Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Wini Shaw in Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935, dir. Busby Berkeley)

Wini Shaw in Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935, dir. Busby Berkeley)

Wini Shaw & Dick Powell w/Dick Jurgens & his Orchestra - Lullaby of Broadway (via Gold Diggers of 1935 soundtrack)

One of the most famous Busby Berkeley numbers is actually a short film-within-a-film, which tells the story of a “Broadway Baby” who plays all night and sleeps all day. It opens with a head shot of singer Wini Shaw against a black background, then the camera pulls back and up, and Shaw’s head becomes the Big Apple, New York City. As everyone rushes off to work, Shaw returns home from her night’s carousing and goes to sleep. When she awakens, that night, we follow her and her beau (Dick Powell) from club to club, with elaborate large cast tap numbers, until she is pushed off a balcony to her death. The sequence ends with a return to Shaw’s head, as she sings the end of the song.

Sequence is viewable on youtube starting here (part II here)

Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935, dir. Busby Berkeley)

Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935, dir. Busby Berkeley)

42nd Street (1933, dir. Lloyd Bacon, choreography by Busby Berkeley)

42nd Street (1933, dir. Lloyd Bacon, choreography by Busby Berkeley)

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, dir. Mervyn LeRoy, choreography by Busby Berkeley) (“neon violin” sequence can be seen here)

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, dir. Mervyn LeRoy, choreography by Busby Berkeley) (“neon violin” sequence can be seen here)

Carmen Miranda in the final shot of the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat number from The Gang’s All Here (1943, dir. Busby Berkeley) If you’d like to legally experience the effects of a technicolor acid trip, do check out the sequence here. 

Carmen Miranda in the final shot of the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat number from The Gang’s All Here (1943, dir. Busby Berkeley)

If you’d like to legally experience the effects of a technicolor acid trip, do check out the sequence here. 

…there’s a dedicated tech crew - behind-the-scenes shot of the Warner Bros. electrical department & the mechanism they built to produce the spinning fountain in Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade “By a Waterfall” routine.

…there’s a dedicated tech crew - behind-the-scenes shot of the Warner Bros. electrical department & the mechanism they built to produce the spinning fountain in Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade “By a Waterfall” routine.

Footlight Parade’s “By the Waterfall” sequence (1933, dir. Lloyd Bacon, choreographed by Busby Berkeley)  (via drmacro) Behind every elaborate Busby Berkeley production number…

Footlight Parade’s “By the Waterfall” sequence (1933, dir. Lloyd Bacon, choreographed by Busby Berkeley)  (via drmacro)

Behind every elaborate Busby Berkeley production number…

Banana-wielding chorus girls on the set of Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here (1943) rehearse the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat routine, which was aptly described by one critic as “a male hairdresser’s acid trip” (via Hollywood Musicals)

Banana-wielding chorus girls on the set of Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here (1943) rehearse the Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat routine, which was aptly described by one critic as “a male hairdresser’s acid trip” (via Hollywood Musicals)

Ginger Rogers - We’re in the Money (via Gold Diggers of 1933 OST)

At a certain point, Rogers seems to be singing gibberish - she is actually singing in Pig Latin. She had sung the song so many times during rehearsal that she began singing it in Pig Latin to relieve the monotony & amuse herself. Director Mervyn LeRoy liked the sound of it, so he had Rogers sing the last part of the song that way.