Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)

I could have sworn I had seen this before but now I think it’s just that the “Lullaby of Broadway” sequence has been anthologized so often.  It is fairly entertaining but does not hold a candle to those sassy, sexy pre-Code Busby Berkeley musicals.

The story concerns the staff and guests at a luxury resort.  Wealthy Mrs. Prentiss (Ann Brady) arrives with her randy son Humbolt (Frank McHugh) and bored daughter Ann (Gloria Stewart) in tow.  Soon thereafter,  Ann’s fiance, daffy millionaire snuff-box collector T. Mosley Thorpe (Hugh Herbert), shows up.  Ann hates Mosley and is longing to have fun.  Her mother agrees that she can have fun that summer if she will promise to marry Mosley afterward and hires hotel clerk Dick Curtis (Dick Powell) to escort Ann around.  It doesn’t take a genius to tell where that part of the plot is going ….

Meanwhile, impresario Nicoleff (Adolphe Menjou) is deep in debt to the hotel.  The hotel manager plots to have Nicoleff direct Mrs. Prentiss’s annual charity show.  Nicoleff plots to milk as much money out of Mrs. Prentiss as possible.  The whole thing ends with the show, naturally.  With Glenda Farrell as Mosley’s gold digging private stenographer.

This is closer to a traditional musical comedy than the earlier Warner backstage musicals in that the opening minutes are a kind of artificially staged narrative and Dick Powell spontaneously bursts into song a couple of times.  Everyone is pretty good and Menjou is very funny as a Russian theatrical type.  The production numbers can be rather clunky at times.  I never fail to be shocked by the tragic ending to the “Lullaby of Broadway” sequence.  It seems so out of place.  Maybe the girl needed to be punished for staying out all night?

Trailer