Thursday, January 18, 2024

Movie review - "Gold Diggers of 1933" (1933) ***

 Some of this is amazing - Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon and Ginger Rogers as chorus girls (Ruby Keeler is also in it), some fun character actors, excellent songs - 'We're in the Money', 'My Forgotten Man'.

It's weird script wise. It's set up there's a Depression (great), then a producer wants to put on a show (great), then in one scene he hears Dick Powell play tunes and gets him to do the score only he's got no money and Powell says he's got money. So the show goes on, Powell steps up for the lead as well, the show's a hit, Powell gets outed as a rich boy... and his brother and lawyer turn up hoping to break up Powell and Keeler. So Joan Blondell and Aline MacMahon decide to "take them for a ride" by having Blondell pretend to be Keeler and have Williams and Kibee buy them things. Powell is all for it. Williams and Blondell fall in love sometime (they don't even have a nice scene or song... just a few lines would've done it) and so do Kibbee and MacMahon (ditto)..

There's no stakes because the show's a hit and Powell won't break up with Keeler. They needed to have the show be the stakes... so easy to fix up! Have them need money, send in the girls to raise it off the guys... complicated by love.

Anyway so much talent involved. The ending number thrown in 'My Forgotten Man' has power but it is this random dose of hardness.

Ginger Rogers pops in and out- as if she wasn't in the film originally but they kept finding upsestt o put her in.

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