Broadway-Show

Dick Powell and the music of Warren and Dubin is reason enough to watch this otherwise average musical. Busby Berkley's choreography is an aquired taste - I prefer the elegance of Hermes Pan/Fred Astaire and the expert tapping of George Murphy and Eleanor Powell, or even the highly entertaining Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Shirley Temple duets. But these all came later than DAMES and Berkley's eye-candy style is highly entertaining and, sometimes, memorable.

I never thought Ruby Keeler was terribly talented and her lack of acting ability does show, especially in the company of such accomplished players as Joan Blondell, Powell, Hugh Herbert, and Guy Kibbee. Keeler's acting is passable, if a bit clumsy, and I find her dancing adequate. (She was called, in some 1930s circles, "The Stomper" for her heavy-footed tapping.)

What makes this film a winner is the music. The title song is wonderful and the splendid "I Only Have Eyes For You" is one of the best songs ever written for a movie. That song is fully performed twice, once about midway into the film and, differently, near the end. The later performance is fine, the former one of the screen's greatest musical numbers. Powell sings it with his beautiful high tenor and Berkley provides probably his best ever production. I dare the viewer to not get goose bumps when watching this.

Take away the music and Busby Berkley and you're left with not much except a (mostly) great cast. I give "DAMES" my highest rating for the music and production numbers and a solid middle ranking for the plot. One could do a lot worse than spend 90 minutes with DAMES.

...from Warner Brothers and directors Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley. Ultra-wealthy Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert) promises to bequeath $10 million to his relatives Horace (Guy Kibbee), Mathilda (Zasu Pitts), and Barbara (Ruby Keeler), as long as they live a "just and moral life", which includes no show business. Barbara's boyfriend and distant cousin Jimmy (Dick Powell) wants to put on a big musical show, and he teams with brassy showgirl Mabel (Joan Blondell) to make it happen, even if Ezra won't approve.

The story is silly, the characters are one-dimensional, and it takes a long time to get to the musical numbers. The song "I Only Have Eyes for You" has become a true standard, although the dance number here features chorus girls wearing Ruby Keeler masks and it gets kind of disquieting. Blondell has an oddball number singing to men's underwear, while the title number features a smirking Powell espousing the virtues of dames. This wasn't bad, and probably lots of the deficiencies were caused by the production code, which began to be enforced just a month before this film was released.

Warner Bros. musical comedies from the 1930s tend to be lightweight romps known for their ensemble casts, their silly gags, and of course the imaginative choreography of Busby Berkeley.

In DAMES (1934), Hugh Herbert is an eccentric millionaire who promises cousin-in-law Guy Kibbee ten million dollars if he and his family (wife ZaSu Pitts and daughter Ruby Keeler) prove to be of the utmost moral standards. He even organizes a committee to raise morality in the cesspool that is New York City by abolishing things like actors and the theatre.

Of course, in a movie like this, somebody's gonna want to put on a show, and that somebody is Dick Powell, actor/songwriter and the black sheep of Herbert's family tree. Powell and Keeler are in love, but it's okay because they're only thirteenth cousins or whatever.

With ten million dollars on the line, Kibbee and Pitts can't afford to make a wrong impression when Herbert comes to stay with them. Little do they know that their daughter is part of Powell's "obscene" theatre troupe. Here ZaSu Pitts is a prudish, disapproving housewife, which is a bit of a departure from her usual "oh, dear..." characterizations. Kibbee is great as always, this time faced with catastrophic scandal when he unexpectedly finds the alluring Joan Blondell in his bed.

Ah, Joan Blondell. Joan Blondell is always terrific and she steals the show this time as a hard-up actress with a genius for blackmail. She's a hoot in her scenes with Kibbee and she blows her co-stars off the screen the minute she enters a scene.

Personally, I've never been a big fan of Ruby Keeler, but she stars in a lot of these Warner Bros. musicals. She's sweet enough as the love interest, although she lacks personality and speaks with a distracting accent.

The cast is solid all around and there's some great comedy in the script. My favorite running gag is the character of Herbert's perpetually drowsy bodyguard (played by Arthur Vinton). And Herbert is always referring to his sin-eradicating foundation by its unwieldy abbreviation "the O. F. for the E. of the A. M."

DAMES follows the pattern laid out in earlier WB musicals like GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933) and FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933) of back-loading Berkeley's musical numbers in a half-hour block at the end of the film. Berkeley's choreography is creative as always, but not as memorable as his earlier work.

In "The Girl at the Ironing Board" Joan Blondell dances with a bunch of laundry hung out to dry. (Did somebody say "puppeteered long johns"?) "Dames" is a celebration of feminine beauty and a trippy kaleidoscopic showcase of dozens of anonymous peroxide-haired chorus girls.

The most enduring hit from DAMES is "I Only Have Eyes For You" (later popularized in a doo-wop version by The Flamingos), which is staged as a nonsensical, dream-like number featuring giant cut-outs of Ruby Keeler's face.

A minor quibble that I have with these Busby Berkeley movies is that the numbers are often presented in-story as stage productions, while Berkeley's choreography is so purely cinematic (using camera tricks and movements) as to be completely impossible to present on stage. Berkeley's job was to wow the cinema-goers, obviously, and not the fictitious people attending Dick Powell's opening night. But it's still an interesting point. When the director cuts to a shot of the theatre audience applauding, I know they couldn't have seen the same thing I saw.

I tend to be harsh on these Busby Berkeley/Warner Bros. musicals, but while DAMES has its weaknesses, it's a fun romp with a great cast. Joan Blondell is reason enough the see this film and Berkeley's crazy ideas are always fascinating.

6.5/10

Advertised by Warners as Gold Diggers for '34, it's another film in that backstage cycle that traces the efforts of youth restless with creativity to seduce with love cynical hearts hardened by money and rigid morals. It is again a film about the makings of a show, the show we're meant to be watching.

So very much in line with Gold Diggers '33 and Footlight Parade, except a little less wondrous this time, a little less seductive in all the circumstances surrounding the stage, the burlesque of trials and tribulations in fighting to stage a vision.

But it is again Busby Berkeley who is staging the vision that we have come to see. So once more an astonishing panorama of Hollywood dazzle, but with all the frill and gaudiness of the musical working beneath the dazzle to address the circumstances of its making; so we have a number where a woman romances empty shirts on a hangwire but which are animated by invisible strings from above, implying the fates that seem to be in control, another number with the author of the whole thing singing about the face that inspired the vision with the ardor of love, and the final number addressing us from our position as viewers. Of course we have come to be seduced by the dames, nothing else mattered.

The show is so intoxicating that those cynical hearts watching from the balcony are completely soused by the end of it!

So what was from the outset seemingly controlled by the fates, by a woman chancing to sleep on the wrong bed in a train compartment, is gradually revealed to have been shaped all this time around a center with clearly reflected purpose; the author's effort to announce his passion for music and this woman he sings about, and so approach within his art the face behind the cardboard image of social appearances, as the middle number reveals.

As with the other films in this cycle, even if a little less accomplished, it is overall more than potent stuff on the ardor of a loving heart to transform anxieties of a chaotic modern life that we also know into a pattern that seduces love out of both participants and viewers.

It is enjoyable to watch, brisk with dance, the disposition dreamy, but with the small hint of a shadow at the heart of this dream. The choreography maps to the contours of that internal heart wishing to beat truthfully.

Busby fans have to wait until the last part for their guy to do his stuff. But then it's a real eye-popper. The dames keep comin' at yah one after another, blondes, brunettes, and in- betweens. What a line-up of 30's cuties. Then there's Berkeley's trademark: feminine geometry. That's enough to give Freud analytic overload and others x-rated dreams. Good thing those fluid figures were too abstract for the censors to erase. Speaking of blue- noses, '34 was the first year of Code enforcement. So, wouldn't be surprised the plot was jabbing at our watchdogs of public morality. After all, ridding the city of stage shows is the millionaire's (Hugh Herbert) favorite hobby. It's a winning cast, even if Powell mugs it up faster than a Ferrari's RPM's. True, Keeler's hoofing may be on the clunky side, still she's got the sweetest smile this side of Hollywood and Vine. Too bad the real dame, Blondell, was hobbled by six months of motherly gestation. Working her camera angles must have been a real challenge. I know a lot of folks don't especially like these antique concoctions. But in my book, they're inspired combinations of artistry, pizazz, and sheer Hollywood hokum.