Precode Picks #9

 

42nd Street and Dancing on Precode Ceilings 

Let’s say that dancing is your dream and you’ll do just anything to be on Broadway and show your stuff. Many gave wholly enough of themselves to end up with nothing save spent youth and limbs shot for good. I knew a Broadway seeker who ended up teaching what she could no longer perform, aged hopelessly out by thirty. Having been in the Will Rogers Follies was proof of her having made the grade. Touching hem of such success was perhaps enough for many, the heaven knows most would subsist on less. I look at background Golddiggers and chorus folk who vaulted if not to heights, then at least to tap, hoof, or speaking jobs elsewhere. One in 42^nd Street was Dave O’Brien, he of falling down for Pete Smith shorts, being a cowboy and getting to talk, if not from Shaw or Ibsen, at least for box lunch or enough to cover rent. There was Toby Wing who’d smile winningly in close-up beside Dick Powell while he, and not her, sang, me left to wonder why looker to surpass all lookers Toby didn’t make stardom grade. She surely wondered too, though living to eighty-five was some compensation, signing stills and fielding fan mail even though she’d been more-less retired since the late thirties. “I used to dance for Busby Berkeley” wouldn’t rate a front table at the Mocambo because after all, so many had so danced. Toby glories still for our thinking and talking about her, but what of “youngsters” who slaved eighty-six hours a week for $25, take-it-or leave heard going in and out of auditions, rehearsals for which you’d not be paid, this by far bulk of what your so-called living comprised. Life not ever being fair was etched deeper upon Toby and kin than cow hide stood for the hot iron. They’d complain, even strike, then pay dear for complaining and striking. “Troublemaker” was a term broader than what a thickest Thesaurus tendered.

Driven by Whips ... the Life of Depression-Era Chorus Folk

Toby Wing with Dick Powell --- Hers Was Beauty That Doesn't Date

Chorine reunions --- were there such things? I’d guess competition was such to foreclose friendships, though Rockettes are said to have got together for reminisce. To what … revisit past hardship, struggles, being overworked and underpaid? Hours given to the grind were rule, not exception. Accounts read like Upton Sinclair exposing meat pack abuse going on concurrently, Depression breeding desperation in most walks of life. Motion Picture Herald on 9/16/33 spilled beans re dancing for devils that was presentation houses, specifically Radio City Music Hall, the Capitol, Paramount, other palaces trading dreams for ducats, New York primary target for Chorus Equity spokeswoman Dorothy Bryant, who with “cold but dramatic precision” relayed cost of dubious fame as tendered by women and men whose bodies had but so much to give. Big reason such conditions persisted was ongoing buyer’s market that was chorus work. If you don’t take our terms, somebody else will. Carrot at the end of very long sticks was Broadway as ultimate get, if not that maybe a specialty where it’s just you plus the orchestra and thousands applauding. So what if it’s all day and most of nights rehearsing (remember: no pay), then they want you back at seven a.m. the next (more likely same) morning. Warner Baxter in 42^nd Street warned that’s how it would be, so if you can’t cope, go home if you've got one. What’s refreshing, and bitingly realistic about 42^nd Street, its MGM cousin Dancing Lady, plus Golddigging to follow, is warning they gave of price you’d pay to dance. No one would hand you success. Even if you had talent enough to earn it, you’d not necessarily get it. Ask Toby Wing. And how many hours did it take for a pair of rehearsal shoes to fill up with blood? Upton Sinclair may have missed a bet not turning his laser in dance direction. Comedian Georgie Price was for reforms, having suffered in same trenches as dancer peers. He’d push through policy that “ballet girls” would “not be required to stand on their toes more than eight hours at a time.” Eight hours? I can barely stand on mine eight seconds (just tried).

Bebe Herself Excelled in Early Musicals, Sidelined Much As Her Character in 42nd Street 

42^nd Street and Dancing Lady were but two among many to valorize the struggle of creation, both emphasizing necessity of sacrifice. If that be life itself, then live it, this emphasized by Warner Baxter as Julian Marsh, director supreme of musical revues whose doctor tells him that this latest project, if embarked upon, will be his last. Aura of doom hangs over Marsh throughout and to final 42nd Street view of him a seeming moment before collapse alone in an alley, brave ending to a story honestly told. Musicals of lesser merit would go glib direction, each reliant upon 42nd Street momentum. But how long could copies measure up to the model? Turns out no longer than it took for the PCA to lock down. Major among takeaways was what highlights director Busby Berkeley did with a last seventeen or so minutes where principal songs and dancing were enacted at levels of imagination not experienced so far in movies save those Berkeley himself had worked on to forecast this and even wilder extravaganzas he’d stage as Golddigging was developed. Sixties and into seventies bloom his rose maintained kept not only Berkeley evergreen but Ruby Keeler as both came back to Broadway where just maybe they could make magic same as they had thirty-forty years before. Seemed an impossibility and sure enough it was, but look what the gesture said about staying power of long-ago efforts, whither camp, kitsch, or unintended comedy now, though at least the last was intended, and staged so dynamic as to defy those who’d call such entertainment “light.” 42nd Street and follow-ups Golddiggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade were elephants behind whom pygmies would march once Code enforcement withdrew hope of worthy encores. Truth-tellers faced high enough hills before restrictions got tighter, working many times harder to simulate life and people living it.

Joan Faints with Fatigue, So Let's Give Her a Two Minute Break to Recover

42nd Street ennobled hardships of performing. So did Dancing Lady of the following year. Chorines sneak off to sleep behind boxes, so great is their fatigue. Joan Crawford pulls a leg muscle and Clark Gable has to rub it out before brusquely sending her back to the line. All in a life’s work for so long as you last at it, said both films plus innumerable others. Anybody who complained didn’t deserve a chance, so rare and precious were these. Bosses could and probably did argue same at hearings cited earlier. Getting exploited was everybody’s worry from top to bottom, best survival method being not to carp over it. Theatres playing 42nd Street numbered in thousands, but had not power that ordinarily came with numbers. They’d grouse to trades in small print toward back of issues, each saying same things that made all less potent. “Really a wonderful picture” was 42nd Street, “get busy and play it now” they’d add, but then would come the stinger: “I’m getting tired running my theatre for the producers. No more such one-sided contracts will get my signature. If they won’t make me a few dimes, I don’t want them. High film rentals and percentage pictures are a thing of the past for this house.” Success of 42nd Street would only encourage further abuse: “Why do we suckers bite on this 50 per cent thing?” asked an Iowa showman having to empty his till to play Golddiggers of 1933. Maybe the truest precode stories were told by retailers at the end of the line who’d pay dearly for pictures they’d admit were good, realizing the while that this would only make terms stiffer.