Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy; Dance Direction by Busby Berkeley
Written by Erwin Gelsey and James Seymour from a play by Avery Hopwood
1933/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Trixie Lorraine: Isn’t there going to be any comedy in the show?
Barney Hopkins: Oh, plenty! The gay side, the hard-boiled side, the cynical and funny side of the depression! I’ll make ’em laugh at you starving to death, honey. It’ll be the funniest thing you ever did.

I can still remember seeing this movie in a retrospective theater way back when.   It had me when Ginger Rogers started singing in Pig Latin and never let me go!

The Depression has made chorus girl jobs a bit iffy on Broadway.  Three roommates, Carol King (Joan Blondell), Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon) and Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), try to keep the wolf from the door.  Composer Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) lives across the way and is in love with Polly.  Broadway producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) has a great idea for a new show but lacks capital.  It turns out that Brad is independently wealthy and he agrees to finance the show.

Word gets back to the family that Brad has taken up with theater people and is sweet on a chorus girl.  The family is absolutely dismayed.  So Brad’s brother J. Lawrence Bradford (Warren Williams) and his friend Fanuel (Fanny) H. Peabody arrive in New York intent on extricating Brad from his situation.  Instead, Carol pretends to be Polly and Trixie goes for Fanny in an effort to keep the show alive and take the men for all they are worth in the process.  Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers) is always around to throw a fly in the ointment.

This film is chock full of the most madly inventive and extravagant numbers ever put to film, including Billy Barty as a mischievous infant and the cops on roller skates in “Petting in the Park”, the neon violins in “The Shadow Waltz”, and the starkly powerful “My Forgotten Man.” The comedy sparkles as well.  My personal favorite of the Busby Berkeley musicals and I love them all. Highly recommended and a real feel good movie.

Gold Diggers of 1933 was nominated for an Academy Award for Sound, Recording.