing a spec­ta­cle of shared suf­fer­ing turns out to be one way to bear it.

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