42nd Street (1933)

A producer puts on what may be his last Broadway show and, at the last moment, a chorus girl has to replace the star.

Director:

Lloyd Bacon

Writers:

Rian James (screen play), James Seymour (screen play)

Stars:

Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 1 win.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Warner Baxter	...	Julian Marsh
Bebe Daniels	...	Dorothy Brock
George Brent	...	Pat Denning
Ruby Keeler	...	Peggy Sawyer
Guy Kibbee	...	Abner Dillon
Una Merkel	...	Lorraine Fleming
Ginger Rogers	...	Ann Lowell
Ned Sparks	...	Thomas Barry
Dick Powell	...	Billy Lawler
Allen Jenkins	...	Mac Elroy
Edward J. Nugent	...	Terry
Robert McWade	...	Jones
George E. Stone	...	Andy Lee

Storyline

Renowned Broadway producer/director Julian Marsh is hired to put together a new musical revue. It's being financed by Abner Dillon to provide a starring vehicle for his girlfriend, songstress Dorothy Brock. Marsh, who is quite ill, is a difficult task master working long hours and continually pushing the cast to do better. When Brock breaks her ankle one of the chorus girls, Peggy Sawyer, gets her big chance to be the star. She also finds romance along the way.

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Plot Keywords:

chorus girl | gala premiere | chorus line | director | song | 

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Taglines:

OK. Say, Jones and Barry are doin' a show! - That's great. Jones and Barry are doin' a show.

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Genres:

Comedy | Musical | Romance

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

11 March 1933 (USA)

Also Known As:

Forty-Second Street

Filming Locations:

Stage 2, Vitagraph Studios - 4151 Prospect Avenue, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$439,000 (estimated)

Gross:

$2,300,000 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

89 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

In the original novel by Bradford Ropes, director Julian Marsh is gay.

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Goofs

The same drinking glass (water) is used throughout the movie. The glass is first seen during the rehearsals when Peggy faints. The same glass then pops up again in Pat Denning's home/apartment when he uses it for his lapel flower/button hole, then again the exact same glass appears in Julian Marsh's hotel room, but this time after the company have moved on to Philadelphia.

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Quotes

Julian Marsh: Sawyer, you listen to me, and you listen hard. Two hundred people, two hundred jobs, two hundred thousand dollars, five weeks of grind and blood and sweat depend upon you. It's the lives of all these people who've worked with you. You've got to go on, and you've got to give and give and give. They've got to like you. Got to. Do you understand? You can't fall down. You can't because your future's in it, my future and everything all of us have is staked on you. All right, now I'm through, but you...

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Connections

Referenced in The Cinema Snob: At Long Last Love (2014)

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Soundtracks

Pretty Lady
(1932) (uncredited)
Music by Harry Warren
Fast dance number danced by chorus girls throughout picture

User Reviews

the movie that created the clichés

Most of the negative comments posted below seem to be from people who either just don't like musicals or who are unaware that all the "cliches" in this movie were essentially invented by "42nd Street." It's sort of like complaining that Shakespeare is full of quotations. This movie is absolutely brilliant, which is why it's been imitated endlessly for the last seven decades.

Sure, Keeler's not the end-all of tap dancing, but she fits the bill as an ingénue and is generally amiable and perky. The plot is predictable, but only because we've seen it duplicated so often. If you hadn't seen the same sort of thing a million times, you'd notice that it's tightly assembled and even somewhat suspenseful. The show is full of first-rate comic asides, even if some of the material is dated by obsolete slang and contemporary pop culture references.

And do people still take the trouble to complain that Busby Berkeley's dance numbers couldn't have been seen properly by the audience in the theater? That's like complaining that an ape couldn't really grow to be as large as King Kong. The whole point is that it's a movie, and Berkeley is able to do things that can't happen in the real world. Hence the transformation of background settings while the camera is close up on an actress's face. There isn't even such a thing as a close-up in a stage production. Carping that a '30's musical isn't realistic enough is like complaining that Venus couldn't actually have been born out of a clamshell.

In any case, this is one of the great '30s musicals... and one of the great Hollywood movies of all time. If you don't like the genre, then so be it. It always amazes me that so many film fans strongly prefer "Singin' in the Rain" to such predecessors as "42nd Street," "Dames," "Top Hat," "Swing Time," etc., when "Singin' in the Rain" is simply an homage to the '30s musical and generates quite little fresh material of its own. Mind you, it's a brilliantly executed homage, and it arguably benefits from its overt tongue-in-cheek attitude, but I can't help thinking many are simply swayed by the fact that it's in color (really good Technicolor) and has clearer sound quality than its '30s predecessors. Either way, you need to see and appreciate the original movie musicals before you can really understand what "Singin' in the Rain" was about... just as you should see some Hong Kong action flicks and blacksploitation films to get what's going on in "Pulp Fiction."

But I digress. See "42nd Street," and try to keep an open mind. Just because it's old is not a reason to assume that the people who made it didn't know their business extremely well.