Underplayed Gems

Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933 poster
Directed by
Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley
Genre
drama film, musical film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 36m
Rated
NR
Rating
7.2 of 10 from 178 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

More films like thisWatch the trailer

or watch the trailer on YouTube

How it feels

During the Great Depression, a group of showgirls and a struggling composer try to put on a Broadway musical. They face financial trouble and romantic complications along the way.

livelyenergeticromanticwhimsicallightheartedglamorousupbeat

What happens

Gold Diggers of 1933 is an American pre-Code musical film directed by Mervyn LeRoy, with songs by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics). The film's numbers were staged and choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It starred Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, and Dick Powell. It also featured appearances by Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks and Ginger Rogers. The story is loosely based on the play The Gold Diggers by Avery Hopwood, which had its Broadway run for 717 performances in 1919 and 1920. The play was adapted into a 1923 silent film by David Belasco, the producer of the Broadway play, as The Gold Diggers, starring Hope Hampton and Wyndham Standing, and again as a talkie in 1929, directed by Roy Del Ruth. That film, Gold Diggers of Broadway, which starred Nancy Welford and Conway Tearle, was one of the biggest box-office hits of that year. Gold Diggers of 1933 was one of the highest-grossing motion pictures of the year, earning over $2.2 million at the box office. This version of Hopwood's play was written by James Seymour and Erwin S. Gelsey, with additional dialogue by David Boehm and Ben Markson. In 2003, Gold Diggers of 1933 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.