Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) on Netflix
Passed19331h 37m
The Depression has closed Broadway, and chorus girls Polly, Carol and Trixie have no work. Their neighbor Brad Roberts offers to finance Barney Hopkins's new show, but will not perform in it.
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Featurette
Plot summary
The Depression has shut Broadway down, and a rehearsal for a new show ends when creditors seize the sets and costumes over unpaid bills. Chorus girls Polly Parker, Carol King and Trixie Lorraine have no work. In the apartment the three share, producer Barney Hopkins has everything he needs for a new show except the money to stage it. Polly's boyfriend, their neighbor Brad Roberts, plays piano for the girls and offers Hopkins fifteen thousand dollars in cash to back the production, on one condition: Brad will not perform in it himself. That, and his guarded past, leaves the girls suspicious.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- During filming of the "Shadow Waltz" number, the 1933 Long Beach earthquake struck, blacking out the set and short-circuiting the neon violins. Busby Berkeley was nearly thrown from the camera boom and hung by one hand until he pulled himself back up, then yelled for the dancers, many on a 30-foot platform, to sit down until the soundstage doors could be opened.
- Mark A. Vieira's book Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood says Gold Diggers of 1933 was among the first American films released with alternative footage to get around state censorship. Studios shot different takes of censorable scenes, and the toned down reels went to different districts.
- Ginger Rogers sings one verse of "We're in the Money" in Pig Latin. Busby Berkeley overheard Rogers speaking Pig Latin during filming and immediately decided to add a Pig Latin verse to the song.
- Busby Berkeley based "The Shadow Waltz" on a vaudeville act he had seen, and the neon tubes on the violins were added later.
- Busby Berkeley was inspired to create "Remember My Forgotten Man" by the May 1932 war veterans' march on Washington, D.C., and FDR's speech about the "Forgotten Man" from the same year. When the number was finished, Jack L. Warner and Darryl F. Zanuck were so impressed that they ordered it moved to the end of the film, displacing "Pettin' in the Park".
- Gold Diggers of 1933 was first going to be named High Life. George Brent was considered early on for the part that Warren William played.
- Early drafts of the Gold Diggers of 1933 screenplay centered on the story's sensual elements, and later drafts gradually added more of the narrative set behind the scenes of the show. After 42nd Street became a big success, the studio chose to make Gold Diggers of 1933 a musical.
SPOILER
According to Vieira, Gold Diggers of 1933 had two endings. In one, the romance between Warren William and Joan Blondell is settled backstage after the "Forgotten Man" number. In the other, that scene is gone and the number closes the film.
