Busby Berkeley, Dick Powell, The Gibson Girl

DAMES (1934) directed by Ray Enright, choreographed by Busby Berkeley; cinematography by Joan Blondell's husband George Barnes. Songs: “Dames,” “The Girl at the Ironing Board,” “I Only Have Eyes for You”, “Try to See It My Way.” “DAMES differed so little from the previous Berkeley musicals that only an expert can separate it from the others. Composer Harry Warren claims that he and Al Dubin tried to come up with a song in every picture that summed up the whole plot. Berkeley launches into another of his complicated, kaleidoscopic fanciful routines.” (Tony Thomas, The Hollywood Musical, 1975). The plot revolves around reformer Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert) who promises his cousin Horace P. Hemingway (Guy Kibbee) a fortune on condition that Hemingway heads the Ounce Society for the Elevation of American Morals and that he keeps out their young relative, 

Jimmy Higgens (Dick Powell), out of the theatre. Taking a train home, Horace finds himself stranded in a sleeping compartment with chorus girl Mabel Anderson (Joan Blondell) and he gives her money on condition that she keeps the matter quiet. When she reaches New York City, Mabel tries to get into Jimmy’s new Broadway show but he informs her he does not have the money to produce it. She acquires the funds by blackmailing Horace about the train incident. Meanwhile, Jimmy’s girlfriend, Barbara (Ruby Keeler), Horace’s daughter, becomes jealous of his involvement with Mabel and breaks off their engagement. When the fracas orchestrated by Ezra’s hirelings commences, the police arrive and everyone is carted off to jail. Behind bars, Ezra decides he prefers the company of chorus girls to reforming, while Horace must explain the situation to his strait-laced wife Mathilda (ZaSu Pitts), as Jimmy and Barbara become re-engaged. 

This was the fourth of seven Warner Bros. musicals to team Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell and the fourth of them to be directed by Busby Berkeley. “Dames” featured a bevy of blonde chorus girls weaving to and fro in intricate patterns bolstered by trick photography while Powell crooned the lyrics about the joys of gorgeous womanhood. According to Tony Thomas in The Busby Berkeley Book (1973): “By far the most memorable item in Dames is ‘I Only Have Eyes for You.’ One of the best songs ever written for a film, it is sung beautifully by Dick Powell and expertly staged by Berkeley. Dick and Ruby meet in front of a movie theatre, then take a long subway ride during which they fall asleep. As Powell dreams—hordes of girls appear, all wearing Benda masks of Ruby so that an army of Keelers assaults the audience's eye. Each girl, with a board on her back, bends over, and fitting the boards together, a gigantic jigsaw picture of Ruby’s face appears.” 

As in other Berkeley movies, his most spectacular number in Dames is held back for a delirious finale. As Richard Brody in The New Yorker described it, “The title number, a balletic day in the life of a showgirl, gives rise to one of Berkeley’s greatest visual inventions, a white background festooned with dancing girls’ black-clad legs—which rhythmically open and close to yield up a flying wedge of pubic rapture, ending with a black hole—at the end of which is a dancer dressed in baby clothes.  It suggests nothing less than “The Origin of the World.”

Producer Darryl F. Zanuck reteamed director Lloyd Bacon and dance director Busby Berkeley from 42ND STREET (1933), for this expansive musical affair: FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933), which also contains some of Berkeley’s best remembered symmetrical production numbers, all presented in the final portion of the picture: “Honeymoon Hotel” with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler as newlyweds; the two in a woodsy love song “By a Waterfall”; and the finale, “Shanghai Lil,” involving James Cagney and Ruby Keeler in a saucy story within a story, which had both of them singing, tap dancing in military precision steps. Young crooner Scotty Blair (Dick Powell) is soon attracted to secretary Bea Thorn (Ruby Keeler), who proves to be an excellent tap dancer. Scotty romances Bea during rehearsals while brassy actress Nan Prescott (Joan Blondell), who is interested in Chester, is frustrated to see him being vamped by wealthy Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd). 

While FOOTLIGHT PARADE was one of Warner Bros.’ most costly Busby Berkeley musicals, it met with mixed critical reception. The New York Herald Tribune enthused, “FOOTLIGHT PARADE is elaborate, well acted and fantastically extravagant in its chorus numbers." The Los Angeles Times reported, “This Warner Brothers feature is just about the biggest song, dance and story picture to date and I would hesitate to name any in its class for spectacular numbers. It’s easy to figure this as a sensational hit.” Originally, when FOOTLIGHT PARADE went into production, Dick Powell was suffering from a throat problem and Stanley Smith was brought in to replace him, but Powell recovered in time to join the cast, thus allowing for the third screen teaming of Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. The latter was not initially intended to sing in the “Shanghai Lil” number; it had been planned for Renee Whitney (seen in the film as Cynthia Kent), but at the last minute it was decided to have Keeler perform in the interlude. 

Credited with revitalizing the popularity of the movie musical, 42ND STREET is one of the best musicals in the history of the genre. With its adult, fast-paced plot, a quartet of sparkling songs by Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and an appealing cast, 42ND STREET remains a viewing delight no matter how many times it is watched (even in its computerized color version). Ace Broadway producer Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter), in failing health, is set to put on his greatest musical (Pretty Lady), a lavish affair starring veteran actress Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels). Marsh has to deal with the temperamental star, her “backer,” Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee), and her new boyfriend, Pat Denning (George Brent). Marsh also has troubles trying to coach the show’s ingenue, Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler), who is falling in love with leading man Billy Lawler (Dick Powell), while a member of the chorus, Ann “Anytime Annie” Lowell (Ginger Rogers), keeps pushing for a bigger part in the proceedings. The part goes to Peggy, who after much coaching from Marsh, goes forth to perform, with the director commanding her, “You’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star.” Peggy does just that and helps to make the show a hit. 

Peggy and Billy rejoice together. The film launched Dick Powell as one of filmdom’s most popular singers of the 1930s. It was also the beginning of Ruby Keeler’s movie hoofing career, which included nine musicals at the studio. Powell and Keeler were made for each other, they oozed pure chemistry together onscreen. 42ND STREET received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Sound. In Gold Diggers of 1933, composer Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) uses his family’s fortune to back a Broadway show for producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) and the production gives work to needy showgirls Carol King (Joan Blondell), Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon), Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler) and Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers). The girls are all focused on snaring millionaire husbands and when Brad’s conservative brother, J. Lawrence Bradford (Warren William), learns of his brother’s folly he rushes to New York City. Stuffy Lawrence encounters Carol and is convinced she is out to vamp Brad, who really is in love with Polly. 

While Berkeley’s dance extravaganzas of the early 1930s would seem to be impossible anywhere but on the movie screen, they in fact did have origins dating back to 19th century stage spectacles. They evolved from the revues that had been popular on Broadway in the 1910s and 1920s. Revues were not a series of completely unrelated acts, like in a vaudeville show, but a series of musical and comedy specialties structured around a loosely defining theme. There were no overhead views, but Berkeley used stairs and platforms to alter the space on stage, and in Earl Carroll Vanities of 1928 he used an optical device called the “Vanities Votaphonevitotone” to project enlargements of one chorus girl’s face at a time on a screen. At MGM, he had giant turntables in one of his Eddie Cantor movies, but they didn’t revolve. Berkeley was told if he wanted revolving turntables, he would have to go to another studio, and he decamped to Warners.

Toby Wing was one of Berkeley’s favorite chorus girls. Dick Powell sings “I’m Young and Healthy” to her. Berkeley showed a gaggle of executives what his plans were for “Young and Healthy”: “I staged this with three revolving platforms, and I explained to Zanuck that I couldn’t show him exactly what he would see on the screen because I planned to shoot it in cuts. I outlined the continuity for him and showed him my camera placements, then I had Dick Powell and the boys and girls go through the numbers in sections. Zanuck and the others seemed very pleased with the performance and the staging I had planned; he turned to the executives who were with him and said, ‘Give Berkeley whatever he wants in the way of sets, props, costumes. Anyhthing, he wants, he can have.’”James Sanders notes in Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, “One story has Darryl Zanuck coming onto the stage during the production of 42nd Street and finding the director in the rafters, looking at the stage floor. ‘What the hell are you doing up there?’ Zanuck shouted. ‘You can’t take the audience up there!’ ‘I know,’ Berkeley replied, ‘but I’d like to. It’s pretty up here.'” 

For Gold Diggers of 1933, he'd designed a crane that ran on dual tracks; it went both up and down as well as gliding back and forth. Sixty feet off the ground seemed not quite high enough, and he had holes cut in the studio roof to take his camera still higher. These numbers were rehearsed and rehearsed until they were perfect. Gold Diggers of 1933 embraces newly elected FDR’s New Deal, and in the pairing of innocents Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler looks forward to economic and spiritual rebirth. Busby Berkeley was an alcoholic, which became, after 1935, more of a handicap. He was hospitalized after a suicide attempt in July 1946. He was forgotten until his films began to be rediscovered as “camp” in the 1960s. —THE GREAT HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL PICTURES (2016) by James Robert Parish 

The Gibson Girls became the first 20th century standard of female beauty and style. Named after Charles Dana Gibson, a Life Magazine illustrator, the Gibson Girl was essentially an idealized brainy pin-up who would pave the way for the flapper in the Roaring 1920s. Gibson depicted the Gibson Girl as an equal and sometimes teasing companion to men. She was also sexually dominant, for example shown literally examining men under a magnifying glass, or, in a breezy manner, crushing them under her feet. Next to the beauty of a Gibson Girl, men often appeared as simpletons or bumblers; and even men with handsome physiques or great wealth alone could not provide total satisfaction to her. Gibson illustrated men so captivated that they would follow her anywhere, attempting to fulfill any of her desires. Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

Although Dick Powell's first directorial venture was uncredited at the time in the gritty noir Cry Danger (1951) by Robert Parrish, Rhonda Fleming, talking with Eddie Muller from the Film Noir Foundation, stated that Dick Powell had actually directed Cry Danger. Even in its streamlined construction, Cry Danger displays all the things that make noir the legendary film genre that it is, all the while raising the same philosophical questions that have come to be expected of the noir style, be it in literature or in film. In 2011, at the behest of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Festival of Preservation, with funding provided by the Film Noir Foundation, Cry Danger was given a sterling digital transfer by Olive Films, bringing to life 60-year-old celluloid that remained a taut, no-frills film noir of the old school, drenched in simple noir elegance. Cry Danger has one thing that many noirs don't—an acrid sense of humor. As Rocky Mulloy, Powell is the classic tough-guy, stone-faced noir man, one who rattles off dark threats as easily as he does witty quips. To a bartender after tipping him: “I got that money from a typhoid carrier”; to a woman that rebukes him after a failed flirtation: “Someday, Alice, you and I are gonna have a nice long talk. And you’ll really do some talking”. Source: popmatters.com

Cry Danger, a relatively little-known film noir is an absolute treat, combining a sharp, witty script, tremendously atmospheric L.A. location shooting, and a top-drawer cast. Co-star Richard Erdman said at the UCLA Film Festival that when he first went to meet Dick Powell, whose production company was involved in making the film, Powell asked him what he thought of the script and of his role. Erdman said "It's one of the best parts." Powell told Erdman he was right and then asked, "How can we help you?" Erdman said that's how Powell conducted himself during the making of the entire film, always supportive and generous. Dick Powell re-invented his screen persona as a world-weary, acid-tongued noir deadpan guy. He was more likely to deliver a devastating put-down than a gun-butt or upper-cut. In Cry Danger, Powell pushes this persona to its reasonable limits. At times, as the ex-convict Rocky Mulloy, he seems more like a displaced stand-up comedian than an underworld denizen, and he nails it in this movie. Rocky Mulloy is among the biggest sour-pusses in film noir. And Powell plays him flat as pavement, and twice as hard. Source: filmnoiroftheweek.com

Eddie Muller: Dan Duryea is my favorite noir weasel of all time. But the noir icon who is the most unlikely of noir icons and yet still one of my favorites is Dick Powell. By the time he’s making Cry Danger, he has perfected his technique, because his performance in Cry Danger is as good a laconic, wise-cracking, tough guy performance as anybody has given in film noir. Dick Powell has become a very important figure in relation to the work of the Film Noir Foundation. He wanted to be independent, he wanted to cut the studio out of the equation because he was tired of the studios overlooking him for parts that he wanted to play, like Double Indemnity. He finally said, “Well, the hell with them, if they’re not going to give me the parts, I’m going to produce the films myself and star in them.” And so he made Pitfall, Cornered, Cry Danger and Split Second which he directed and produced. Source https://parallax-view.org

Dick Powell's first official debut as director Split Second (1953) was a smash success. Craig Butler wrote: "Not as well known as it should be but a favorite of many who know it, Split Second is an incredibly tense film noir-cum-atomic bomb flick that marked an auspicious directorial debut for Dick Powell who is aided by the first rate black and white cinematography of Nick Musuraca." In 1954, Powell had in mind to film a story about the fabled Gibson Girl, starring Jane Russell. June Allyson joked saying: "If he cast me, it would be a very different kind of movie. I have a feeling Richard fancies Jane Russell for the part." [This project would be thwarted by Howard Hughes, who assigned Powell to direct the disastrous The Conqueror two years later.]

The Powells don't gad all over the place. It's not the way her predecessor Joan Blondell, in her brash manner, tells it to gullible ears, but June Allyson certainly has made Dick Powell one of the best husbands in town. I asked June if she had ever given an off-screen performance worthy of note. She took her time and replied: "There was one, Sheilah, I don't know if it was one of my best, but it was certainly the most difficult performance I've ever given. It's over two years now, and it was when Richard was so ill. The doctors had told me that Richard probably had suffered an allergic reaction to penicillin after having caught pneumonia. At 4 in the morning the hospital called me to come over. I felt as though my heart would burst, but every time Richard opened his eyes, I managed to smile and tell him everything would be allright. Richard had told me how much those moments meant to him, so I bottled up the tears during my stay at the hospital. When he recovered and went back home, I must have cried buckets that day. You can do anything if you love someone enough." —Sheilah Graham for Photoplay magazine (November 1952, and August 1955)

Joan Blondell talks about her three husbands in the last two chapters of her alleged biography Center Door Fancy, and she disparages the three, although there are different degrees of grievance against her partners. She critizices her first husband George Barnes (who started as a still photographer for Thomas H. Ince, the man who died on Hearst' yatch) for being remote and not wanting children. Later, after divorcing him, she finds out he suffered a terrible childhood that left him deeply scarred. Barnes actually married eight times and had four kids, one with Joan (Norman S. Powell) who would be adopted legally by her second husband, Dick Powell. The most baffling reproachments against the collected crooner are quite contradictory. For example it's clear she was looking for security with Powell, who was a practical and caring family man. In fact, she leads Jim (Powell) to break up with May Gould (Mary Brian) and acts quite the seductress when she recounts: "Jim was waiting for me. I had on a white piqué sheath that made my skin tan and my hair very light. "You look pretty dawgone pretty," Jim said admiringly. "It'll be fun to make that musical together," I said to him. Jim laughed: "But I don't get you in the finale. Cagney does." 

"Try not to suffer too much, Jim. After all, you've got me off-screen, you know?" "Really?" Jim asked seriously, slowing the car down. I fidgeted for my cigarettes, trying to hide my embarrassment and asked Jim for his lighter. We didn't speak for several blocks. Jim suddenly asked me: "Do you still love David?" She says no. Her intimate relationship with Powell starts at this moment, when both share a kiss, and she abandons George Barnes, favoring the secure arms of Dick Powell, who had sent her a 1000$ check for her son's childbirth. She expresses doubts to Sally (Glenda Farrell) about her true feelings towards Jim, saying "he's too nice to hurt." They marry, spending their honeymoon at the Santa Paula yatch, and they consummate their marriage. She seems to find Powell charming and even a bit daring when he gives a playful whack on her behind. Also, she writes: "He smiled and put his hands on my shoulders. He says (naughtily): 'I'm sure that we didn't do it the last few nights because your eyes would look glassy now'." Nora (Joan) feigns not knowing: "Glassy?" "From doing it too much!," Powell jokingly says. Nora rolls her eyes and tells to herself: "What did I get into?" Supposedly she was a sex enthusiast and later thinks of Powell as mechanical in bed, but it sure doesn't look like that from her initial account during their honeymoon. 

When Nora bumps into a table playing with her son and bruises her leg, Jim says worried: "People will say I did some weird sex thing to you, and I can't have that." So he sounds sensible and pretty knowledgeable of sexual matters. Powell wasn't just a hick from Arkansas, he was a very intelligent, amiable man and obviously he had sex-appeal. It's true that Powell was conservative politically and Blondell was a Democrat, and she tries to exploit this gap too, trying to characterize Powell as racist and anti-semite. She has Powell ranting: "Damned Jews run this business! Damned niggers get some fancy salaries now. The goddamned government is killing us with taxes! I've got to change agents, the son of a bitch does nothing for his ten percent." She tries so hard to make an impression of Dick Powell as Nixon is not even funny. In the last chapter, Joan (Nora) acknowledges that Dick Powell and Ronald Colman (a friend of Barnes) drew up a pension fund for Joan through Lloyds of London, which would allow her to retire at the age of 47. "It's with Lloys of London and when I'm 47, I'll get money enought to live on the rest of my life," she boasts to Mike Todd. And don't get me started on her obsession towards her eternal rival, the sweet and easygoing June Allyson. Ironically, Joan (Nora) barely talks of her terrible fights with her third husband Mike Todd, who was pathologically jealous and threatened with killing her if she ever cheated with him. What a prize she got! Source: medium.com