Gold Diggers of Broadway (film)
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| Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) | |
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| Directed by | Roy Del Ruth |
| Written by | Robert Lord based on the 1923 play by Avery Hopwood |
| Starring | Winnie Lightner Nick Lucas |
| Music by | Joseph Burke |
| Cinematography | Barney McGill Ray Rennahan Technicolor) |
| Editing by | William Holmes |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | October 5, 1929 |
| Running time | 101 min (copyrighted as 11 reels - Overture disc included) |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English alternate silent version also produced |
| IMDb profile | |
Gold Diggers of Broadway 1929 is a lost Warner Bros comedy/musical film which is historically important as the second talkie (a term used in 1929 to describe a film with synchronized speech and/or music) photographed entirely in Technicolor. It became a box office sensation, making Winnie Lightner a worldwide star and boosting guitarist crooner Nick Lucas to further fame as he sang two songs that became 20th century standards; 'Tip-toe thru the Tulips' and 'Painting the Clouds with Sunshine'.
It earned a domestic gross of $3.5 Million, extending to over $5 Million worldwide (adjusted for inflation in 2005 this would be a gross of around $240,000,000). The original production cost was approximately $500,000. This film was so popular that it quickly became the top grossing film of all time in 1929 and held this record until 1939. It was chosen as one of the ten best films of 1929 by Film Daily. As with many early Technicolor films, no complete print survives, although the last twenty minutes survive, but are missing a bridging sequence and unfortunately the last minute of the film. Contemporary reviews, the soundtrack and the surviving footage suggest that the film was a particularly well made and fast moving comedy which was enhanced by the Technicolor and a set of lively and enduring pop songs. It encapsulated the spirit of the flapper era, giving us a rare glimpse of a world about to be changed utterly by the Great Depression late in 1930.
The dialogue is unusually frank and witty, quite ahead of most others films in 1929 or 1930. The breakthrough noted by Mordaunt Hall, reviewing in the 'New York Times' was that Warner Bros had abandoned sentiment in favour of musical comedy, with the emphasis on the fun. Prior to 'Gold Diggers of Broadway', most early talkie musicals were seeped in melodrama. This light touch made the film one of the first 'feel good' movies.
Unfortunately because the film is lost, the partial remake (Gold Diggers of 1933) is the most frequently seen version of the story. The film has become so completely forgotten that it has never featured in any 'most wanted' lost film lists and is completely missing from many modern reviews of the early talkie (1928 to 1930) period.
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[edit] Advertisting
Original adverts for the film promised much:
"VITAPHONE recreates The Gold Diggers of Broadway in 100% natural color in Technicolor"
"One hundred percent Color, an additional feature of Vitaphone all talking pictures, doubles the 'life-likeness' of this most vivid and enjoyable of all talking pictures."
"Look for the thrill of a lifetime the day you see 'Gold Diggers of Broadway'.....And look for the Vitaphone sign when you want talking picture entertainment-always!"
"Picture a profuse procession of revue spectacle scenes in amazing settings....superbly staged chorus dancing numbers......the flashing wit of Winnie Lightner....the charm of Nancy Welford.....the astounding dancing of Ann Pennington.....the crooning of Nick Lucas.....love scenes as only Conway Tearle can play them......a story that had New York gasping and giggling for one solid year....and you only begun to imagine the treat that is in store for you"
[edit] Plot
The story is set in the contemporary New York City of 1929, and is about a group of 'gold digging' Broadway showgirls who are all looking for love and money but not sure which is the most important.
The film opens on an audience watching a lavish Broadway show, featuring a giant gold mine production number ('Song of the Gold Diggers'). This is followed by famous guitarist Nick Lucas who sings the song 'Painting the Clouds with Sunshine' which climaxes on stage with a huge art deco revolving sun.
Backstage, the star of the show (Ann Pennington) is fighting over Nick with another girl. We are also introduced to a group of chorus girls who are all 'man hungry'. They are visited by a faded star who is reduced to selling cosmetic soap. They gossip about how they all want a man with plenty of money so they don't end up selling soap. We then discover that a stuffy businessman called Stephen Lee (Conway Tearle) angrily forbids his nephew Wally (William Bakewell), to marry one of the showgirls (Violet).
A corpulent lawyer friend Blake (Albert Gran) advises him to befriend the showgirl first before making a decision. However the showgirls are a group of friends who stick together and the most raucous girl called Mabel (Winnie Lighnter) takes a fancy to Blake calling him 'sweetie' and shows her appreciation by singing him a song ('Mechanical Man').
That evening, they all visit a huge night club. Mabel ends up on a table singing another song to Blake 'Wolf from the door' before jumping into his lap. Showgirl Jerry (Nancy Welford) extends the party to her apartment. Everyone gets drunk and after seeing Ann Pennington dance on the kitchen table, Steve decides he is 'getting to like these showgirls'. Blake says he is 'losing his mind or just plain mad'.
Keeping the fun going, Nick Lucas sings 'Tip Toe Thru the Tulips'. Complications come thick and fast after a balloon game with both Blake and Lee falling under the spell of Mabel and Jerry. Blake gets fed drinks from Mabel. The party ends with Lucas singing 'Go to bed' and Jerry contrives to get Lee back after everyone has left. She gets him more drunk whilst tipping her own drinks away when he isn't looking. Her aim is to get Lee to agree to allow Wally to marry. To do this she lies and is shown up by her own mother who accidentally finds both of them together.
Next morning Jerry is feeling disgraced. Mabel has been given an extra line for the show 'I am the spirit of the ages and the progress of civilisation', but cannot get the words right. Nick Lucas is told off for singing poor songs and sings another 'What will I do without you'. Ann Pennington fights with another showgirl and hurts her eye. Jerry is asked to take her place as the star of the evening performance. Mabel receives a proposal of marriage from Blake, but worries about her extra line.
The show starts with Nick Lucas reprising 'Tip Toe Thru the Tulips' with full orchestra in a huge stage set that shows girl tulips in a huge greenhouse. Backstage, Uncle Steve comes back to give his consent to his nephew and tell Jerry he wants to marry her.
The finale starts with Jerry leading the 'Song of the Gold Diggers' against a huge art deco backdrop of Paris at night. Various acrobats and girls litter the stage as all the songs are reprised in a fast moving, lavish production number. This ends with Jerry sweeping through the middle as the music reaches a climax. Mabel then says her line, but forgets the end!
[edit] Background/Production
Based on the 1923 play The Gold Diggers (which was also turned into a film the same year, now lost), Gold Diggers of Broadway utilized Technicolor, showgirls and sound as its main selling points.
Mordaunt Hall wrote in his review for the New York Times:
- "The fun, coupled with the lovely pastel shades, the tuneful melodies, a sensible narrative, competent acting and elaborate stage settings, resulted in an extraordinarily pleasing entertainment. It caused one to meditate in the end on the remarkable progress of the screen, for not only are the voices reproduced with rare precision, but every opportunity is taken of the Technicolor process in producing the hues and glitter of a musical comedy."
The Technicolor process used for this film could not reproduce a full range of color. Normally, color in movies and photographs is created by recording the image using filter material sensitive to red, green and blue light values. This early Technicolor was a simplified compromise that kept the red, but used a blue/green combination with the emphasis on the green.
The resulting prints reproduced a rich 'sepia like' browns, 'reds' that varied from a muddied brick red to a coral pink and 'greens' that were slightly muted and at their most pale, struggling to look like blue. No pure blue, yellow or purples were possible.
The Technicolor camera was specially constructed for the purpose of color photography, but used standard 35mm b/w panchromatic negative film. The gate of the camera contained a prism which split the incoming light into an image pair of film frames instead of the usual single image frame. Each image pair consisted of two back to back images, one exposed through a red filter and the other through green. The effect on the b/w negative was to have a record of the different color values from each filter recorded in shades of gray. This meant the the negative was double the length of a conventional b/w negative.
This camera negative was cut and reprinted to form a complete reel, but this was done twice, once for each colour, using a special printer to strip off the images. The negative was then printed to a special print called a matrix. This was developed to convert the image into a gelatin relief which acted like a printing plate. To create Technicolor prints, a clear 35mm film reel was run into a special dye transfer machine. Underwater, the red exposed Matrix was dyed green and brought into contact with the blank through a heated pressure roller. The dye in the matrix was stronger or weaker according to the thickness of the gelatine, which varied according to the values of the photographic image derived from the negative. The green dye transferred an image based on the original photographic values. This is known as imbibition printing (it has also been used for professional still photography). The complete reel was then fed through a second pass using the green exposed Matrix and this was dyed red. When the red dyed image was stamped over the green, a complete color image was formed (the process was later refined for full color to add a third pass (known as 3 strip Technicolor) and a silver or sometimes dye image to sharpen the print).
Once started, the transfer process had to be continuous. It was carried out until the required number of prints were made. Each reel (or half reel) would be done in sequence. The transfer would only stop if a fault developed. A single matrix was good for only so many transfers, but it could be taken off the machine and the dye washed off for re-use.
The prints were expensive (compared to b/w) and contracts for the film required a $50,000 deposit. The prints were never as well defined as a b/w print and this was due to unavoidable dye spread. The speed of the camera was around 4 ISO/ASA. The studio lighting was therefore very intense. Pure white was forbidden on costumes because of the glare and the resulting 'white out' on the matrix, which lead to transfer problems.
Initially, public response to early Technicolor was extremely good, but subsequent color musical films (about 36 features were made) began to make the public associate color with musicals. Warner Bros. spared no expense in lavishly filming such musicals as Sally (1929), Golden Dawn (1930), Hold Everything (1930), Song of the Flame (1930), Song of the West (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), The Bride of the Regiment (1930), Under a Texas Moon (1930), Bright Lights (1930), Viennese Nights (1930) and Kiss Me Again (1930) entirely in Technicolor. Late in 1930, musicals became extremely unpopular with the public and many Technicolor films that had been filmed as musical comedies had their musical number completely removed (The Life of the Party, Fifty Million Frenchmen, Manhattan Parade, etc.). The effects of the depression also began to be felt by the movie industry by 1931 and in an attempt to reduce costs the first things to be dispensed with were the needless extravagance of color and wide-screen. The Technicolor process was revamped to a full three-strip color process in an attempt to entice studios to begin using it once more. In spite of this, color would not be used on the scale it had been in 1929-1930 until late in the 1930s as the economy finally began to recover from the Depression.
[edit] Cast
- Nancy Welford - Jerry Lamar (the understudy)
- Conway Tearle - Stephen Lee (Uncle Steve)
- Winnie Lightner - Mabel Munroe
- Ann Pennington - Ann Collins (the leading lady)
- Gertrude Short - Topsy St Clair
- Lilyan Tashman - Eleanor
- William Bakewell - Wally Saunders (the nephew)
- Nick Lucas - Nick
- Helen Foster - Violet Dayne
- Albert Gran - Jim Blake (the lawyer)
- Julia Swayne Gordon - Cissy Gray
- Lee Moran - Dance Director
- Armand Kaliz - Barney Barnett
- Louise Beavers - Sadie the Maid
- Neely Edwards - Stage Manager
[edit] Songs
- "Song of the Gold Diggers" (WB Vitaphone orchestra and stage chorus)
- "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" (Nick Lucas with WB Vitaphone orchestra and stage chorus)
- "And Still They Fall in Love" (Winnie Lightner with backing)
- "Song of the Gold Diggers" (Nancy Welford)
- "Blushing bride" (Nancy Welford)
- "Mechanical Man" (Winnie Lightner with backing)
- "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" - reprise (Nick Lucas with band)
- "Keeping the Wolf from the door" (Winnie Lightner with band)
- "Tip-toe thru the Tulips" (Nick Lucas with guitar and band)
- "The Pennington Glide" (Instrumental - Apartment Party Sequence) (Title cited in script)
- "The Poison kiss of that Spaniard" (need confirmation of this band instrumental) is connected with above entry?
- "In a Kitchenette" (Nick Lucas on guitar)
- "Go to Bed" (Nick Lucas on guitar)
- "What Will I Do Without You?" (Nick Lucas on guitar)
- "Tip-toe thru the Tulips" - reprise (Nick Lucas with WB Vitaphone orchestra and chorus)
- Finale featuring Nancy Welford with WB Vitaphone orchestra - "Song of the Gold Diggers" introduction/"Tip-toe thru the Tulips" (instrumental WB Vitaphone orchestra) /"Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" (instrumental WB Vitaphone orchestra) and chorus/"Mechanical Man" (instrumental WB Vitaphone orchestra) / Nancy Welford with WB Vitaphone orchestra - "Song of the Gold Diggers" - reprise and finale.
[edit] Quotes
Mabel: "I don't care what kind of a man he is as long as he has pants and an income"
Topsy: "And you're not so particular about the pants, are you"
Steve Lee to Blake: "I'm living Jim, just living. We've been letting ourselves get old. These young people are dancing the kinks out of our knees and our hearts. The spirit of youth. You ought to welcome it."
Topsy: "I've got a very sore"
Stage manager: "Sore what?"
Eleanor: "Tell him the truth darling. One can't shock him. He's been married.......frequently"
Blake "A Gold Digger, generally a woman, who extracts money and other valuables from the gentlemen of her acquaintance, generally without making any adequate return".
[edit] Preservation
The film was shot using Vitaphone sound on disc combined with full aperture nitrate Technicolor two-component prints. The discs (including the overture) have survived, but until around 1986 nothing survived from the film. It was at this time, that the last reel, minus the final minute was donated to the British Film Institute as a silent, 35mm, Technicolor print on nitrate stock. This was faithfully copied and thus restored. Nearly ten years later another reel was discovered in Australia (the end of the distribution line) and this turned out to be the penultimate reel featuring the 'Tip-toe thru the Tulips' production number. It was also missing a short bridging sequence. Footage from the start of the film also survives in a 1937, black and white trailer for Gold Diggers of 1937 and also in a 35mm, nitrate fragment lasting approx twenty seconds and purchased on ebay, found with a toy projector.
Although the film had copyright renewed in the late 1950s, it does not appear to have been shown on Television (16mm b/w prints were made of other early Warner Bros talkies). It is currently unclear why the film wasn't reprinted but as with many titles with no optical soundtrack, conjecture might suggest that the Vitaphone discs may have been lost at that particular time.
[edit] Trivia
The song 'Painting the Clouds With Sunshine' was originally the main theme for the film. After Nick Lucas signed up for the film (he was hired by Darryl Zanuck) it was spotted as a potential hit and 'Tip-toe thru the Tulips' was written to enlarge the film and proved, against exepectations to be just as popular. Zanuck provided an extra production number for the tune. It became his theme song, yet ended up being emulated in a much different version by the 1960s singer Tiny Tim who recorded it as a novelty, and eventually attached a campy stigma to the tune that would remain, seemingly forever after. Lucas was a favorite of Tiny Tim's, however, and even appeared as a guest at Tim's infamous wedding ceremony on The Tonight Show in 1969, singing both of their trademark number.
The basic storyline was modified and reused in later Warner Bros films such as Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) and Painting the Clouds With Sunshine (1951).
Lilyan Tashman's character of the sarcastic cool Blonde with the throwaway comments and 'English accent' was one of the first in a long line of similar characters in countless subsequent films.
Director Roy Del Ruth ended up marrying star Winnie Lightner in 1940.
The two production numbers for "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine" and "Tiptoe thru the Tulips" both start on a smaller set and move to a larger one. To change between sets while the song was sung and create a seamless transition, instead of using a curtain, a shot of a stagehand was shown, throwing a sparking electric lighting switch which darkens one scene out and fades in another.
The only performer in the 1929 film to have also appeared in the 1923 silent version, The Gold Diggers, was Gertrude Short. Largely forgotten today, she's perhaps best known to film buffs as the aggressive reporter who hounds Robert Armstrong in the opening reel of Son of Kong (1933).
Winnie Lightner became one of Warner Bros. biggest stars in 1930. She starred in two lavish Technicolor features in that year: Hold Everything (1930 film) and The Life of the Party (1930 film). Winnie Lightner's first appearance as the title character in the 1931 Olsen & Johnson comedy Gold Dust Gertie pays homage to her success in Gold Diggers of Broadway by utliizing "Song of the Gold Diggers" as the musical underscoring during this sequence. Her flapperish care-free demeanor became decidedly dated as the conservatism of the 1930s took it course and this probably explains why she retired from films in 1934.
In a late 1960s audiotaped interview with Winnie Lightner, she speculated that her extremely poor eyesight (which began to fail unusually early) was due to her frequent exposure to the brilliant lighting required for the string of early Technicolor films she appeared in between 1929 and 1930.
Majestic Pictures attempted to cash in on the "Gold Diggers" concept by naming a feature Gold Diggers of Paris, however Warner Bros. prevented this via legal action.
In the top ten money making films for Australia in 1930.
