Warner Bros released 42nd Street in March 1933. MGM’s attempt to plough the same furrow came out eight months later. All the basic elements are there: a chorus girl becomes the star of the show; a hard-bitten director orders everyone about; dozens of wisecracking chorus girls perform musical numbers that transcend the physical limits of an actual stage. But Dancing Lady has the MGM sheen that Warners would never even try to emulate, with huge Merrill Pye sets that seem to go on forever.
Janie Barlow (Joan Crawford), tracking her man in a Slavko Vorkapich montage
Dancing Lady is a lesser film than 42nd Street, but that does not make it a bad one. It is thoroughly entertaining, and a demonstration of the way Metro was coming into its own as the studio of sophistication and gloss. Robert Z Leonard’s direction could not be more different from his first musical, 1929’s Marianne. Aided by cinematographer Oliver T Marsh (also from Marianne), he imbues the film with smooth camera work.
The production numbers at the end of Dancing Lady include the kind of reality-defying nonsense familiar from Warner’s 1933 musicals, and Slavo Vorkapich’s special effects in ‘Heigh Ho, the Gang’s All Here’ are as inventive as anything conceived by Busby Berkeley.
Joan Crawford recognized and embraced the autobiographical aspects of a story about an ambitious hoofer who makes it to the top, and was able to contribute to the development of the story after expressing some initial doubts. Her dancing is as energetic as always, not dissimilar to Ruby Keeler’s buck-and-wing style.
Curly Howard, Moe Howard and Larry Fine, under the direction of Steve (Ted Healy), prepare to undermine Janie
Clark Gable was a less willing participant than Crawford, and his ill health at the time shows on the screen. His sometimes difficult behaviour was a major factor in Metro’s decision to ‘punish’ him by loaning him to Columbia to make the film that won him an Academy Award. Gable’s Patch Gallagher is never really convincing as a director of musicals, but is certainly preferable to Franchot Tone’s sleazy and manipulative Tod.
Janie gives Fred Astaire sex appeal while he gives her style
The sudden outbursts of violence by Ted Healy and his three stooges, while entertaining, seem a little out of place, though not as much as Fred Astaire, in his film debut, who looks like he has wandered onto the set by mistake. He would have to wait until A Damsel in Distress (1937) and Joan Fontaine to have a less gifted dance partner.
Ettore Vittorio Sarno (1880-1953) was an Italian-born actor known to have worked for New York-based film companies from around 1912. His first feature film is thought to have been Under the Gaslight (1914).
Sarno appeared in at least 200 features and shorts, mostly credited roles during the sound era, but more often uncredited after 1929, when he was largely restricted to ‘ethnic’ parts. He can be seen in King of Kings (1927), Lucky Star (1929), Wee Willie Winkie (1937), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Cloak and Dagger (1946) and The Egg and I (1947).
Sarno was a Mexican waiter in MGM’s Going Hollywood and the Gypsy leader at the beginning of Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow. IMDb also suggests he appeared in Balalaika, which seems likely given its setting.
Both IMDb and the AFI cite a singing group called the Rangers as appearing in MGM’s Going Hollywood. This would appear to be the octet usually known as the KMBC Texas Rangers, a group that performed western songs on a Kansas City, Missouri radio station. The group also appeared in a number of 1930s ‘B’ westerns.
The lineup of the Texas Rangers changed, and it is currently difficult to be certain about which singers participated in Going Hollywood. They are likely to have been Clarence ‘Idaho’ Hartman, Gomer ‘Tenderfoot’ Cool, Joe ‘Monty’ Strand, Herbie ‘Arizona’ Kratoska, Fran ‘Irish’ Mahaney, Robert ‘Captain Bob’ Crawford and Edward ‘Tucson’ Cronenbold.
Vesey Alfred Davoren (1888-1989) was an Anglo-Irish actor from an upper-class background who started out in the British theatre in 1909. His career was interrupted by the First World War, in which he seems to have had a particularly bad time, sustaining several injuries, the effect of a mustard gas attack, and experiences that must have been traumatizing.
When he travelled to America in 1920, press reports mentioned him as a British film actor, but there is no indication of what films he might have made before emigrating.
While maintaining his theatrical work, O’Davoren developed a parallel career as a largely uncredited character actor in films, making his debut in Winds of the Pampas (1927). He was in approaching sixty feature films, frequently playing a butler, which is slightly ironic, given his roots.
Notable pictures in which O’Davoren played a small part include Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1937), Stella Dallas (1937), Four Men and a Prayer (1938) and Forever Amber (1947).
O’Davoren was in three of MGM’s musicals: Going Hollywood, Million Dollar Mermaid and Brigadoon.
He continued to live in California for almost thirty years after retiring at the age of 72.
Morita Mitsugi (1896-1985) was a Japanese character actor in Hollywood at a time when stereotyping was the order of the day and difficult to resist.
Morita left Japan when he was eighteen and worked at a variety of jobs in the United States and Canada. Some sources claim he appeared in silent films, but the first appearance cited by the AFI catalogue is in 1933. He had a prominent role in Nagana (1933). In fact, it is understood that he was originally slated to play the Japanese research scientist Noguchi Hideo in a biopic, but the idea was dropped. Instead, he played second fiddle to Melvyn Douglas in a story about the fight to cure sleeping sickness.
After that, Mikita was restricted to playing uncredited supporting roles, frequently as butlers, valets and assorted servants. He vigorously rejected a featured role in Marie Galante (1934) because he believed it showed Japan in a bad light.
Morita was a gifted actor, and his brief appearances in films such as Front Page Woman (1935) and It Couldn’t Have Happened (1936) were singled out for mention by some reviewers. In even the smallest role, he would fight against the stereotype, for example, when engaging in jujitsu with Cary Grant in The Awful Truth (1937).
Miki Morita appeared as a florist in Going Hollywood at MGM.
Mary Thelma Lange (1912-73) travelled from Pennsylvania to New York City as a nineteen-year-old to join the Ziegfeld Follies. She was spotted by a Hollywood scout and invited to go West.
In Hollywood, Lange became a Goldwyn Girl, appearing in Roman Scandals (1933). She went on to play uncredited chorus girls in a dozen or so pictures for Goldwyn and a variety of other studios. For a change of pace, she was a lady in waiting in The Affairs of Cellini (1934).
In 1938, Lange got married and gave up performing to raise a family.
She appeared as chorus girls in three MGM musicals: Going Hollywood, Broadway Melody of 1936 and, back where she started, The Great Ziegfeld.
Jennifer L Corrie (1876-1963) gained considerable stage experience in stock companies and vaudeville before starting out in films in 1911. Her earliest appearances were in shorts, including a number of westerns, before her feature debut in The Parson of Panamint (1916).
Keckley appeared in over 160 feature films and shorts, and was a regular in bit parts for Cecil B DeMille. She played uncredited character parts in The Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Magnificent Obsession (1935), Show Boat (1936), Theodora Goes Wild (1936) and Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). She featured in dozens of ‘B’ westerns, ending her career in a Tim Holt programmer.
Keckley showed up in just one MGM musical, as a teacher in Going Hollywood.
Louise Mackintosh (1864-1933) was a British actor who made the first of many appearances on Broadway in 1902.
Mackintosh started out in films with credited roles in pictures shot in New York city, including Chickie (1925), which starred her compatriot Dorothy Mackaill. She went on to play character parts in over a dozen films, both credited and uncredited.
Her final role, completed shortly before her death, was as one of the teachers in MGM’s Going Hollywood.
The screen immortality of Clara Blanchard Dickey (1876-1962) rests on her role as Dorothy’s Auntie Em in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Playing aunts was something of a speciality: she was Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly in three different pictures, and Esther Blodgett’s Aunt Mattie in A Star is Born (1937), amongst many others.
Blandick made her stage debut in Boston at the age of 21, and made her first Broadway appearance in 1903, in Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman. She continued to work on Broadway and in touring productions.
Some sources claim she made her first film in 1908, but the earliest appearance identified by the AFI is Mrs Black is Back (19140, an adaptation of a Broadway hit made by Famous Players.
Blandick was part of the 1929 exodus to Hollywood, where she worked as a character actor until the early fifties, sometimes credited, sometimes not, and well over 100 pictures in total. She played the snooty mother in Shopworn (1932) and was uncredited in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932). Blandick was credited again in Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and DeMille’s North West Mounted Police (1940), and uncredited in Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943).
As well as The Wizard of Oz, Blandick appeared without credit in three other MGM musicals: Going Hollywood, The Big Store and Du Barry was a Lady.
