Dames
Directed by Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley
Warner Bros.
1934/USA
First Viewing

I love the 1933 Busby Berkeley musicals and was really looking forward to finally catching up with this one.  What only a year can do … The Production Code put quite a damper on the sex appeal of the Warner Brothers backstage musical. Although this had its points, it all seems a bit lackluster in comparison to something like Gold Diggers of 1933.

Barbara Hemingway: I’m free, white, and 21. I love to dance AND I’m going to dance.

Rich Uncle Ezra (Hugh Herbert) wants his money to go to a strictly moral fruit of his family tree and has settled on his cousin Mathilda (Zasu Pitts) and her husband Horace (Guy Kibbee). Ezra has banished his wicked Broadway-show writing cousin Jimmy (Dick Powell). Naturally, Jimmy is in love with Barbara (Ruby Keeler), Horace and Mathilda’s daughter. Somehow a chorus girl (Joan Blondell) is able to blackmail Horace into backing Jimmy’s show and all the hijinks begin.

Dick Powell sings some love ballads (including “I Only Have Eyes for You”) toward the beginning of the film but the three main chorus numbers are saved for the end. Of these, the only one that begins to capture the Busby Berkeley magic is the title tune “Dames”. That, however, was worth seeing the movie for.

Clip – “Beautiful Girls”