Review of 42nd Street (1933) by Rodolfo R — 11 Apr 2005

My head hurt so badly yesterday that I ended up going home at 11:30. Usually when I have an enormous headache at work, it tends to disappear by the time I get home. No such luck. It finally subsided around 5:30, not coincidentally the same time I broke out the guacamole. Of course, now that I'm back at work, the headache is back.

Also, I woke up screaming again in the middle of the night. Like the first time this happened a week ago, I had been dreaming about Mummy. I really need to give Shrink this URL. It would save a lot of time.

There's not a lot to be said about [i]All About Eve[/i] or [i]42nd Street[/i] that hasn't already been said. And any quick look pretty much any other entry will tell you that I'm a diva queen who loves musicals and the theatuh, so these movies are for me.

[i]All ABout Eve[/i] has no less than 5 divas. Miss Bette, Ann Baxter, Thelma Ritter, Marilyn and Celeste Holm. I met Celeste Holm once and she was terribly sweet. I asked her about [i]Oklahoma![/i] (she was the original Ado Annie) and she told me about seeing the servicemen standing at the back of the St. James, watching the show before they shipped out. Then she charged me 50 cents (for UNICEF) to autograph my CD booklet. She even signed it "Thanks John from UNICEF." In 1970, [i]All ABout Eve[/i] was turned into a Broadway musical called [i]Applause[/i] with Miss Betty (note the spelling) as Margo Channing. The songs were by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, the team behind [i]Bye Bye Birdie[/i] and the book by Comden and Green. Bonnie Franklin was featured as a gypsy (that's a dancer in a Bway show). The songs for the gypsies, "Applause" and "She's No Longer a Gypsy" (about Eve) are both a lot of fun and most of Bacall/Margo's numbers, especially "Who's That Girl" are well done. But there's also the reprehensible I-can't-believe-they-actually-named-a-song "Fasten Your Seatbelts." Ugh.

[i]42nd Street[/i] is the best of the Busby Berkeley musicals from Warner Brothers. The diva count is still pretty high: Ruby Keeler, Ginger, Una Merkel and Bebe Daniels. Okay, I can't think of anything else Bebe Daniels did but she plays a diva so that counts. No matter how many times I watch it (and last night I watched it twice), the title number still amazes me. And I still get goosebumps when Julian March (Warner Baxter) grabs Peggy Sawyer (Keeler) and implores, "You're going out there a youngster, but you've got to come back a [i]star![/i]" What gives [i]42nd Street[/i] an edge over other Berkeley musicals like [i]Dames[/i],[i] Footlight Parade[/i] and the Gold Diggers series, is that everything in the movie centers around the musical they're producing, [i]Pretty Lady[/i]. [i]Pretty Lady[/i] isn't just the background to the story, it becomes a separate character. A living, breathing, life-sustaining organism. It gives the movie an urgency missing from its contemporaries.

In 1980, [i]42nd Street[/i] was turned into a smash Broadway musical. It was revived in 2001 and I saw that production on Broadway. It remains one of the greatest nights I ever spent in the theatre. I can remember at least three[color=blue] (actually four, I just remembered another one)[/color] moments that literally took my breath away. I was so enthralled by what was happening I though I was going to cry. Iy was a joyously visceral experience. So much so that I saw the show again on tour. Shows are very expensive and I have a very limited income - that's how good the show was. Also, I was in the mezzanine at Broadway and wanted to see it from the orchestra. There's a big difference between the Broadway and touring productions of the same show, but the magic was still there.

There are only four songs in the film, by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, so the stage musical filled out the show with other numbers from the pair's catalogue. (The stage script also added Marsh's immortal line "Think of [i]musical comedy[/i], the two greatest words in the English language!") This provided for a particularly enjoyable original cast album with Tammy Grimes as Dorothy Brock and Jerry Orbach as Julian Marsh. The 2001 revival album is even better, as technology allowed more songs to be included. Christine Ebersole won a Tony as Dorothy Brock and Kate Levering (now on [i]Kevin Hill[/i]) as a pretty sensational Peggy Sawyer. Ebersole had already left the show when I saw it, but Levering was, well, sensational.

I could go on and on - and I kind of already have - but I need to work. 22 emails came in while I was out yesterday. I'm coordinating a series of seminars across the country. I was hired as an assistant. I still am an assistant. I'm certainly getting paid as an assistant. And yet I'm coordinating a series of seminars across the country. By myself.