[Publius]

THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

HARRY WARREN

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935

Comparison of Warner Brothers and RKO musicals of the Thirties yields some interesting results. At RKO, Pandro Berman based each musical for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on one single composer of the Great American songbook. Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and the Gershwin brothers got their chances to shine. At Warner Brothers, Harry Warren and Al Dubin wrote the songs for each show. The RKO musicals live on as great classics while the Warner musicals have their high and low points. The real star was choreographer Busby Berkeley who redefined the cinematography of dancing.

This was one of the high points of the Warner Brothers musical, and it was the first time Berkeley directed. Thanks to the production code, Berkeley could no longer display large sections of female skin, but he stretched the code to the breaking point.

”LULLABY OF BROADWAY“

Tonight is dedicated to the one song that survived the movie and took on a life of its own. It can be sung in a variety of ways and subjected to a number of jazz treatments.

This is how it appeared in the 1935 flick, a massive tap dancing number. Only Busby Berkeley could have pulled off something like this. It’s an excerpt from the full 13 minute production number. If you concentrate, you can count the number of cameras Berkeley used to film this sequence.

“Lullaby of Broadway”

[Fiji Hill]

The “Lullaby of Broadway” production number in “Gold Diggers of 1935” ended on a sad and disturbing note. The protagonist poured some milk into a bowl for a cat before she went out to the show. The final scene shows the poor kitty waiting by the bowl for the girl to return—but she will not be returning because she was killed in a fall.