Cinema: The New Pictures: Jun. 5, 1933

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Gold Diggers of 1933 (Warner). "We see clearly that overproduction of musical films is coming quickly ... as a result of the fact that 42nd Street has broken box office records: therefore, after Cold Diggers of 1933, we will produce no more musical feature-length pictures . . . until the imitative craze dies down. . . ." This smug bit of ballyhoo, by Major Albert Warner for Gold Diggers of 1933, would have sounded more sincere if Warner Brothers' current cinemusicomedy had been a less obvious copy of their earlier one. The casts—Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks—are similar. The narrative frameworks of both pictures—the inception and production of a Broadway show—are identical. This time the suspense is caused not by a chorus girl's big chance to be a star but by a mysterious young song writer (Dick Powell) in love with a dancer (Ruby Keeler 1. He turns out to be a rich Boston socialite. When his older brother (Wrarren William) and the family attorney (Kibbee) arrive to break up his romance, they stay to marry two of the dancer's friends. All this farcical to-do is interrupted from time to time by songs, which may well become as popular as the ones in 42nd Street, called "We're in the Money," "Petting in the Park," "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song," "Forgotten Men." Dance Director Busby Berkeley's most decorative notion was a "shadow waltz" with a chorus in triple-decked hoop skirts carrying phosphorescent violins. The stage presently darkens so that the violins appear to float about under their own power, finally waltz themselves into the outline of an immense bull fiddle. Good shot: Guy Kibbee's alarm when he looks in a mirror and detects a resemblance between his own face and that of a chorus girl's Pekinese, which he is holding under his arm. The Nuisance (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). No actor in Hollywood is more adept than Lee Tracy at characterizations of likable rogues. This time he is an ambulance chasing shyster, aided by a dipsomaniac doctor (Frank Morgan) and a collapsible assistant named Floppy (Charles Butterworth) whose duty it is to fall down in front of moving vehicles without getting hurt. Everything goes well for Lawyer Stevens and his disreputable assistants until the traction company which is the chief victim of their frauds tries to retaliate by hiring a girl detective (Madge Evans). She falls in love with Stevens and he with her until he finds in her purse a check from the traction company's lawyer. To prevent her testifying against him, Stevens marries her. She goes to jail for perjury but not until she ha? convinced her husband of her loyalty to him. He gets her out by framing an automobile accident to involve the traction company's lawyer. Mr. Calhoun. Of all Lawyer Stevens' machinations, this one is the most expert. He has Floppy jump in front of the car, gets a blonde into the back seat while Lawyer Calhoun steps out to investigate, threatens a scandal unless Lawyer Calhoun helps him free Mrs. Stevens. Later he congratulates Floppy on his performance of holding the bumper with one hand while smearing his face with imitation blood as the car slows down. Says Floppy: ''I thought it was adequate." The Nuisance is not an important, not even a particularly original picture but in its genre it ranks higher than

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