David Hast: Scott, have you seen Gold Diggers of 1933?
Scott Vander Werf: I saw Gold Diggers of 1933 for the first time recently and really enjoyed it.
DH: It's a fun musical andkind of an important movie in movie history. We're revisiting pre-code Hollywood movies for the next few episodes and uh we actually covered pre-code a little bit in our very first show we did. Remember?
SVW: That is right.
DH: We talked about Footlight Parade which is another musical, another Busby Berklee musical, we're gonna talk about Busby Berklee, and an influential film like Gold Diggers of 1933 that kind of changed, uh had a huge impact on movie musicals.
SVW: And in both are musicals in the sense that all the music takes placeon stage in front of audiences. It's not where characters spontaneously break out into song. All the music is actually a part of a play within the movie.
DH: Yeah, well, it's supposed to be on a stage, right? But what makes these movies great, unlike earlier musicals in the early days of Hollywood, is they don't look stagey at all. They look like cinema.
SVW: Exactly. In fact, that was one of the things that in Gold Diggers, I really that's where my enjoyment grew when I when I understood that. Wait a minute. There's no way that all this choreography would be happening on a stage, a small stage in a theater, modest theater in New York City.This is a movie set.
DH: Yes, and that's how Busby Berklee changed movie histories and saved the movie musical. So we're going to talk about pre-code movies in this and the next couple shows. And I think we're going to, I think we've decided to do a couple of movies in each show. So after we talk about Gold Diggers of 1933 today, we're going to also talk about The Thin Man, which was one of Hollywood's first blockbuster movie franchises. There were six of them, but the first one wasinMay of 1934, which made it pre-code. So pre-code refers to movies made before the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code. And that period is usually talked about as from 1930 till literally July 1934. And the reason why they talk about it in that period is the production code itself, which is basically sort of censorship rules about what could and could not be allowed in movies. It was created in 1930, but it was not enforced at all until July of 1934. So any movie made before July of 1934, and we're really talking about the early sound movies, they weren't enforcing it. And the movies of that period, that kind of four- or five-year period, are famous now for their kind of...daringness and breaking the rules and doing things that became shocking and were not allowed at all. Once the production code started from 1934 all the way until the late 1960's
SVW: And inthe thing that I always remember hearing about uh after the code was put into place was that a couple could not be on a bed together that maybe one could be on a bed and then the other person may be sitting awkwardly on it or maybe not you not being on the bed at all.
DH: Yeah, and then there were all kinds of rules about what, certainly about the way appearance. People could not, you couldn't have people dressed in revealing ways. And pre-code movies are famous for women in particular wearing, know, negligées and looking,just stuff that wasn't allowed once the code started. And then crimes, criminality, there's various things that all became, and it's funny is the public in general didn't have a problem with pre-code movies.It was more a response to certain groups in society, organized groups that were trying to censor the movies, were trying to get laws passed. And so Hollywood set up its own code. And once they started to enforce it, they made all the movies conform to it.
SVW: Yeah, in society and in certain areas of society thinking that movies are basically a sinful thing.
DH: Which has been a criticism of movies since the beginning.
SVW: And in the pre-code films,we're used to at this point having very explicit or graphic sexual content in movies. So we might look at the sexual content within the pre-code films as not being thatrisqué, but for the time, things were risqué.
DH: By today's rating system, I doubt there would be any movie made in the pre-code period from 30 to34 that would get a rating beyond PG-13. Most would be PG, many would be G, but they wouldn't, you know, our standards have changed now. Anyway, Gold Diggers of 1933 is an iconic example of pre-code filmmaking. And it's truly a type of movie that no longer exists. I mean, there's not a movie like this anymore. Actually, this one is really like three movies rolled into one. It's a farcical romantic comedy, it's a musical, and it's a social message picture about the Great Depression.It seems like you'd be asking for trouble trying to combine all those things in a 197 minute movie.
SVW: And alsopost-World War I,there's aspects of oh soldiers who served in the Great War.
DH: Right, that's the message.The famous song that ends the movie is called Remember My Forgotten Man and it's about people suffering in the depression. But a lot of, they're also shown some of those forgotten people who are out of work and struggling are veterans of World War I. Anyway, Gold Diggers, it's a really simple story, right? Like many of these Busby Berklee musicals, these really interesting musicals that happen in 33, 34, the story revolves around a bunch of song and dance singers and dancers who are trying to get a show produced. So it's the behind the scenes.So…the first movie that Busby Berklee was involved in was uh 42nd Street. Then there was Footlight Parade, then there's this one. They're all about performers putting on a musical. And then this one has this subplotof couple that wants to get married and then the rich brother who wants to stop one from getting married. So then the so-called “gold diggers” who are after their money take them on a ride to try and scam them out of their money. And then it all just ends with fun music.
SVW: Well, and in fact, it's two friends of the bride to be the fiancé who initially they're not there. The scamming seems to be sort of a side benefit for them. They just want to
Fool the brother and his friend To make sure that they don't interrupt this marriage that's gonna happen.
DH: Right and so this big chunk of the movie is basically this kind of farcical comedy right these two guys from the city older men, especially one of them going out with these two chorus girls who are Misrepresenting themselves one of them. They completely think is a completely different person than she is, and the other one is just she's the true gold digger. She's taking this guy for a ride and trying to convince him she loves him, but she just wants his money, which actually he probably suspects anyway he doesn't mind because he's getting to go out with a beautiful chorus girl. The movie, the director of the movie is credited as Mervyn LeRoy, who directed many pre-code films, is a really prodigious director of pre-code cinema. Little Caesar, I Was a Fugitive on a Chain Gang, lots of great movies. He directs thecomic scenes, the acted scenes, and Busby Berklee, who we've mentioned, his credit in this movie, as well as in Footlight Parade, 42nd Street, he's credited as, quote, numbers created and directed by. So basically, he directed the musical numbers, which are song, dance, and a really spectacular kind of photography,almost like animation. Busby Berklee was this guy who,he had no formal training in choreography. He learned it apparently as a soldier in World War I. learned how to, part of his job wascreating formations for soldiers.But then he learned after the war, he got work and started working in musicals like On Stage. And this guy saved the movie musical. Obviously, what happened when sound started in movies? The very first sound movie is The Jazz Singer. It's musical, right? It's a guy singing, Al Jolson. And it was an obvious choice. I mean, when you get sound in movies, you finally can have dialogue, you can have talking, but you can also, you know, if you can't figure out a story, if you can't figure out a good story to write, it's easy to just do music. And so there were tons of musicals in the early, the late 20s into the 30s. And they were mostly just sort of like musical reviews. They had very little interesting story to them. And they were very stagey. almost is like, well, we're just going to do what they do on Broadway, but we'll do it on movies. So that you'd have these like lockdown shots that look like you were just sitting in the 12th row and an occasional cutaway. Berklee was given total creative freedom by Warner Brothers. And he shot movie, shot song and dance. like it was a movie.
SVW: And the scenes are spectacular in terms of as a panorama.
DH: Yeah, so it's not even, mean, you know, just to name what he did. mean, Berklee introduced, he started, he wasn't like, we're not just going to put people on stage and have them sing and tap dance. We're going to use tracking shots, crane shots, crazy angles, high angles, low angles.His ideas were too big for the space he was working in. There's a story that he literally had to drill a hole in the top of one of Warner Brothers sound stages. And those things are like, gotta be 50 feet high, right? They're tall, big, big spaces, but it wasn't big enough. He needed the camera higher.He used massive exotic sets. He cut to closeups. He had used huge numbers of dances. And then he did this stuff with the dances that was it almost doesn't look like dance anymore. It's more like a special effect. How would you describe the the kaleidoscopic effects that you see it is in his movie
SVW: Just like what you're sayingit's all it's like an analog version of something that would be a digital you know art creation today. There's the dance sequence in here in this film where it it progresses it evolves during the course of the dance until finally all these dancers have violins and then all of a sudden the violins have thesealmostLED lights that are around them. It was neon. And then all of a sudden the whole set goes dark and all you do, all you see is the neon, the neon light and how it's moving around and how it's formed. He uses the choreography, the light,the angles and everything to create mosaics of movement where the dancers become something that's not human. They're flowers.
DH: They look right. I mean, he became, there was a revival of Berklee in the 60s when people were altering their consciousness because his stuff is very trippy looking and it's just amazing to look at. And no one has ever done what he's done anywhere close since. You see musicals, even expensive musical movies now, they'll do some pretty interesting stuff and a lot of it is influenced by Berklee but never have I seen anything on the scale of what Busby Berklee did.
SVW: And in this film, the very first scene is a musical number. So it begins with one of these great choreographed sequences before it even gets into the plot.
DH: But what's cool about it is the very first shot of the movie is a tight close-up of Ginger Rogers singing a song. And then it cuts to the second shot, cuts a little wider on her, and then the camera pans right or tracks right.
from one chorus girl to another. This is one of the really cool things he did. In every one of his movies, there's a sort of parade of faces where he shows the chorus girls. gives them, it's very democratic. He gives all the, many, many of these girls who have no lines and are just part of this, you know, chorus, creating this visual and sound effect. He gives them closeups.And he takes his camera right into the middle of them when they're doing some kind of you know, uh whether it's like you said, making a flower effect, whether they're in a pool, a giant pool of water, there's all kinds of things in his movies. And he'll take the camera right in, so it's sort of like he's showing us how they're doing it.
SVW: And in fact, he even introduces in some of these sequences wherehe introduces weather. This is supposed to be on a stage in a theater, and yet, all of a sudden, as a viewer, you understand that it's on a soundstage at a studio, but all of a sudden, there's a whole parade of men that are marching and then all of a sudden they're in the rain.
DH: Yeah, and that's in the climactic, the fourth big musical number that ends the movie called Remember My Forgotten Man, which is an amazing, again, piece of choreography and geometric effects, but also is that social message because it's about those forgotten men in The Depression. For fans of pre-code films, I'm going to list the names of the stars in this movie. And if you're not already familiar with pre-code Hollywood, but think you might like to check it out, start watching them and pretty soon you'll know all these names. These names are huge names who are in dozens of pre-code films. Mostly their names would be forgotten today, but the main characters, you'll recognize Ginger Rogers, I mentioned her, but Joan Blondell, Warren William, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Eileen McMahon, Guy Kibbe, and Ned Spark. I'm crazy about all these actors. They're interesting in ways that just actors. It's different than now. Maybe Ruby Keeler I'm not so crazy about what do you think of her?
SVW: Well, who did she play?
DH: She's the one that's the dick pals love interest the one that wants the chorus girl who wants uh Well, she's given the lead and she wants okay married.
SVW: Yeah, she seems like uh just you'resort of your normal romantic lead…
DH: But as an act, you know Ruby Keeler basically can't sing can't dance andshe's okay as an actress.
SVW: Well once in in terms of the plot once things are rolling with this musical and then you have uh hisThe brother coming in trying to break things up at that point Theyou think that these other two are the main characters. They're out of the story.
DH: Yeah, it's all about the two gold diggersand the game that they're playing right and then ultimately with all the films that Busby Berklee was involved with the last 10 to 15 minutes is all aboutthe music and the effects. So let's talk about The Thin Man, because this is very different kind of uh pre-code film.
SVW: Different type of pre-code film, and it's also based onthe original source material is a novel by Dashiell Hammett, one of the great noir crime writers, American crime writers who really created, one of the creators of hard-boiled fiction who wrote the Maltese Falcon, he wrote the original Thin Man novel.
DH: But this movie's not hard boiled at all.
SVW: That's true.mean, Dashiell Hammett wrote wrote like five or six very influential books. It was the Maltese Falcon that was his hard boiled novel.
DH: Right. Which comesseven years after this movie.This is again pre-code and long beforethe film noir that the Maltese Falcon is one of the movies that kicked off. This movie is, you know, it's a murder mystery. Like you said, it's based on Hammett with a married couple are the leads, Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. Nick is, we know he's a former detective, but he's given up being a detective because he's married Nora and she's rich. So they're just like living a life of leisure until he gets drawn in on this,drawn into this murder story.
SVW: And uh they are two characters that if, for myself, being someone who enjoys adult beverages and being around people my life who are into movies and enjoy adult beverages, uh Nick and Nora Charles arereally famous and aside from the detection at being able to drink cocktails morning, noon and night. And it never really seems to affect them.
DH: I mean, Nick is completely drunk this entire movie, he shows it a little bit, but you're right. He goes about his business, he solves the mystery, and this is part of the pre-code aspect of it, um that this sort of like excessive drinking and illegal drinking, right, because it's during the Prohibition, would not have been allowed for the main characters once the code started. Now I guess they must have given him a pass on the Thin Man series, because that became a hugely successful franchise, and five of the six are after the code starts, right? They're in the mid to late 30s and one or two of the last couple, I think, are in the 40s. And Nick and Nora are always drinking.
SVW: They're always drinking cocktails. Maybe in the later films, they kind of pulled back onshowing the effects of the alcohol. Maybe that's...
DH: Maybe more so, yeah. So, yeah.
SVW: And they're very witty.The repartee between the two of them is nonstop.
DH: Yeah, the dialogue is just terrific. And they were really popular, maybe because they play a married couple. They're very smart, very witty. You tell they really love each other, and it's very romantic, and they're married. Which is, you know, not the common thing in movies, even now, right? You don't play up romance too much once a couple's married. It's usually among couples that are dating or whatever. And they were just so popular. You don't see this anymore either, do you, Scott? How many times, you may see a couple that you think are really great in a movie together. I don't know, I'm thinking say like Jennifer Lawrence and what's his name, Bradley Cooper, right? They've done a couple movies together, but they're not gonna do 14 movies together playing romantic couples. Now six of them are thin man movies with Powell and Loy, but they did a bunch of others where theywere just, that's a phenomena really of the golden age of Hollywood, maybe especially of like the 30s, where a couple was so popular with movies that the studios who made so many more movies then so much faster, they just make a bunch of movies with that those two actors.
SVW: And I would guess this is just something I'm guessing that there would be the movie going public would think that they are a real couple because there's so the chemistry is so solid on the big screen and yet they were never romantically linked.
DH: Those two were not. That's true. Oh, and there's a third member of their family, Asta. the wire fox terrier, the white wire fox terrier who steals a lot of scenes. It is pre-code, I mean it's right at the end of oh the pre-code era, but there are a lot of double entendres in dialogue. Of course there's this excessive unrepentant drinking, and you might not notice it now, but I mean she's wearing some pretty revealing clothing, which they wouldn't have, they probably changed that in the later Thin Man movies. The look of it is also really amazing, the cinematographer was James Wong Howe, who's one of the great Hollywood cinematographers who worked from the silent era all the way until the 1970s. And for 1934, it's remarkably kind of noirish looking at times.
SVW: Yeah, particularly the sequences and uh the man that they're looking for. There's a man that they're looking for who may or may not be a murder suspect or may have committed a murder. And the sequences in his laboratory, he's a scientist, are very noirish or evenlike a horror movie.
DH: Yeah, well, Nick goes in there at night and all he has is a flashlight. And you just don't see this in movies from the 1930s. There's a couple of shots in there that are basically black and just a little bit of light flashing around. That really didn't become an established technique in Hollywood until the 40s.
SVW: Yeah, this is a movie that I had seendecades ago. I had not seen it in a while.Andright away, when William Powell and Myrna Loy are on the screen together, everything just clicks.
DH: Yeah, it's one of the great examples of movie chemistry. So both these movies, Gold Diggers of 1933 and The Thin Man, I can't emphasize enough. They're both fun and funny movies and worth seeing.
SVW: Worth seeing and if you searchonline you will be able to find some place to stream these.
DH: Thanks, Scott.
SVW: Thank you.
