42nd Street

42nd Street
Warner Bros
March 11, 1933
Musical
DVD
B-

Cast I recognize:

• Louise Beavers as Pansy, Dorothy's Maid
• Ruby Keeler as Peggy Sawyer
• The never-aging Charles Lane (seriously, this guy looked much the same in the '70s) as the Author of Pretty Lady
• Una Merkel as Lorraine Fleming
• Dick Powell as Billy Lawler
• The marvelous Ginger Rogers as Ann "Anytime" Lowell
• Lyle Talbot as Geoffrey Warning

Yes, finally we've got to a movie from the library that I could sit all the way through, and it figures it's definitely the oldest one yet.  It's not only '30s, it's pre-Code, which means lots of revealing costumes and racy dialogue and lyrics, including from the saucy pair of Rogers and Merkel.  There's even a song comparing love to drug addiction! It also mentions The Great Depression more than once, while some of its contemporaries are set in a fantasy world where money is never discussed.  In some ways, this feels like the most "modern" movie I've looked at so far for this blog, but it also has corny melodrama and cliches that it may've invented, or at least popularized, but are still cliches.  (It's based on a 1932 Bradford Ropes novel.)  I know this film is regarded as a classic, but I could've actually done with less backstage stuff and more of the show within a show.

Lloyd Bacon directed but choreographer Busby Berkeley is deservedly the household name.