Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Not quite as gritty or well-written as 42nd STREET, but thanks to the movie's powerful final number, and the real erotic heat of its B-romance between Joan Blondell and Warren William, it's one of my favorites. The film is all about Getting By During The Great Depression, and what showpeople, especially women, have to do to survive and thrive - and amazingly, it manages to be sharply funny while never punching down at the titular "Golddiggers".The movie opens with an elaborate Busby Berkeley number set to "We're In the Money" - which quickly turns sour when it's a rehearsal for a number that will never get seen on Broadway, because the Money Dried Up and the Show's Assets are being seized by sheriffs. The three main women sharing an apartment - Ruby Keeler as sweet Polly Parker, Joan Blondell as tart-tongued Carol King, and Aline MacMahon as equally tart-tongued comedienne Trixie Lorraine, are sweating the rent and how they're going to eat (a funny sequence has the three of them casually filching milk, bread and butter from their neighbor's apartments by using the fire escape). Polly's all swoony over the songwriter across the way, Brad Roberts (Dick Powell, of course), but since he's living in their apartment complex he's got to be as broke as they are, right? When the producer of the last show Barney Hopkins (great character actor Ned Sparks) shows up to complain about how he's got a great show but no money to hire people, Brad promises to give him $5,000 to stage it if he can write the songs - and, after some suspicion of his being a no-good welsher, produces said money. That makes Polly nervous since she's wondering how he can just cough up that much dough in a day - which gets worse when Carol and Trixie read a newspaper story about a bank robber who's apparently in hiding!Polly, who is by now in love with Brad, begs him to tell her the truth - especially since Brad seems determined not to appear as the songwriter in public, let alone the male lead. Brad keeps promising he will "when the time is right" - and that time is opening night, when the male ingenue hired, who's clearly a few decades past ingenue age, hurts his back and Brad has to go on in his place. The show's a bit, Brad's a star - and then it comes out that "Brad Roberts" is actually Robert Treat Bradford, the younger son of an incredibly wealthy Boston Brahmin family...who disapprove of his interest in "Show Biz" and hanging out with "Golddiggers" like Polly!The next day Brad's stiff, arrogant older brother, Lawrence Bradford, shows up with the family banker Fanuel H. Peabody, "Fanny" (Guy Kibbee) in tow on the girls' doorstep to demand Polly stop seeing Brad. Since Polly and Brad are out on a real date finally, Carol pretends to be Polly - and matches the full force of Lawrence's icy contempt with her own sharp fire, especially when Lawrence offers to pay Polly off. When Carol pretending to be Polly doesn't cave immediately, Lawrence concocts a scheme to get her to fall for him so she'll leave Brad alone - which Fanny promptly points out sounds a LOT like he's attracted to her himself. Carol and Trixie lead Lawrence and Fanny on a merry goose chase, especially after Brad proposes to Polly - at a nightclub where they're all together, Lawrence drunkenly confesses to the real Polly that he wishes Brad would fall for a nice girl like her...and in the process lets it slip that he's fallen for Carol, who he still thinks is Polly! Trixie concocts a scheme to make it appear he drunkenly took advantage of Carol - er, "Polly" - while the real Polly and Brad run off to get married before Lawrence realizes what's really going on. Carol, to her surprise, is very reluctant to go along with this - especially after Lawrence confesses to her how attractive she finds her...In the end, Lawrence discovers the truth but tells Carol he loves her anyway - even if he can't countenance his younger brother marrying Polly! That causes some problems until Lawrence attempts to break up Brad's and Polly's marriage by using an actor who mostly plays cops to pretend to be one and arrest Brad - which Barney sees through, after which Lawrence offers Brad and Polly the check he'd given to Carol who refused to cash it (which was how Lawrence realized she was in love with him, too). Yes, there's a bit of a dropped stitch here, but it really doesn't hurt the movie that badly - because it's emotionally true to both the humor and the hunger of The Great Depression.After all the wrap-up stuff, Carol goes on-stage with one of Busby Berkeley's most powerful numbers, "The Forgotten Man" (a lament sung by Joan Blondell and Etta Moten about the plight of WWI veterans ruined by the Hoover Government's refusal to pay benefits to them) - I imagine Berkeley put his all into it, as a WWI vet himself.

Great set of films some really classic with songs like hurray for Hollywood and the old swing bands too like Benny Goodman. Amazing musical dance numbers by busby Berkeley.

On the Library of Congress Film Registry, listed as one the 100 most influential films of all time, and noted by Dance Magazine as one of “80 momentous dance moments,” Gold Diggers of 1933 was directed by a man most admired for films like I’m a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Little Caesar with dance routines choreographed by a man who commented that “I don’t know one note from another and never took a dancing lesson in my life.”With the earliest sound films coming at the same time as the Great Depression and with little interference from censors, studios and their directors felt free to explore controversial topics and new ideas. Most of the principals responsible for this film knew the underside of life from the bottom up. The director, Mervyn Leroy, watched his Father waste away after his business was lost in the San Francisco earthquake. He fought for choice street corners as a newsboy and scrambled for low-paying entertainment jobs as a teenager. The choreographer, Busby Berkeley, developed his skills planning military parade routines for soldiers as an army lieutenant and spent several years taking odd jobs while out of work in the early twenties before bluffing his way to success with dancers in New York. He kept about a dozen dancers called the “Berkeley Girls” under personal contract. They established a standard for all others who might work for him in their ability to perform with a bright smile on their faces after long hours of rehearsal in uncomfortable and heavy costumes, neck deep in water, or practicing uncomfortable stunts.The earlier Warner musical 42nd Street set a realistic tone depicting an exhausted theatrical director recovering from a nervous breakdown pushing his bone-tired chorines through long rehearsals all for the chance to build a success on stage, for a lucky break turning an ingénue into a star. This dream of stardom kept the overworked Berkeley Girls content despite the conditions. Though it was played for laughs in the Gold Diggers of 1933, the handful of girls stealing milk from next door, sharing one apartment with the rent past due and with one good dress between them for the occasional job interview was close to the reality on the street. Leroy’s film pushes for social reform, a decent chance at a job for those in need, and contempt for those withholding their money, because they only saw greedy opportunists among the poor.Berkeley developed his musical routines separate from the movie script. There were just placeholders for his routines in Gold Diggers of 1933 when the remarkable success of 42nd Street and his powerful “Remember My Forgotten Man” number induced the director to change the order of the routines, moving it to the end in place of a replay of “We’re in the Money.” A young Joan Blondell set the tone for the piece in a short introductory skit, but the young African American singer Etta Moten Barnett sold the heart of it sitting in a window singing the chorus about her forgotten man. Calling to mind the Bonus army of WWI vets brutally rousted from their 1932 protest in Hoover’s Washington, the Roosevelt administration made the forgotten man their rallying cry. Barnett became the first black woman to sing in the White house when Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to sing “Forgotten Man” at the president’s birthday in 1934.(a review I wrote as part of a city film series I ran 12 years ago)

Always a fun movie to watch.

this is a brilliant restoration - the film has been shown and on dvd for years but it was in prints that looked and sounded pretty ropey. Heaven knows how they found such an excellent negative which is fine grain and at last shows the sheer genius of Sol Polito's astounding photography - how he does these amazing wide shots with a black backing and never a crease or wrinkle showing - genius. So "forgotten man" can now be seen just as Busby would have seen it - or maybe better. There is one risky dialogue scene (before censoring) which must have been cut after the hays code came in - and that is now back in situ and obviously from a pre-code print which stands out as very dupey/grainy looking but otherwise this version really is a treat.

For anyone wondering, I can confirm this Blu-Ray disc is compatible with Region B players, despite what is stated on the Blu-Ray.com website. To the best of my knowledge, all the vintage Warner Brothers Archive Collection discs are at least Region A & B - I can't testify to other regions as I'm in Australia. I hope this alleviates any concerns about compatibility.

Ce film fut l'un des grands succès de l'année 1933 avec "Flying down to Rio"(Carioca), le premier "King Kong" et quelques autres... Il lança la mode des grands films musicaux Hollywoodiens des années "1930". Au sortir de la crise économique et sociale provoquée par le krach boursier de 1929, le cinéma d'Hollywood commença à produire ce genre de film pour distraire agréablement, faire oublier les effets néfastes de la crise en redonnant bonheur et optimisme aux gens. Ce que j'ai particulièrement adoré dans ce film et qui s'avère le clou du spectacle, c'est le magnifique show réglé par le chorégraphe Busby Berkeley ou l'on voit des demoiselles en robes à volants danser en jouant du violons; des violons lumineux ainsi que le tandem formé par Dick Powell et Joan Blondell qui nous offrent une prestation de chant particulièrement réussie. Un show devenu culte.La mise en chapitres du film sur DVD étant remarquablement bien faite permet de visionner maintes fois ce show sans avoir à repasser tout le film. Un régal pour les yeux et les oreilles; on ne s'en lasse pas.

I think for the money this is probably the best busby berkeley set you can get i would highly recommend this box setit includes.42nd StreetDamesFootlight ParadeGold Diggers in ParisGold Diggers of 1933Gold Diggers of 1935Gold Diggers of 1937Hollywood HotelVarsity Show

veramente eccezionale,le immagini di tutti i film sono nitide a distanza di tanti anni,molto belli e interessanti gli extra su tutti i film,piu' un disco extra,lingue solo inglese e sottotitoli in inglese e spagnolo extra senza sottotitoli,peccato non ci sia l'italiano lo consiglio agli amanti del genere.