Wait until you see Ruby Keeler (AKA Mrs Al Jolson) gambolling around as a fluffy white feline, being wooed by an ogling tomcat, or chasing Billy Barty, a child actor with dwarfism, costumed as a mouse. Joan Blondell (seven months pregnant during filming) livens up workaday laundry tasks by fantasising about the men whose underwear she hangs out to dry. And the underwear flirts right back.
Who cares if you can see the wires? If this were a tap dancing Top 20, Eleanor Powell would be at No 1, but Berkeley wisely stands back and showcases her epic skills with minimal fuss. All the tricksiness took place out of frame, where stagehands were pushing grand pianos out of her way.
Berkeley’s first colour film as both director and choreographer stars “Brazilian Bombshell” Carmen Miranda in her signature fruit-laden headdress. The fruity motif continues in a musical number set on a fake tropical island where chorus girls wield giant bananas. Nothing salacious to see here, move along.
This quintessential backstage musical was a huge hit and established Berkeley’s approach to choreography. An initially stagebound song with innuendo-laden lyrics, belted out by lecherous Dick Powell, blossoms into revolving geometric formations of young women shot from every conceivable angle, culminating in a travelling shot through their spread legs. Just before the Hays Code banished navels from Hollywood, blond-wigged beauties flaunt their belly buttons while performing the ultimate ostrich feather fan dance.
Before Dick Powell went all film noir as Philip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (1944), he and Keeler regularly played sweethearts in Berkeley’s musicals. The camera glides around what is essentially a sex hotel, as attempts to consummate their hasty marriage are hampered by other guests, interfering relatives and an unnaturally precocious child. Once again, Berkeley the choreographer stands back and lets Eleanor Powell work her magic.
MGM failed to come up with a suitable dog to partner her for this number, so Powell bought a terrier mix called Buttons and trained it herself. Keeler once again tries to consummate a marriage (to Clarence Nordstrom), this time on a sleeper train to Niagara Falls. Other passengers leer salaciously out of their curtained compartments, while worldly Una Merkel and Ginger Rogers predict the ingenue will soon be on a train to Reno for a quickie divorce.
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