Dames

Millionaire Hugh Herbert leads a moral crusade against musical shows he deems objectionable. But his young relatives Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are both actors and intend to put on a show of their own. They also date but, before you are grossed out, we're told they're 13th cousins. Anyway, the plot is incidental. What we really want to see are those wonderful Busby Berkeley musical numbers, which are all great fun.

Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are likable leads. Neither strains their acting muscles. Powell sings several pleasant tunes. Joan Blondell, not surprisingly, steals the show as the sexy wisecracking dame she always played so well. Hugh Herbert is an acquired taste. I have watched movies where I enjoyed him and watched movies where I couldn't wait for him to go away. His primary shtick was to fidget with his fingers and mumble a lot, frequently throwing in a 'woo hoo.' It could get old fast. Thankfully here he resists using many of his usual idiosyncrasies (whether that's his choice or the director, I don't know). Because of this, I thought Dames had one of Herbert's better roles. There's more fine comedic support from Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts, and Leila Bennett. It's a fun movie. Not the best of the Warner Bros musicals but a good one.

...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.

A wonderful musical comedy, fitting in well with 42nd Street, Golddiggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, and Golddiggers of 1935. Of the five, I would place this one tied for second, behind Golddiggers of 1933, equal to Footlight Parade, and just a hair better than 42nd Street. If you have seen none of them it would be good to start with this one. Then I would go to 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, saving the masterpiece Golddiggers of 33 for last. (Golddiggers of 1935 is quite a bit inferior.)

The first strong point is the excellent comedic plot, better than that in 42nd Street, about the same as Footlght Parade. Guy Kibbe is wonderful as always, Hugh Herbert and Zasu Pitts are great. The three of them really steal the show, at least as far as acting and plot go. The jokes come quickly and can easily be missed. I would hazard a guess that some viewers will no longer get the joke in the name of Hugh Herbert's character, "Ezra Ounce."

Joan Blondell is gorgeous and smart as always. Dick Powell is the same as in all the movies - which is absolutely fine! I love his voice.

I find Ruby Keeler a delight to look at and watch. It's true, as others have commented, that she really doesn't do a heck of a lot in this one, though she is on screen quite a lot. Some people seem to love to put down her acting or dancing. OK, so she's not going to star in King Lear or Antigone. So what? Get over it! That's not the point. She is very appealing. Similarly, I like seeing her dance. She doesn't have to be as good as Cyd Charisse. Get over it!

The real appeal of all five of the movies I've mentioned here, and the real star, is Busby Berkeley. It is amazing to read one or two of the reviews written here in the last decade by people who, I suppose, are rather young and set in their ways. How anyone with half a brain can watch this movie and not be absolutely blown away is unbelievable to me. Truly, such a person is blind. Maybe not in the sense of passing the eye test for a driver's license, but blind nonetheless. Surely Busby Berkeley was the most unexpected creative genius in the history of film.

Let me echo something another poster has written. Though I was born long after the great depression ended, it was still a living reality in the minds of my parents, and something I absorbed somehow when growing up. Maybe a byproduct of the difficult economic times we are living through now will be a greater sensitivity on the part of some people to those times and the culture produced in those times. It does seem that some of the negative reviewers here need to broaden and deepen their appreciation, not just of movies, but of humanity.

But I digress. This is a wonderful, fun, eye-popping movie, full of great songs and fantastic choreography. Enjoy.

• henry

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.

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