First large musical scene in Colleen. I do not own the copyright. The full film is available from the Warner Archive Collection and is well worth it for fans of 30s musicals.
Powell had a great voice. To think he chucked it in the 40s and became a successful dramatic actor and film and television producer, which is what I knew him as when I was growing up. I was well into my 20s before I ever saw one of his musicals.
I love Ruby in all her films, she was so wonderful, sweet, beautiful, and charming in every film she was in from 1932-1941, and then again in 1969 in Broadway's "No no Nanette"
Too bad no one has given credit to Paul Draper who danced the role of the husband. I worked with him so recognized him right away. It's rare to have this long a film sequence featuring him.
These movies were created to take people's minds (off) the Depression and let them think of better times to come. It did the trick, the movie theatres were packed and for 35 cents you could see an entire movie feature with yours truly Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler.
In the early 70s, it was possible to see a movie for $1, Jerry Lewis the comedian and actor, has this chain of movie theaters. I always had the impression that Jerry wanted movies to be as affordable as possible, he was a generous soul.
Dave Gould said that movie chorines in the late 1930s typically worked 40 six-day weeks a year for $70 pw, say $2,800 pa or maybe $250,000 in today's terms. Only one in a hundred got any further, and they had expenses; but California taxes were low, you got to see the stars up close and it sure beat working in a shop or office for a few years before settling down as a homemaker. In the Eighties America was still dotted with gray-haired ladies such as these fashion show hoofers. They could play a VHS tape and point themselves out to their grand-kids as a little bit of the Golden Age.
It was actually Bobby Connolly and Paul Draper. Connolly's stuff gets mistaken for Berkeley's all the time. An interesting fact, that they were both involved in choreographing different bits of the same movie once. That was The Wizard of Oz, but Berkeley's dance for Ray Bolger for the If I Only Had a Brain number got removed due to space considerations. Connolly's stuff stayed in.
When Buzz Berkeley was rediscovered in the mid-1960s, Ruby Keeler was hauled out of retirement to reminisce. She told everyone she could see she was no actress, an indifferent singer and far from the best tapper either; she was bemused that she ever became a big name. But the record belies this modesty. Somehow she overcame her limitations, so that today her performances have an unaffected but delightful charm. Ruby is never breathtaking like Eleanor Powell or deeply expressive like Ginger, but her very lack of intensity can be endearing. She is no 'screen goddess' but an idealization of the girl next door who got a break in pictures. Surrounded by the lavish daftness and ingenuity of the big-budget musical, she is never swamped by it: an oasis of normalcy.
I loved Dick Powell during the 1930’s being a crooner... By 1944 he was playing a tough guy persona like Philip Marlowe, in “Murder, My Sweet”. He was also married to Joan Blondell and his third and final wife was June Allyson. Unfortunately he died rather young at the age of 58. It was speculated that he along with John Wayne and Susan Hayward developed cancer when they were filming a movie called, “The Conqueror” 1956. It was filmed in St. George, Utah near a site that the military used for nuclear testing. Over 1/3 of the people that worked on that movie all died of cancer. Imagine that! 😢😡
I was aware of the curse of that movie. Dick Powell, one of my favourite actors. That transition he made from baby-faced crooner to starring in hard boiled & Noir dramas was brilliant. He also so busy on radio TV & a producer/director. Taken too young as you rightly say.
The director of the dance was Bobby Connelly, here at his lavish best, rivalling Busby Berkely, although he had got into trouble with Warner's over the film Cain and Mabel, were costs over ran wildly, with grossly over the top dance numbers that involved hundreds of dancers and vast sets paid for by Hurst to feature Marion Davis. Here he is much more controlled and the results better...and Ruby Keller dances very well!
In 1936 Ruby Keeler told 'Screenland' magazine: 'Eleanor Powell is so far superior to me as a dancer that it's silly even to mention my name in the same breath.' But Ruby added that when she became a star in Busby Berkeley's numbers for Warner Brothers, she had not been taxed: he chopped and changed angles so much that she never had to dance more than eight bars at a stretch. She said that WB wanted interpolated close-ups because the audience might grow bored by more than a few seconds of a long shot. Buzz had obliged with processions of smiling girls' faces, one of his trademarks. In this number Bobby Connolly is the dance director. Deferring to Paul Draper's acknowledged virtuosity as a stage choreographer and performer, the scene flows theatrically without slicing and dicing; Ruby has to keep things going, and she does it well. However she also said 'I would honestly rather let others figure out what I am to do, and just do it!'. That was the way all the leading women dance stars felt... except Eleanor.
The difference in Keeler's dancing between the early movies and this is remarkable. In 42nd Street, she's somewhat clunky. But Draper really seems to have raised her game. She's graceful and her tapping is much faster. Love this clip.
Did Draper, 'The Aristocrat of Tap', coach her? He was lightness personified-- here his taps are probably dubbed too loud by someone else. Ruby is so unaffectedly sweet that one forgives her any tendency to lumber. Dick Powell is such an eager beaver that the same applies. I find Draper more impressive than emotive: a little too refined and precise for the gutsy comic musicals of the Hungry Thirties. His face was off-puttingly snooty too. His pieces de resistance were tapping to classical music or without music at all, which did not square with brash, jazz-based Great American Songs. But the moguls could have fitted him in as a novelty; after all, Katherine Dunham's company turned up in 'Cabin in the Sky'! Shame that once Draper got out from under the blacklist, the genre was heading for the pretentious badlands of Robbins and Sondheim. He wore well and might have made a comeback in the later 1950s in a more elegant species of production than 'West Side Story'.
"Fashion show" - ?! Good lord! Where was this supposed to be occurring, I wonder? A department store? Well, no store anywhere in the world ever looked like this or staged a fashion show anything like this either. Only in Hollywood.
A really nice little segment here. Hopefully one day I'll actually get to watch the entire film. Paul and Ruby made a really nice on-screen team. It's a pity that Paul got blacklisted a few years later due to the anti-Communist hysteria going around in the post-war era -- the guy was really an amazingly talented dancer. And while Ruby wasn't flashy, overly glamorous or multi-talented, she was still very sweet and likeable and delightful to watch!
Paul Draper as the featured tap dancer is just amazing, and to think that this film from 1936 was made early on in Draper's tap dance development. He obviously created the choreography, which is stellar both as tap dancing and as storytelling. I'll pick out his double pullbacks at about 10:30, which he is performing so cleanly and expertly (on on his left side!) while Ruby Keeler is performing them on her right side and also releasing her right foot prior to each pull back. With technique like that she'd have a tough time reversing to the left side, like Paul. Also, just after at about 10:45, Paul starts into a step shuffle hop shuffle crossing pattern that I learned from him in 1979 when I studied with him at the American Dance Machine in NYC. Definitely one of his signature moves. This clip surely reveals Draper's talent and unique approach to tap dancing. If only he would have enjoyed his Hollywood experience...think of what wonderful tap dances he could have created!
Great to hear knowledgeable analysis from a Draper student. Maybe you could apply it to routines by some of the great movie dancers of the Golden Age? I did hear that Paul annoyed some in Hollywood by his somewhat condescending attitude, like Cyd Charisse... though that might be jealousy talking. Years later a different kind of hoofer, Jimmy Cagney, gave Draper another shot at movies in 'The Time of Your Life', but PD looked too old to be an aspiring star, and rather silly prancing about in the saloon. 'Colleen' shows him at his feather-footed best.
hello, The Warner Archive DVDs are produced in NTSC format, Region 0 coding. Region 0 means Region Free. Almost all PAL dvd players can play NTSC too, so you should be fine wherever you are.
@@edwardharbur4907 The girls prancing in riding breeches remind one of Ginger in 'Isn't This a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain?', from 'Top Hat', shot the previous year.
Make sure and check the 3 Stooges' "Slippery Silks" (1937), which features a similar (but much more insane) fashion show ("I think I'd look stunning in that riding habit...").
It's about more than looking well groomed and amiable. In those days girls in their early twenties assumed the dignity and comportment of adult women. Today women of 40 act like vulgar kids, such is the dread of aging. Consider the persona Beyonce or Lady Gaga presents compared with that of Bette Davis or Ginger Rogers. The First World War resulted in female emancipation. The Second World War produced reincarceration. Hollywood in the 1930s was full of strong-minded but feminine and glamorous role models: Garbo, Dietrich, Crawford, Stanwyck, Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, Davis, Rogers, Mae West. In the Fifties woman stars were wriggling, giggling sexpots such as Monroe and Mansfield, or child-women such as Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron. By the Seventies there was a serious lack of A-list female names. The daughters of Womens' Lib did not possess fascinating personalities. The second wave of feminist ideology blanched them as thoroughly as their back-to-the-kitchen moms. The destruction of individuality was completed by the spread of lockstep liberalism and political correctness, so that there are no longer any actresses capable of projecting their own natures. The most admired, such as Meryl Streep, submerge into their roles. The rest, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, are kooks or conformists.
Yes of course,you are absolutely right, but what a beautiful fantasy....we always tend to idealize the past and identify it with the lives of the very wealthy...ignoring the difficulties and harshness of reality....nostalgia for a past which wasn’t really what we would like it to be...in the end we have never had it so good as today...plus we have the luxury to recreate the style ,lifestyle and the look of any period we wish, minus the ugly bits...so let’s enjoy the fantasy..
i agree she didnt have the best voice but that was part of her charm in my opinion she was a very pretty beautiful lady who i would have fancied if i had lived in them days god bless her.
