Gold Diggers of 1933, a lavish and glittering showcase for Busby Berkeley's musical production talent, was designed and produced as a Depression tonic. As Berkeley said, "In an era of breadlines, Depression, and wars, I tried to help people get away from all the misery . . . to turn their minds away to something else. I wanted to make people happy, if only for an hour. This book contains the full shooting script of Erwin Gelsey and James Seymour, based on the Avery Hopwood play of 1919, as well as the lyrics to the five songs of the film. Arthur Hove's introduction outlines the story concept from its initial Broadway form, through the 1923 silent movie, the 1929 talkie, and including several post-1933 versions. The concept of the good-hearted chorus girl with a penchant for separating wealthy men from some of their money has long been popular with both theatre and movie audiences. Hove tells much about the relationship between the story line and musical segments of the movie, about how far a writer can go before passing the baton to the director, and about how a film is actually put together. The film is remembered for Berkeley's musical and visual extravaganza. In the opening number, "We're in the Money," his sumptuous corps de ballet, numbering fifty-four, appeared in costumes made of fifty-four thousand "silver" coins. Five silver dollars, twenty-eight feet in diameter formed the background for the chorus.

A dictionary of short entries on American musicals and their practitioners, including performers, composers, lyricists, producers, and choreographers

The stereotype of the "gold digger" has had a fascinating trajectory in twentieth-century America, from tales of greedy flapper-era chorus girls to tabloid coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and her octogenarian tycoon husband. The term entered American vernacular in the 1910s as women began to assert greater power over courtship, marriage, and finances, threatening men's control of legal and economic structures. Over the course of the century, the gold digger stereotype reappeared as women pressed for further control over love, sex, and money while laws failed to keep pace with such realignments. The gold digger can be seen in silent films, vaudeville jokes, hip hop lyrics, and reality television. Whether feared, admired, or desired, the figure of the gold digger appears almost everywhere gender, sexuality, class, and race collide. This fascinating interdisciplinary work reveals the assumptions and disputes around women's sexual agency in American life, shedding new light on the cultural and legal forces underpinning romantic, sexual, and marital relationships.

Beginning with The Jazz Singer (1927) and 42nd Street (1933), legendary Hollywood film producer Darryl F. Zanuck (1902–1979) revolutionized the movie musical, cementing its place in American popular culture. Zanuck, who got his start writing stories and scripts in the silent film era, worked his way to becoming a top production executive at Warner Bros. in the later 1920s and early 1930s. Leaving that studio in 1933, he and industry executive Joseph Schenck formed Twentieth Century Pictures, an independent Hollywood motion picture production company. In 1935, Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century Pictures with the ailing Fox Film Corporation, resulting in the combined Twentieth Century-Fox, which instantly became a new major Hollywood film entity. The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes is the first book devoted to the musicals that Zanuck produced at these three studios. The volume spotlights how he placed his personal imprint on the genre and how—especially at Twentieth Century-Fox—he nurtured and showcased several blonde female stars who headlined the studio’s musicals—including Shirley Temple, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Vivian Blaine, June Haver, Marilyn Monroe, and Sheree North. Building upon Bernard F. Dick’s previous work in That Was Entertainment: The Golden Age of the MGM Musical, this volume illustrates the richness of the American movie musical, tracing how these song-and-dance films fit within the career of Darryl F. Zanuck and within the timeline of Hollywood history.

This book offers a different take on the early history of Warner Bros., the studio renowned for introducing talking pictures and developing the gangster film and backstage musical comedy. The focus here is on the studio’s sustained commitment to produce films based on stage plays. This led to the creation of a stock company of talented actors, to the introduction of sound cinema, to the recruitment of leading Broadway stars such as John Barrymore and George Arliss and to films as diverse as The Gold Diggers (1923), The Marriage Circle (1924), Beau Brummel (1924), Disraeli (1929), Lilly Turner (1933), The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Even the most crippling effects of the Depression in 1933 did not prevent Warners’ production of films based on stage plays, many being transformed into star vehicles for the likes of Ruth Chatterton, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.

For more than seven decades Nick Lucas was an entertainer, beginning as a child street musician and becoming one of the most popular singer-guitarists of all time. He was a popular sideman in bands, and his solo career conquered radio, recordings, vaudeville, Broadway, films, night clubs and television. He is credited with being the first musician to replace the banjo with the guitar in big bands and on records, and with initiating the "intimate style" of singing, making him the first crooner. Nick Lucas' guitar playing contributed significantly to the instrument's popularity, and he influenced generations of players with his instruction books and by having a line of popular guitar picks bearing his name. He was the first guitarist to have a custom-made model, "The Nick Lucas Special." This biography comprehensively covers Nick Lucas' career as he entertained audiences in the United States, England and Australia, becoming a beloved star and influencing popular music to the present day.

I have completed this manuscript Just Remember This, or as American Pop Singers 1900-1950+, about music before the 1950s in America. It perhaps offers knowledge and insights not previously found in other musical reference books. I have moreover been working on this book very meticulously over the past twelve-plus years. It started as a bit of fun and gradually became serious as I began to listen along with the vocalists of popular music, of the era before 1950, essentially just before the dawn of rock and roll. If you can call it that! Indeed genre and labeling of American music started here, and then from everywhere. While the old adage of always starting from somewhere could be noted in every century, the 1900s had produced the technology. Understanding the necessity, more so, finds a curiosity on the part of a general public hungry for entertainment, despite 6 day work weeks, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.

Collection of the five hundred films that have been selected, to date, for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board, and are thereby listed in the National Film Registry.