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Gold Diggers of 1933
1933 (obviously)
Brainscan's comments:
Gold Diggers of 1933 was one of the last
movies to make it into distribution before Hollywood
decided to enforce the Hays Code, largely in response to
local, state and federal government censorship, or
threats along those lines. This movie is, in many
ways, precisely why Martin Quigley and Father Daniel
Lord wrote the Code in the first place (in the cruelest
of ironies, Father Lord's motivation as a Roman Catholic
priest was to protect children). No one back then
was filming bare breasts or bare behinds, but what many
producers worked to do was skate the thin edge of
nudity. Movies used uncredited and scantily clad
chorus girls, women in dressing rooms, stars in lingerie
or in the tightest-fitting costumes and an occasional
profile of nude women in silhouette. Gold Diggers
of 1933 checks each of those boxes.
Let's start with Joan Blondell, who never, ever
disappointed, and sho' 'nuff she does not in Gold
Diggers.
One short scene early in the movie has her put on
nylons,
but a
longer and more revealing scene showed her in a
nightgown, brushing her hair - carefully brushing to
reveal as much side-boobage as anyone could imagine.
That gal was something and, as her career from 1934
onward shows, she had dramatic and comedic talent out
the wazoo, without the need to get almost nekkid to get
hired. Born 50 years later, she would have had an
entire wing of the Funhouse devoted to her.
So that's a start. Gold Diggers also has one
chorus gal in skimpy clothes,
and a bunch more in a routine that is supposed to have the gals undress
behind a backlit curtain. We get to see
unmistakable boobage in silhouette.
Another of the movie's stars, Aline
MacMahon, also spends some time in lingerie (and
in a bath tub, but she might as well have been in an
overcoat for all we can see). Not perfectly sure,
but it seems we might have some nipplage barely covered
by silk.
And then there is Ginger Rogers. I had no hope of
seeing anything at all from Ms. Rogers, and sure enough
as
she sings some stupid song in pig latin you see
nada.
A
short scene in which she is kind of, sort of disrobed
by a guy sent to confiscate all the costumes and props
of a live show also reveals nothing much... until you
pay attention to south of the equator. Let's just
say Ginger wears some of the tightest fitting and
flimsiest shorts you can imagine, so that as she moves,
they also move... into some intimate regions. Yup.
Gold Diggers is a silly, fluffy movie made 4 years into
the Great Depression with a message that we'd be okay,
all of us, very soon. Uh, no. So far as the
title is concerned, three of the four women in the movie
are indeed Gold Diggers by the Kanye West definition,
for two of them marry heirs to a fabulous fortune and
another hooks up with a guy just a rung lower (he is the
family's lawyer). They spend no time at all with
impecunious fellows.
Scoop's notes:
The historian William Manchester called 1932
America's worst year. It was the very nadir of the Great
Depression. Families were starving. Able-bodied men,
unable to find work, were forced to stand in breadlines.
Cheery films like this were meant to be an anodyne for
our psychological suffering.
As seen in that light, it's kind of an odd film in that
the musical numbers progress in a reverse order, from
optimistic to pessimistic. The first number is the
snappy "We're in the Money," filled with lovely women
wearing coins and dollar signs, giving off a message
that "this depression is no match for our spunky
spirit." The last number is the somber, depressing
"Forgotten Man," which portrays the brave men who put
their lives on the line in WW1, men who still able and
willing to work, but were forced to resort to charity in
order to feed their families in the Great Depression.
While the number celebrates their bravery, it also
laments the society's inability to reward them
accordingly for that valor. I actually finished this
film feeling kind of sad. I think it made the damned
depression even more depressing.
It's not much of a movie, but I always tell people to
watch it just to see Busby Berkeley's choreography. His
musical production numbers are always so lavishly
over-the-top that they can't fail to bring a smile to
your face. They are filled with infinite lines of chorus
performers moving in precision formations, and always
include some overhead shots of the patterns formed by
the dancers as they formed a living kaleidoscope or some
recognizable figure. And these numbers always were as
sexy as the censors of their era would allow, as covered
above by Brainscan. Granted, some of you may be laughing
because the numbers are so ridiculous, but I figure a
laugh is a laugh, irrespective of whether you consider
his work genius or kitsch. (I vote for both genius and
kitsch, making him the Bill Shatner of choreographers.)
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