August 30, 2011 (XXIII:1)

Mervyn LeRoy, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933, 97 min)

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Written by Erwin Gelsey, James Seymour, David Boehm, Ben
Markson, & Avery Hopwood (play)
Produced by Robert Lord, Jack L. Warner
Cinematography by Sol Polito
Edited by George Amy
Art Direction by Anton Grot
Costume Design by Orry-Kelly
Makeup by Perc Westmore
Music & lyrics byAl Dubin, Harry Warren
Conducted by Leo F. Forbstein
Arranged by Ray Heindorf
Numbers created and directed by Busby Berkeley

Warren William...Lawrence
Joan Blondell...Carol
Aline MacMahon...Trixie
Ruby Keeler...Polly
Dick Powell...Brad
Guy Kibbee...Peabody
Ned Sparks...Barney
Ginger Rogers...Fay
Billy Barty...Baby in 'Pettin' in the Park' Number
Busby Berkeley...Call Boy
Dennis O'Keefe...Chorus Boy
Jane Wyman...Gold Digger
Awards
2003 National Film Registry
Mervyn LeRoy (October 15, 1900 in San Francisco, California –
September 13, 1987, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California)
directed 78 films, some of which were 1968 The Green Berets,
1965 Moment to Moment, 1964 Mary, Mary, 1962 Gypsy, 1961 A
Majority of One, 1960 Wake Me When It's Over, 1959 The FBI
Story, 1958 Home Before Dark, 1958 No Time for Sergeants, 1956
Toward the Unknown, 1956 The Bad Seed, 1955 Mister Roberts,
1955 Strange Lady in Town, 1954 Rose Marie, 1952 Million Dollar
Mermaid, 1952 Lovely to Look at, 1951 Quo Vadis, 1949 East Side,
West Side, 1949 Any Number Can Play, 1949 Little Women, 1948
Homecoming, 1945 The House I Live In, 1944 Thirty Seconds Over
Tokyo, 1943 Madame Curie, 1942 Random Harvest, 1941 Johnny
Eager, 1940 Waterloo Bridge, 1939 The Wizard of Oz, 1937 They
Won't Forget, 1936 Anthony Adverse, 1936 Three Men on a Horse,
1935 Oil for the Lamps of China, 1933 Tugboat Annie, 1933 Gold
Diggers of 1933, 1932 I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932
Three on a Match, 1932 Big City Blues, 1932 The Heart of New
York, 1931 Five Star Final, 1931 Broadminded, 1931 Little Caesar,
1930 Show Girl in Hollywood, 1929 Broadway Babies, 1928 Flying
Romeos, and 1927 No Place to Go.
Jack L. Warner (August 2, 1892 in London, Ontario, Canada –
September 9, 1978, Los Angeles, California) was a prolific
producer: he has almost 300 producing credits. He won two Oscars,
the 1965 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and the 1965 Best
Picture Award for My Fair Lady (1964). Some of his other films
are 1972 Dirty Little Billy, 1972 1776, 1967 Camelot, 1964 My Fair
Lady, 1949 Beyond the Forest, 1949 Night Unto Night, 1948 The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1947 My Wild Irish Rose, 1947 Dark
Passage, 1947 Life with Father, 1947 Nora Prentiss, 1946
Humoresque, 1946 The Beast with Five Fingers, 1946 Deception,
1946 The Big Sleep, 1946 A Stolen Life, 1946 Of Human Bondage,
1946 Night and Day, 1945 Saratoga Trunk, 1945 Confidential
Agent, 1945 Mildred Pierce, 1945 Pride of the Marines, 1945 The
Horn Blows at Midnight, 1944 To Have and Have Not, 1944
Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944 The Mask of Dimitrios, 1944 Mr.
Skeffington, 1944 Passage to Marseille, 1944 In Our Time, 1943
Destination Tokyo, 1943 Watch on the Rhine, 1943 This Is the
Army, 1943 Background to Danger, 1943 Action in the North
Atlantic, 1943 Mission to Moscow, 1942 Casablanca, 1942 Yankee
Doodle Dandy, 1942 Murder in the Big House, 1941 Bad Men of
Missouri, 1939 Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, 1939 Torchy
Blane.. Playing with Dynamite, 1939 The Cowboy Quarterback,
1939 Nancy Drew... Trouble Shooter, 1939 Nancy Drew...

Reporter, 1938 The Dawn Patrol, 1938 Angels with Dirty Faces,
1938 Girls on Probation, 1937 The Adventurous Blonde, 1937 The
Footloose Heiress, 1937 The Life of Emile Zola, 1937 San Quentin,
1937 They Won't Forget, 1937 The Singing Marine, 1937 Kid
Galahad, 1936 Gold Diggers of 1937, 1936 Three Men on a Horse,
1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1936 Anthony Adverse,
1936 The Green Pastures, 1936 Bullets or Ballots, 1935 Captain
Blood, 1935 Stars Over Broadway, 1935 A Midsummer Night's
Dream, 1935 'G' Men, 1935 A Night at the Ritz, 1933 Gold Diggers
of 1933, 1932 The Cabin in the Cotton, 1932 So Big!, and1918 My
Four Years in Germany .
Sol Polito (November 12, 1892, Palermo, Sicily, Italy – May 23,
1960, Hollywood, California) was cinematographer for 167 films,
some of which are 1949 Anna Lucasta, 1948 Sorry, Wrong Number,
1947 The Voice of the Turtle, 1947 Escape Me Never, 1946 Cloak
and Dagger, 1946 A Stolen Life, 1946 Cinderella Jones, 1945
Rhapsody in Blue, 1945 The Corn Is Green, 1944 Arsenic and Old
Lace, 1944 The Adventures of Mark Twain, 1943 This Is the Army,
1942 Now, Voyager, 1941 Sergeant York, 1941 The Sea Wolf, 1940
Santa Fe Trail, 1940 The Sea Hawk, 1940 Virginia City, 1939 Four
Wives, 1939 Essex and Elizabeth, 1939 Confessions of a Nazi Spy,
1939 Dodge City, 1938 Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938 Gold
Diggers in Paris, 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1937 The
Prince and the Pauper, 1936 Three Men on a Horse, 1936 The
Charge of the Light Brigade, 1936 The Petrified Forest, 1935 'G'
Men, 1935 The Woman in Red, 1934 Madame Du Barry, 1933 Gold
Diggers of 1933, 1933 The Working Man, 1933 42nd Street, 1932 I
Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, 1932 Three on a Match, 1932
The Dark Horse, 1932 Fireman, Save My Child, 1931 Woman
Hungry, 1930 Madonna of the Streets, 1930 The Girl of the Golden
West, 1930 No, No, Nanette, 1929 House of Horror, 1929 Seven
Footprints to Satan, 1928 The Hawk's Nest, 1926 Satan Town, 1925
The People vs. Nancy Preston, 1925 The Bad Lands, 1925 Beyond
the Border, 1924 The Flaming Forties, 1924 The Lightning Rider,
1920 Alias Jimmy Valentine, 1919 Are You Legally Married?, 1918
Her Husband's Honor, 1915 M'Liss, 1915 Wildfire, and 1914/I Rip
Van Winkle.
Orry-Kelly (December 31, 1897 in Kiama, New South Wales,
Australia – February 27, 1964 in Hollywood, California) won three
Academy Awards for Costume Design: 1951 (An American in
Paris), 1957 (Les Girls), and 1959 (Some Like It Hot). He was
costume designer for almost 300 films, some of which were
1963 Irma la Douce, 1962 Gypsy, 1962 The Chapman Report, 1962
Five Finger Exercise, 1962 Sweet Bird of Youth, 1958 Auntie
Mame, 1955 Oklahoma!, 1951 An American in Paris, 1950 Harvey,
1948 For the Love of Mary, 1948 One Touch of Venus, 1947
Mother Wore Tights, 1947 The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, 1945 The
Dolly Sisters, 1945 The Corn Is Green, 1944 Arsenic and Old Lace,
1944 Mr. Skeffington, 1944 The Adventures of Mark Twain, 1943
Watch on the Rhine, 1943 This Is the Army, 1942 Casablanca, 1942
Now, Voyager, 1942 In This Our Life, 1942 Murder in the Big
House, 1942 Kings Row, 1942 The Man Who Came to Dinner, 1941
The Maltese Falcon, 1941 The Little Foxes, 1941 The Strawberry
Blonde, 1940 All This, and Heaven Too, 1940 Virginia City, 1939
Essex and Elizabeth, 1939 Dark Victory, 1938 Angels with Dirty
Faces, 1938 Jezebel, 1937 Kid Galahad, 1936 Gold Diggers of
1937, 1936 Jailbreak, 1936 Satan Met a Lady, 1936 The Petrified
Forest, 1935 We're in the Money, 1935 Oil for the Lamps of China,
1935 In Caliente, 1935 Gold Diggers of 1935, 1935 Devil Dogs of
LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—2
the Air, 1934 Babbitt, 1934 Madame Du Barry, 1934 Dames, 1934
Here Comes the Navy, 1934 Fog Over Frisco, 1934 Merry Wives of
Reno, 1934 Mandalay, 1933 Lady Killer, 1933 Mary Stevens, M.D.,
1933 Baby Face, 1933 Private Detective 62, 1933 Gold Diggers of
1933, 1933 42nd Street, 1932 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, 1932 I Am
a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and 1932 The Rich Are Always with
Us.
Busby Berkeley (November 29, 1895, Los Angeles, California –
March 14, 1976, Palm Springs,
California) was choreographer
for 37 films, among them 1962
Billy Rose's Jumbo, 1952
Million Dollar Mermaid, 1951
Call Me Mister, 1950 Annie
Get Your Gun, 1943 The
Gang's All Here, 1939 The
Wizard of Oz, 1938 Gold
Diggers in Paris, 1937 The
Singing Marine, 1936 Gold
Diggers of 1937, 1935 In
Caliente, 1935 Gold Diggers
of 1935, 1933 42nd Street,
Gold Diggers of 1933, 1932
Girl Crazy, 1931 Flying High,
1931 Kiki, and 1930 Whoopee!
Warren William (December 2, 1894, Aitkin, Minnesota –
September 24, 1948, Hollywood, California) acted in 65 films,
some of which were 1947 The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, 1946
Fear, 1945 Strange Illusion, 1943 Passport to Suez, 1942 Counter-
Espionage, 1942 Wild Bill Hickok Rides, 1941 The Wolf Man, 1941
Secrets of the Lone Wolf, 1941 The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance,
1940 Trail of the Vigilantes, 1940 Arizona, 1940 The Lone Wolf
Keeps a Date, 1940 The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady, 1940 The Lone
Wolf Strikes, 1939 Day-Time Wife, 1939 The Man in the Iron Mask,
1939 The Gracie Allen Murder Case, 1939 The Lone Wolf Spy
Hunt, 1938 Arsène Lupin Returns, 1937 Madame X, 1937 Midnight
Madonna, 1936 Go West Young Man, 1936 Satan Met a Lady, 1936
Times Square Playboy, 1935 The Case of the Curious Bride, 1934
Imitation of Life, 1934 Cleopatra, 1933 Lady for a Day, 1933
Goodbye Again, 1933 Gold Diggers of 1933, 1932 Three on a
Match, 1932 The Mouthpiece, 1931 Under 18, 1931 Expensive
Women, 1923 Plunder, and 1922 The Town That Forgot God.
Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906, New York City, New York –
December 25, 1979, Santa Monica, California) appeared in 157
films and TV series, some of which were 1981 The Woman Inside,
1979 The Glove, 1979 The Champ, 1978 “The Love Boat”, 1978
Grease, 1976 Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, 1975
“Police Story”, 1971-1973 “Love, American Style”, 1971 Support
Your Local Gunfighter, 1968 “Petticoat Junction”, 1967 “The Guns
of Will Sonnett”, 1967 “Winchester 73”, 1965 “My Three Sons”,
1965 “The Lucy Show”, 1965 The Cincinnati Kid, 1964 “Dr.
Kildare”, 1964 “Bonanza”, 1964 “Twilight Zone”, 1963 “Wagon
Train”, 1963 “The Virginian”, 1962 “The Dick Powell Theatre”,
1957 Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, 1957 Desk Set, 1947 The
Corpse Came C.O.D., 1945 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1943 Cry
'Havoc', 1942 Lady for a Night, 1941 Three Girls About Town,
1941 Topper Returns, 1939 Good Girls Go to Paris, 1938 There's
Always a Woman, 1937 The King and the Chorus Girl, 1936 Gold
 LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—3

Diggers of 1937, 1936 Three Men on a Horse, 1936 Bullets or Guy Kibbee (March 6, 1882 in El Paso, Texas – May 24, 1956 in
Ballots, 1935 We're in the Money, 1934 Smarty, 1934 He Was Her East Islip, Long Island, New York) has 114 acting credits, among
Man, 1933 Footlight Parade, 1933 Goodbye Again, 1933 Gold which are 1950 “The Billy Rose Show”, 1948 3 Godfathers, 1948
Diggers of 1933, 1933 Blondie Johnson, 1932 Lawyer Man, 1932 Fort Apache, 1946 Gentleman Joe Palooka, 1945 The Horn Blows
Central Park, 1932 Three on a at Midnight, 1943 Girl Crazy,
Match, 1932 Big City Blues, 1942 Scattergood Rides High,
1932 Miss Pinkerton, 1932 1941 Design for Scandal, 1941 It
Make Me a Star, 1932 The Started with Eve, 1941
Famous Ferguson Case, 1932 Scattergood Meets Broadway,
The Crowd Roars, 1932 The 1941 Scattergood Pulls the
Greeks Had a Word for Them, Strings, 1941 Scattergood Baines,
1932 Union Depot, 1931 The 1940 Chad Hanna, 1940 Our
Public Enemy, 1930 The Devil's Town, 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to
Parade, 1930 Broadway's Like Washington, 1938 Three
That, and 1930 The Heart Comrades, 1936 Three Men on a
Breaker. Horse, 1936 Little Lord
Fauntleroy, 1935 Captain Blood,
Aline MacMahon (May 3, 1934 Babbitt, 1934 Dames, 1933
1899, McKeesport, Footlight Parade, 1933 Gold
Pennsylvania – October 12, Diggers of 1933, 1933 42nd
1991, New York City, New Street, 1932 The Conquerors,
York) appeared in 53 films and 1932 Rain, 1932 The Mouthpiece,
TV series, some of which are 1932 So Big!, 1932 Union Depot,
1975 “For the Use of the Hall”, 1974 “Great Performances”, 1969 1931 Laughing Sinners, 1931 City Streets,and 1931 Stolen Heaven.
“NET Playhouse”, 1963-1964 “The Defenders”, 1963 All the Way
Home, 1963 Diamond Head, 1960 Cimarron, 1955 The Man from Ned Sparks (November 19, 1883 in Guelph, Ontario, Canada –
Laramie, 1953 The Eddie Cantor Story, 1948 The Search, 1944 April 3, 1957 in Victorville, California) and his forever unlighted
Dragon Seed, 1941 Out of the Fog, 1935 Ah, Wilderness!, 1934 cigar appeared in 86 films, including 1947 Magic Town, 1941 For
Babbitt, 1933 Gold Diggers of 1933, 1932 Silver Dollar, 1932 One Beauty's Sake, 1939 The Star Maker, 1936 One in a Million, 1935
Way Passage, 1932 The Mouthpiece, 1932 The Heart of New York, George White's 1935 Scandals, 1934 Sweet Adeline, 1934 Imitation
and 1931 Five Star Final. of Life, 1934 Sing and Like It, 1933 Alice in Wonderland, 1933
Gold Diggers of 1933, 1933 Secrets, 1933 42nd Street, 1931
Ruby Keeler (August 25, 1910 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada – Corsair, 1931 Iron Man, 1928 On to Reno, 1927 Alias the Lone
February 28, 1993 in Rancho Wolf, 1927 Alias the Deacon,
Mirage, California) has only 1925 Seven Keys to Baldpate,
15 film and TV credits, 1920 Nothing But the Truth,
among which are 1964 “The and 1915 The Little Miss
Greatest Show on Earth”, Brown.
1937 Ready, Willing and Able,
1935 Go Into Your Dance, Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911
1934 Flirtation Walk, 1934 in Independence, Missouri –
Dames, 1933 Footlight April 25, 1995 in Rancho
Parade, 1933 Gold Diggers of Mirage, California) won the
1933, and 1933 42nd Street. 1940 Best Actress Oscar for
Kitty Goyle: The Natural
Dick Powell (November 14, History of a Woman (1939).
1904 in Mountain View, Some of her other 90 film and
Arkansas – January 2, 1963 in TV roles were in 1987
West Los Angeles, California) “Hotel”, 1965 Harlow, 1963-
has 69 film and TV credits, 1964 The Red Skelton Hour”,
among which are 1962 “The Dick Powell Theatre”, 1961 “The Law 1964 The Confession, 1960 “Zane Grey Theater”, 1954 Black
and Mr. Jones”, 1957-1961 “Zane Grey Theater”, 1952-1956 “Four Widow, 1954 Forever Female, 1951 Storm Warning, 1949 The
Star Playhouse”, 1954 “Climax!”, 1952 The Bad and the Beautiful, Barkleys of Broadway, 1947 It Had to Be You, 1944 I'll Be Seeing
1951 Cry Danger, 1950 The Reformer and the Redhead, 1948 To You, 1942 The Major and the Minor, 1942 Roxie Hart, 1941 Tom
the Ends of the Earth, 1947 Johnny O'Clock, 1944 Murder, My Dick and Harry, 1940 Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a
Sweet, 1943 True to Life, 1938 Cowboy from Brooklyn, 1937 The Woman, 1939 The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, 1935 Top Hat,
Singing Marine, 1935 A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935 Gold 1935 Roberta, 1934 The Gay Divorcee, 1934 Upperworld, 1933
Diggers of 1935, 1934 Dames, 1933 Footlight Parade, 1933 Gold Flying Down to Rio, 1933 Sitting Pretty, 1933 Gold Diggers of
Diggers of 1933, 1933 42nd Street, 1932 Too Busy to Work, and 1933, 1933 42nd Street, 1933 Broadway Bad, 1932 The Tenderfoot,
1932 Blessed Event. 1930 Queen High, and1929 A Day of a Man of Affairs.

Billy Barty (October 25, 1924, Millsboro, Pennsylvania –
December 23, 2000, Glendale, California) appeared in 177 film and
TV series, among them 2001 I/O Error, 2000 The Extreme
Adventures of Super Dave, 1999 “L.A. Heat”, 1997 “The New
Batman Adventures”, 1993 The Naked Truth, 1991 Life Stinks,
1990 “Adventures of the Gummi Bears”, 1989 Lobster Man from
Mars, 1987 Masters of the Universe, 1987 Snow White, 1987
Rumpelstiltskin, 1985 Legend, 1984 “Trapper John, M.D.”, 1979-
1982 “Little House on the Prairie”, 1981 Under the Rainbow, 1978
“The Love Boat”, 1978 “Charlie's Angels”, 1978 The Lord of the
Rings, 1977 “Redd Foxx”, 1977 The Happy Hooker Goes to
Washington, 1976 Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood,
1976 W.C. Fields and Me, 1975 The Day of the Locust, 1972 “The
Waltons”, 1968 “Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In”, 1957 The Undead,
1954 Fireman Save My Child, 1950 Jungle Jim in Pygmy Island,
1935 A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935 Bride of Frankenstein,
1934 Mickey's Medicine Man, 1934 Mickey's Rescue, 1934 Mickey's
Minstrels, 1933 Alice in Wonderland, 1933 Mickey's Covered
Wagon, 1933 Mickey's Tent Show, 1933 Mickey's Touchdown, 1933
Footlight Parade, 1933 Gold Diggers of 1933, 1933 Mickey's Race,
1933 Mickey's Ape Man, 1932 Mickey's Charity, 1932 Mickey's Big
Business, 1931 Mickey's Sideline, 1931 Mickey's Helping Hand,
1931 Mickey's Thrill Hunters, 1931 Mickey's Wildcats, 1931
Mickey's Diplomacy, 1931 Mickey's Rebellion, 1931 Daddy Long
Legs, 1931 Mickey's Crusaders, 1931 Mickey's Stampede, 1930
Mickey's Bargain, 1930 Mickey's Musketeers, 1930 Mickey's
Winners, 1930 Mickey's Merry Men, 1930 Mickey the Romeo, 1930
Mickey's Warriors, 1930 Mickey's Whirlwinds, 1930 Mickey's Luck,
1930 Mickey's Master Mind, 1930 Mickey's Champs, 1929 Mickey's
Strategy, 1929 Mickey's Big Moment, 1929 Mickey's Mix-Up, 1929
Mickey's Surprise, 1929 Mickey's Midnite Follies, 1928 Mickey the
Detective, 1928 Mickey in School, 1928 No Kidding, and 1927
Mickey's Eleven.
Mervyn LeRoy from World Film Directors, Vol. I. Ed. John
Wakeman. The H.W.Wilson Co., NY, 1987
American director and producer, LeRoy was born in San
Francisco, the only child of Harry LeRoy and the former Edna
Armer. His father owned the Fair, a small
department store in the city. Both parents
came from Jewish families that, as LeRoy
says in his autobiography, “had been in
San Francisco for a couple of
generations” and had become
“assimilated to the point of complete
absorption.”
LeRoy had two older cousins,
Jesse and Blanche Lasky, who were
vaudevillians, a circumstance that
“helped kindle my interest in show
business.” His mother was also devoted
to vaudeville and the theatre, though only
as a spectator. Thanks to her contacts,
LeRoy made his stage debut at six
months, carried on at the Alcazar Theatre
as the papoose in The Squaw Man. …
When LeRoy was five, his
mother went off with the man who
subsequently became her second
husband, Percy Temple. They moved no
LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—4
further than Oakland, where LeRoy and his father frequently visited
them, but the event was the first trauma of the boy’s childhood. The
second followed within a year—the San Francisco earthquake of
1906. It ruined LeRoy’s father, destroying both the family home
and Harry LeRoy’s beloved store. He subsequently found work as a
salesman, but “he was a beaten man.”
LeRoy never went hungry, but he wanted more than bare
subsistence and, at the age of twelve or thirteen, quit school to
become a newsboy. “I saw life in the raw in the streets of San
Francisco,” he says. I met the cops and the whores and the reporters
and the bartenders and the Chinese and the fishermen and the
shopkeepers….When it came time for me to make motion pictures,
I made movies that were real, because I knew firsthand how real
people behaved.” “Newsboys had to battle it out for choice corners”
and LeRoy, who was small but wiry, fought his way from a corner
in Oakland to the two pitches he most desired, “the lucrative corner
at the St. Francis Hotel in the morning, and the exciting corner in
front of the Alcazar Theatre in the evening.”
When he was fourteen, hawking his papers outside the
Alcazar, the actor Theodore Roberts noticed him and gave him a
one-line role in a pay called Barbara Fritchie. After that, he says,
“The stage bug had bitten and the itch would never leave me.” He
began to compete in amateur talent contests as “the Singing
Newsboy,” before long promoting himself to “Mervyn LeRoy, the
Boy Tenor of the Generation.” According to some accounts, he
appeared around this time as a child actor in one or more of Bronco
Billy Anderson’s films.
In 1916, LeRoy met another would-be vaudevillian, Clyde
Cooper, and teamed up with him as “LeRoy and Cooper, Two Kids
and a Piano.” After a while they were signed by one of the
vaudeville circuits and toured all over the country with growing
success. LeRoy says: “I learned show business from the bottom up.
I learned the value of dialogue, the value of music, the value of
timing. After three years the act broke up. Stranded in New York
and penniless LeRoy swallowed his pride and went to see his cousin
Jesse Lasky, who had quit vaudeville and risen to power and wealth
as one of the first movie moguls, chief of Famous Players-Lasky.
Jesse gave him his train fare to Los Angeles and a note to the
studio.
LeRoy arrived in Hollywood in
1919 (not in 1923 as for some reason he
states in his autobiography). He found that
he had a menial job in the wardrobe
department at $12.50 a week. Whenever
he could, he would “visit the stages and
watch them make movies,” soon deciding
that “the director seemed to be at the
center of the artistic universe” there.
Tired of the smell of mothballs,
LeRoy talked himself into a job in the lab
as a film tinter, at the same time trading
on his extraordinarily youthful appearance
to secure juvenile roles in two or three
forgotten movies. One day, William
DeMille was directing a movie that called
for the effect of moonlight shining on
water. No one knew how to achieve this,
but that night LeRoy stayed late at the lab
and rigged the shot with a black box full
of distilled water and a spotlight. This
coup brought LeRoy a back-breaking job

as assistant cameraman. responsible for loading the camera and
pulling focus. That advance was short-lived, ending when LeRoy
ruined the first footage he handled.
Deciding that his movie career was finished, he returned to
vaudeville. Within a year he was back in Hollywood, intent on a
new career as an actor. LeRoy played a ghost in Alfred E. Green’s
The Ghost Breaker (1922), a crooked jockey in Arthur Rosson and
Johnny Hines’ Little Johnny Jones (1923), a bellboy in Lloyd
Ingraham’s Going Up (1923), and three or four other small roles in
1923-1924. He was evidently only moderately talented as an actor,
but had impressed Alfred E. Green with his gifts as a gagman
during the filming of The Ghost Breaker. In 1924, when Green
offered him a job as gagwriter, he moved behind the camera “with
no regrets.”
LeRoy worked with Green and others as a “comedy
constructor” on a series of films…. The majority of these pictures
starred Colleen Moore, who became a close friend. It was through
her influence at First National that LeRoy secured his first
directorial assignment, No Place To Go (1928), starring Mary Astor
as a banker’s daughter who sails to the South Seas in search of
romance and finds more than she bargained for.
No Place To Go was adapted from a Saturday Evening
Post story that LeRoy had found himself. In his first film he
initiated a number of policies that he was to follow throughout his
career–wide and constant reading in search of stories with “heart”;
insistence that the script be complete before shooting began (by no
means as general a policy as might be supposed); and the equally
thorough advance working-out of camera angles. Shot in five weeks
at a cost of about $70,000, No Place To Go made a modest profit—
another useful precedent. LeRoy claimed that “all my pictures—and
I made seventy-five of them—have been money-makers.”
His second film, Harold
Teen (1928), certainly was.
Based on Carl Ed’s popular
comic strip, and starring Arthur
Lake and Alice white, it
apparently grossed a million
dollars. By the end of 1928,
LeRoy was making a thousand
dollars a week….
LeRoy’s most important
contribution to the burgeoning
gangster genre was Little Caesar
(1930)….LeRoy had to fight for
permission to film Burnett’s
rawly realistic novel, the
Warners’ front office then being
of the opinion that Depression
audiences wanted only light
relief….Richard Watts Jr. called
Little Caesar “the truest, most
ambitious and most distinguished” of the contemporary rash of
gangster movies, “pushing into the background the usual romantic
conventions of theme and concentrating on characterization rather
than on plot.” Dwight Macdonald went so far as to call it “the most
successful talkie that has yet been made in this country.” ...Forty
years later Peter Waymark found it “still as fast and abrasive as
when it was made.” Though there was a good deal of criticism of
the film’s callousness and violence, it was an overwhelming box-
office success.
LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—5
LeRoy made six films in 1931….The most notable of the
year’s output was Five Star Final, a tough newspaper story…. I Am
a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) broke box-office records and
shared an Oscar as best picture with Forty Second Street….
After a couple of minor pieces came the “ebullient and
witty” Gold Diggers of 1933, generally regarded as one of the
classic film musicals of the 1930s. The “gold diggers” are Ruby
Keeler, Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, and Aline MacMahon—
showgirls looking for work. Ned Sparks plays a producer looking
for an “angel,” and Dick Powell is the playboy songsmith who
writes, subsidizes, and stars in the show that makes all their dreams
come true. The movie features some of Busby Berkeley’s most
spectacular production numbers, including the stunning opening
with Ginger Rogers garbed in gold dollars and the Depression-
conscious finale, “My Forgotten Man.”…
A musical comedy, Happiness Ahead (1934) was followed
by Oil for the Lamps of China (1935) from the novel by Alice
Tisdale Hobart. The book deals with the activities of a ruthless
American oil company in China, centering on an executive (Pat
O’Brien) whose devotion to the company costs him the love of his
wife and the life of his child. The novel’s indictment of the methods
and morals of big business is considerably softened in Laird
Doyle’s screenplay, but the picture has nevertheless been much
admired for the quality of its direction and acting and for Tony
Gaudio’s photography. John Baxter calls it “one of the few films of
the Thirties to deal exclusively with the problems of work,” and “a
brave attempt to generalise about the conflict between individuality
and social allegiance.”…
One of the finest movies of LeRoy’s career followed in
1937, They Won’t Forget, adapted by Robert Rossen and Aben
Kandel from a novel by Ward Greene. Claude Rains plays an
unscrupulous Southern district
attorney ambitious for the
governorship who sees his
chance when a coed is found
murdered. (The coed, in a tight
sweater, is Lana Turner, one of
LeRoy’s discoveries.)...The
poisonous claustrophobia and
demoralizing heat of small-town
Southern life are powerfully
conveyed in a film that Frank S.
Nugent called “a brilliant
sociological drama and a
trenchant film editorial against
intolerance and hatred.”...
LeRoy also acted as
producer of James Whale’s The
Great Garrick in 1937 and the
following year he directed his
last film for Warners, a comedy
called Fools for Scandal. After that he moved to MGM, succeeding
Irving Thalberg as supervisor of production at the phenomenal
salary of $6,000 a week. He produced four films, including the
hugely successful The Wizard of Oz (1939), but found himself
increasingly frustrated in the role of executive. In the end, MGM
gave way and let him return to directing. At the MGM “glamor
factory,” LeRoy became a very different kind of filmmaker from
the socially conscious realist he had been at Warners….
 LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—6

LeRoy had been finding life at MGM increasingly
difficult after the enthronement of Dore Shary, and in 1955 he
returned to Warners….
Raymond Rohauer suggests that LeRoy’s “range and
diversity have seldom been equaled by any other producer-
director,” but the same could be said about the unevenness of his
work. His worst films, as John Baxter remarks, are “impossible to
watch.” But, working for Warners in the 1930s, he made eight or
nine movies that fully justify Peter Waymark’s description of him
as “one of the great Hollywood craftsmen,” and John Baxter’s claim
that he was, at his best, “an artist of ideas.”
from We’re in the Money Depression America and Its Films.
Andrew Bergman. Elephant Paperbacks. Ivan R. Dee, Chucago,
1971.
President of American Telephone and Telegraph, the movies were a
necessity to be ranked just behind food and clothing….
Sixty millions persons did not escape into a void each
week; escapism is hardly a useful concept. People do not escape
into something they cannot relate to. The movies were meaningful
because they depicted things lost or things desired. What is
“fantastic” in fantasy is an extension of something real. To Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., American film in the thirties had “a vital
connection with American emotions—more, I think, than it ever
had before….The movies were near the operative center of the
nation’s consciousness.”...
We’re in the money,
We’re in the money.
We’ve got a lot of what
It takes to get along.

During the most abyssmal days of the early thirties, as economic We never see a headline
paralysis spread, snuffing out a shop here, a bank there, a factory About a breadline
somewhere else, movie attendance still averaged an astonishing Today.
sixty to seventy-five Ginger Rogers sings
millions persons each this in Gold Diggers
week. Although this of 1933, as dozens
was a considerable of girls sing along,
comedown from the holding silver
one hundred and ten currency, giant
million moviegoers coins, swaying and
of 1930 (when sound serpentining. This is
was still a great a rehearsal for a
novelty), it remained new show, but the
a powerful show never sees
testimonial to the opening night
sway movies held because the bank
over the national closes it for
imagination. For, as nonpayment. Just
the number of when the girls are
unemployed moved singing about never
towards fifteen seeing a headline
million, and millions about a breadline,
more became the sheriff walks in
partially employed, it and tells everybody
was evident that the to get out of the
total of sixty million, theatre.
even including Then
repeats, included a producer Ned
great many people who could scarcely afford to be there. In those Sparks gets the idea to put on a show about the Depression. Ruby
painful days, the marquees of America’s Broadways and Main Keeler and Aline MacMahon and Joan Blondell, hungry chorines
Street attracted the dispossessed farmers, the failed bankers and all all, give him the idea—and songs will be by the “poor” boy
the sellers who had no buyers. (actually a Boston blueblood with a yen for Broadway) who lives
Americans needed their movies. Moving pictures had down the hall from the girls. They can hear him playing through the
come to play too important a role in their lives to be considered just window and think he’s great. He’s Dick Powell!…
another luxury item. Immediately after the stock market had Of course they [the musicals] were escapist—a nation
crashed, motion picture executives began stating that people would could drown its sorrows in legs and glitter, and plumes and teeth
part with a great deal before they stopped going to the movies. and sweet harmonizing. But the three musicals that made the most
Harry Warner of Warner Brothers thought that films were “as money...all had Depression motifs. Warner Baxter is broke in 42nd
necessary as any other daily commodities,” and E.W. Hammons of Street, everybody is broke in Gold Diggers of 1933 and star
Educational Films felt financial hardship would not hurt the producer Jimmy Cagney is on the skids (“Breadline I hear you
industry: people “can always afford the price of a seat…” And as calling”) in Footlight Parade….
the crisis deepened in 1932, Walter Gifford, the head of President The backstage musicals, in all their lavishness, were still
Hoover’s Organization on Unemployment Relief, advocated the related to facts of life in 1933. Their pointless successors were
distribution of free movie tickets to the poor. According to Gifford, found to be a bore….

“No medium has contributed more greatly than the film to
the maintenance of the national morale during a period featured by
revolution, riot and political turmoil in other countries. It has been
the mission of the screen, without ignoring the serious social
problems of the day, to reflect aspiration, optimism, and kindly
humor in its entertainment.” Will Hays,
1934
“We were
against revolution.
Therefore, we waged war
against those conditions
which make
revolutions—against
those resentments and
inequalities which bred
them. In America in
1933 the people did not
attempt to remedy
wrongs by overthrowing
their institutions.
Americans were made to
realize that wrongs could
and would be set right
within their institutions.”
Franklin
Roosevelt, 1936
The movies
made a central
contribution toward
educating Americans in
the fact that wrongs
could be set right within their existing institutions. They did so not
by haunting the screen with bogeyman Reds but, as Hays noted, by
reflecting aspiration and achievement. They showed that individual
initiative still bred success, that the federal government was a
benevolent watchman, that we were a classless, melting pot nation.
From 1930 to 1933, it is fairly easy to trace the subject
matter and preoccupations of American film and chalk it all up to
depression, despair, and anomie. Gangsters, prostitutes, con men,
sleazy back-room politicos, lawless lawyers: a dreary parade of
characters peoples the movies, bred by a cynical , burnt-out culture.
And there is that side to it: filmgoers were undeniably attracted to
outlaws, observed a paralyzed law slumbering and bumbling, saw a
dynamism in dishonest lawyers, and rejoiced at the Marx Brothers
war against sanity. But there is another side of this attraction to the
lawless and freakish. (Literally freakish. Tod Browning’s 1932
MGM film, Freaks, had a cast made up of pin-heads, human torsos,
midgets, and dwarfs, like nothing ever in the movies. And what
more stunted a year than 1932 for such a film.)
And that other side seems more compelling and helpful for
an understanding of how the decade progressed. In the gang films
and musicals, Hollywood coaxed an old success model back to life,
creating special worlds in which it could function. The gangster
worlds and the backstage world of Warner’s big three musicals of
1933 were, in effect, success preserves. From triggerman to Boss of
the North Side, from back row of the chorus to the opening night
lead, from office boy to chairman of the board: it was the same
dynamic at work. The avalanche of gangster films in 1931 and 1932
LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—7
and the immense success of Warner’s musicals demonstrate the
pulling power of that dead model during the worst years of financial
hardship. So the gang cycle emerges as less despairing and lawless
than willfully optimistic: the nation going to the bottom of the
social barrel before finding a credible vehicle for its success
dreams.
from Movies and Mass
Culture. Ed John
Belton. Rutgers
University Press. New
Brunswick NJ, 1996.
“The Crowd, the
Collective, and the
Chorus: Busby Berkeley
and the New Deal”
Martin Rubin.
“Remember My
Forgotten Man”
The climactic Busby
Berkeley number of Gold
Diggers of 1933
combines two major
ideas involved in early
1930s political
revisionism:
1. the spirit of the
Great Crusade—the
high ideals that were
aroused by the First
World War and later
betrayed, first by the materialism of the 1920s, then by the
catastrophe of the Crash
2. the New Deal equation between the emergency of the war
and the emergency of the Depression, resulting in a call for a
revival of wartime spirit and collectivism.
Both ideas converged in an ugly event of the early
Depression: the Bonus March of Summer, 1932. An “army” of
15,000 disillusioned, unemployed veterans—complete with
uniforms, military discipline, and parades—squatted in Washington,
D.C., to demand money and/or jobs. They and their families were
finally routed by police, cavalry, and tear gas—one of the most
controversial actions of the Hoover administration.
The “Remember My Forgotten Man” number is
remarkable both for its explicit reference to the still-warm Bonus
Marchers issue and for its wholehearted sympathy for their cause,
as attested by the unforgettable withering gaze that saucer-eyed
Joan Blondell fixes on a surly cop as he collars a sleeping bum who
is wearing a medal beneath his ragged coat. But what is most
remarkable (and most Berkeleyesque) about the number is it
expansion of the political message to a sexual level….
The number is based on an equation between economics
and sex, a confluence of social and psychological factors. For
working men in the Depression, the loss of their jobs or the
decrease in their earning power represents a form of impotence. …
“Remember My Forgotten Man” is the simplest and most
straight-forward of Berkeley’s big numbers in the classic Warner
 LeRoy—GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933—8

Bros. musicals. Its directness is a consequence of its political even a direct cut might do. “Remember My Forgotten Man” is one
commitment. Its points are punched across for maximum impact, of Hollywood’s most hard-hitting political statements of the
most forcefully by the jarring blackouts that drive home the 1930s—much more so than the treatment of similar material in
number’s thematic connection more viscerally and vigorously than Warner Bros.’s Heroes for Sale (also 1933).

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII:

September 6 Pygmalion, Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard (1938)
September 13 Beauty and the Beast/La Belle et La Bête, Jean Cocteau (1946)
September 20 The Red Shoes, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (1948)
September 27 Diary of a Country Priest/Journal d’un curé de campagne, Robert Bresson (1951)
October 4 Black Orpheus/Orfeu Negro, Marcel Camus (1959)
October 11 Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn (1967)
October 18 Marketa Lazarová, František Vláčil (1967)
October 25 The Last Wave, Peter Weir (1977)
November 1 True Confessions, Ulu Grosbard (1981)
November 8 Chunking Express/Chung Hing sam lam, Wong Kar-Wei (1994)
November 15 Richard III, Richard Loncraine (1995)
November 22 Frida, Julie Taymor (2002)
November 29 Revanche, Götz Spielmann (2008)
December 6 My Fair Lady, George Cukor (1964)

CONTACTS:
...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu
…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu
...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com
...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com
....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center
and State University of New York at Buffalo
with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News