Just finished watching a seriously strange and wondrous cultural artifact. Keith, for reasons best known to God, decided to pull out the 1933 Opus “42nd Street” and watch it. Like, first thing this morning, which was about 10:00. (Paul had gone off to work).
I realized I had slid onto an alternate plane of processed cheese when I heard 72 year old dialogue like “Anytime Annie? She only said no once, and that was because she didn’t hear the question!”
The movie itself is no great shakes, and Warner Baxter could have stood a thicker mustache (this line deleted) but what really pulled me were the two little pieces of “filler” at the end. Okay, picture that you’re on the Columbia football team and you just won the Rose Bowl and it’s 1933 and for publicity purposes you are being tossed on a bus, and pulled off the bus in Hollywood and thrown into a big pile of BUSBY BERKELEY STARLETS. Oh, da humanity. Then they all dogpile ya, with their fancy clothes on.
The other piece of entertainment was quite amusing. It showed a very raffinee party during which Harry Warner (the composer of the musical – 42nd Street) sang and played, and a whole bunch of his ‘guests’ sang and played. It was like an MTV video that was a) black and white b) didn’t have seven billion jumpcuts per second and c) didn’t take itself really seriously. Oh, and the woman who sounds like Betty Boop….. so wonderful.
Pic is of the path behind the fOlks’ place.
