I first saw '42nd Street' at a film society viewing session when I was 18. At that age I was very cynical, but still this amazing work swept me off my feet. Now I am less cynical and I can see it to be one of the cinema's finest gems.
This is a film in which it is really difficult to trace who should get the credit. Based on a novel by a writer whose subsequent work was unremarkable to say the least, its two scenarists wrote little else of note. Lloyd Bacon was a perfectly competent director, but he made nothing to compare with this little wonder. And Busby Berkeley? Well, one can hardly credit him with anything much beyond the dance numbers.
But it doesn't really matter. The characters are magnificent. Julian Marsh is the very essence of an ageing director - tetchy, insecure. Peggy Sawyer is a fabulous 'everygirl' plucked from obscurity by a chance miscalculation. Billy Lawlor is the perfect 'juvenile' lead and 'Anytime' Annie is hilarious in her unbridled nastiness and duplicity. Then there are the money men - Abner Dillon - leering at the legs of the chorus girls 'They've got faces too, you know!' says Barry... And Jones and Barry - they have some wonderful lines... 'His interest is our principal!' Every one of the actors inhabiting those roles makes them into archetypes that have remained valid to this day.
And of course, Marsh's 'you got to come back a star' speech is one of the high-points of American cinema.
Perhaps the dance numbers in 'Dames' were better, but for me this is the finest of the early (pre-Astaire-Rogers) musicals. If you have ten musicals to take with you to a desert island, you'd be a fool not to include this one.
This is a film in which it is really difficult to trace who should get the credit. Based on a novel by a writer whose subsequent work was unremarkable to say the least, its two scenarists wrote little else of note. Lloyd Bacon was a perfectly competent director, but he made nothing to compare with this little wonder. And Busby Berkeley? Well, one can hardly credit him with anything much beyond the dance numbers.
But it doesn't really matter. The characters are magnificent. Julian Marsh is the very essence of an ageing director - tetchy, insecure. Peggy Sawyer is a fabulous 'everygirl' plucked from obscurity by a chance miscalculation. Billy Lawlor is the perfect 'juvenile' lead and 'Anytime' Annie is hilarious in her unbridled nastiness and duplicity. Then there are the money men - Abner Dillon - leering at the legs of the chorus girls 'They've got faces too, you know!' says Barry... And Jones and Barry - they have some wonderful lines... 'His interest is our principal!' Every one of the actors inhabiting those roles makes them into archetypes that have remained valid to this day.
And of course, Marsh's 'you got to come back a star' speech is one of the high-points of American cinema.
Perhaps the dance numbers in 'Dames' were better, but for me this is the finest of the early (pre-Astaire-Rogers) musicals. If you have ten musicals to take with you to a desert island, you'd be a fool not to include this one.