42nd Street

Though Busby Berkeley had previously choreographed huge musical numbers, including his trademark overhead kaleidoscope of chorus girls, and he would go on to direct even larger numbers than what we see here, this one, to me, is the granddaddy of huge musical films. It’s the one that has lasted the longest, and has become a classic. It contains all the lovely clichés of the backstage musical. “Now go out there and be so swell that you’ll make me hate you!” “You’re gonna work days, and you’re gonna work nights, and you’re gonna work between time when I think you need it. You’re gonna dance until your feet fall off, till you’re not able to stand up any longer.” “Sawyer, you’re going out a youngster but you’ve got to come back a star!”

It contains three of Berkeley’s numbers, which usually begin on the stage but then transform into spaces that could not fit on any stage ever built. “I’m Young and Healthy” is danced on a huge counter-rotating turntable. The ending shot of the camera moving between the legs of the chorus girls was duplicated in Ken Russell’s The Boyfriend. Dick Powell, the “juvenile” lead, begins it all singing in his high tenor voice that is so strange to modern ears. Until I first saw this movie many years I had always known him for his tough-guy noir films. “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” takes place on a Pullman train car that opens up to show all the berths and the shenanigans going on in them. Then the killer title number, which is a very weird story with a cast of many, many hundreds of dancers. It opens with Ruby Keeler showing her impressive chops as a tap dancer.

Ginger Rogers doesn’t get top billing. It would be later that year that she was partnered with Fred Astaire in Flying Down to Rio, and history was made.