42nd Street (Keep Case Packaging)
by Lloyd Bacon
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bebe Daniels, Dick Powell, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Warner BaxterDirector: Lloyd Bacon
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 89 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-21
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 67852
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- When the leading lady of a Broadway musical breaks her ankle, she is replaced by a young unknown actress, who becomes the star of the show.Running Time: 89 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS Rating: NR Age: 012569678521 UPC: 012569678521 Manufacturer No: 67852
Movie Reviews of 42nd Street (Keep Case Packaging)
Movie Review: Nostalgia at its best, with great songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin
Summary: 5 Stars
42nd Street is one of my favorite movies. It's the granddaddy of "put on a musical" musicals, and if it seems full of cliches now it's because cliches have to start somewhere. They weren't cliches when 42nd Street opened. When young Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) has to take the place of the star, gets a pep talk from Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) and then dances from the wings into the big production number of Shuffle Off to Buffalo...well, is there any doubt that Peggy is going to come back a star? (Even if Marsh's talk is enough to scare the tap shoes off Fred Astaire, much less little Peggy Sawyer. "Sawyer, you listen to me, and you listen hard. Two hundred people, two hundred jobs, two hundred thousand dollars, five weeks of grind and blood and sweat depend upon you. It's the lives of all these people who've worked with you. You've got to go on, and you've got to give and give and give. They've got to like you. Got to. Do you understand? You can't fall down. You can't because your future's in it, my future and everything all of us have is staked on you. All right, now I'm through, but you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out, and Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!")
The story is endearing because we've seen it so many times. The movie is still so fresh, so good and so entertaining, however, because of the songs, the actors and Busby Berkeley's turn-tables, disappearing benches, moving cameras and high-kicking chorus girls. I can watch many times over the musical numbers (songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin) performed by a young, energetic and perfectly confident Dick Powell (I'm Young and Healthy), Una Merkel and Ginger Rogers, Ruby Keeler and Clarence Nordstrom (Shuffle Off to Buffalo), the big 42nd Street extravaganza with Ruby Keeler and half the population of New York City, and a great song that still holds its own, You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me (sung by Bebe Daniels).
Ruby Keeler was such a long shot for actual stardom. She couldn't act. She sang well but without much emotion. Her tap dancing was all elbows and thumping feet. Yet she was so innocent and earnest you just can't help rooting for her. When Warner Baxter gives his impassioned pep talk to Keeler as Peggy Sawyer, he is all intensity, driving home just how important it is for Sawyer to succeed. Keeler is facing him with a pleasant, utterly emotionless expression on her face. Try watching the scene but focus on Keeler, not Baxter. Her lack of expression is so incongruous it's absolutely endearing. Perhaps that's why she was such a success. She might be a klutz like us, but she's going to give it her all in front of an audience, something most of us wouldn't have the courage to try.
One of the delights of the musical numbers is watching Una Merkel and Ginger Rogers in an upper birth, Merkel eating a banana and Rogers an apple, giving the other side of the story of Shuffle off to Buffalo. First we watch Keeler and Nordstrom (unbilled and with an odd vibrato):
I'll go home and pack my panties
You go home and get your scanties
And away we'll go.
Off we're gonna shuffle,
Shuffle off to Buffalo.
To Niagara in a sleeper
There's no honeymoon that's cheaper
And the train goes slow.
Off we're gonna shuffle,
Shuffle Off to Buffalo.
But then Merkel and Rogers give their point of view between bites of banana and apple:
Matrimony is baloney,
She'll be wanting alimony,
In a year of so.
Still they go and shuffle,
Shuffle off to Buffalo.
When she knows as much as we know
She'll be on her way to Reno
While he still has dough.
She'll give him the Shuffle
When they're back from Buffalo.
The movie is filled with similar wise-cracking attitude. And if you're into drugs or love or just exceptionally well-written songs, you cant beat You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me:
Every kiss, every hug,
Seems to act just like a drug.
You're getting to be a habit with me.
Let me stay in your arms,
I'm addicted to your charms.
You're getting to be a habit with me.
I used to think your love was something
That I could take or leave alone.
But now I couldn't do without my supply.
I need you for my own.
Oh I can't break away, I must have you every day,
As regularly as coffee or tea.
You've got me in your clutches and I can't get free,
You're getting to be a habit with me.
With 42nd Street at least, nostalgia is everything it's said to be.
The DVD transfer is excellent. There are several extras including a short vintage feature on composer Harry Warren.
Summary of 42nd Street (Keep Case Packaging)
42ND STREET - DVD MovieSet during the depression, this is the granddaddy of backstage musicals in which the understudy finally gets a chance to shine. It may seem a little cliché now, but in 1933 this was hot stuff. All that behind-the-scenes atmosphere feels very genuine, and the script is more acerbic than you might expect.
A sickly Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) puts his all into what may be his last show, only to face a disaster when leading lady Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) sprains her ankle. Thank heavens for ingenue Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler), who steps in at the last minute. The vivacious soundtrack includes "Shuffle off to Buffalo," and the still-catchy title tune. Best of all are those extravagant, kaleidoscopic dance numbers by Busby Berkeley, then in his prime. --Rochelle O'Gorman
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