Cashed, Not Framed

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
directed by Mervyn LeRoy
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

In the pre-Code early thirties, even the hammy Irish detective is an out-of-work Broadway fake. Everyone owes rent, and those that don't - blue-blood Boston heirs - fall in love with the girls who work between 42nd and 53rd. The Depression went easiest, I'd imagine, when the women outnumbered the men by at least two to one; that's the Gold Diggers golden ratio when no one's dancing. Madman Busby Berkley jukes the stats to a roomful of twirling beauties in high heels and sequins, none of them lovelier or funnier than Joan Blondell.

The next time someone tells you the story about the thunderstorm, cinematographer Winton Hoch, and director John Ford on the set of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, show them this. The sky was dark in Monument Valley that day, and aperture wasn't what it is now. But no electrical display over Elephant Butte is half the accomplishment of lighting Ruby Keeler's face by the neon on a violin's bow. Any softer and it couldn't be real, and what's a cavalry beside a pretty girl?