Las castigadoras de Broadway

I have heard portions of the Vitaphone soundtrack in the past and recently seen the extant film clips featuring Nick Lucas singing "Tip toe through the tulips" and the Finale. Whilst these musical numbers are not like the grand designs as later seen in Busby Berkeley cinematic choreographed numbers they are still spectacular and more like one would see on a real stage. The action is fast and breezy. The costumes and sets look gorgeous. Warners did a great job despite the limitations of early colour and sound movies.

The finale is a reprise of most of the featured songs that were in the film. The colours though muted still look fantastic and there is tremendous energy and life in the dancers. Nancy Welford blew me away with her charm when singing the "Song of the Gold Diggers" in the Finale. I never appreciated "Tip toe through the tulips" until I saw this original version. Keep humming it all the time now. Does anyone know who the lovely lady is that Nick Lucas is serenading? I think it could be Lilyan Tashman who passed way several years after making this film.

Given the success of the stage remake of 42nd Street, it would not be a bad idea if this film was also revived into a stage show. All the ingredients for success are there. The mystique of a lost treasure, a snappy story with a suite of fantastic musical numbers and easily adaptable for the stage. The dialogue and songs still exist on Vitaphone disks and we have a feel of what the film looked like from the clips. It would be a fantastic visual experience to see it in similar two strip Technicolor hues as in the film. All pastels, pinks, greens, turquoise, browns, sepia, reds, oranges and gold. Would make a surreal visual experience.

I recently purchased the newly released 3-disc DVD set of Al Jolson's "The Jazz Singer." One of the extras was of found excerpts of the otherwise lost "Gold Diggers of Broadway." I had seen other musicals from 1929/30 era which all had a cumbersome, boring execution in style and musical presentation before the snap of Busby Berkeley breathed life into the musical. I fully expected the cumbersome quality in this excerpt. I was stunned at how wonderfully entertaining the number was....how talented these different dancers were to say nothing of the energy involved including the delivery in the available bits of dialog. Everyone seemed to be having genuine fun. I also enjoyed the ballet sequence although my guess is that fewer people might appreciate that sequence. The female ballet dancers were very beautiful in it. The quality of these excerpts adds to the tragedy of "Gold Diggers of Broadway" being a lost film. Other lost films have been found. We can only hope that will be the case here.

Except for two clips that are on The Jazz Singer DVD, this movie is lost. One of them begins with a man and a young woman who calls him uncle but is being proposed marriage. Then it's a big finale with many men in top hats and tails and a couple of acrobats doing somersaults. The screen then goes black but the surviving audio continues. The other surviving sequence has a bunch of ballerinas performing on stage with swans in a pond at the end. All this was in two-strip color. It was all fascinating to watch and hear. Since I'm not so sure the entire movie will ever be found, I'm reviewing this now and giving my rating which you'll see above. So on that note, those surviving Gold Diggers of Broadway clips were sure fascinating to watch.

This musical comedy was the third movie released by Warner Bros. in color, and it was a box office smash, making Winnie Lightner a star and bringing greater fame to guitarist crooner Nick Lucas as he sang two songs that became 20th-century standards: "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" and "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine." Of interest mostly to film history buffs. --Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013

this film is lost! well... partially lost, it is. so how do I know Gold Diggers of Broadway? thanks to the wonderful invention of the DVD (in this case the Busby Berkeley Collection Volume 2). It had the song 'Tip Toe through the Tulips' and the song of the climax of the movie.

the last weeks, I've been repeating the song 'Tip Toe through the Tulips' in my head. why? because I saw the fantastic trailer of Jack Smith's 'Flaming Creatures' on the music of the song mentioned before. however, that song is not in the movie (Flaming Creatures) itself. so I returned home very sad and I searched the net on the song (many times I found the version of the song sung by Tiny Tim - a revelation in fact).

but now I bought vol2 of Busby Berkeley and on the DVD of Gold Diggers of 1937 it was one of the extra's. what a beautiful extra this is! probably the best performed version of the song. wasn't Berkeley one of the crew members? it does have some of the known Berkeley factors, like the opening roses with dancers/singers in.

it's really a shame this movie is lost and I certainly hope one day somebody will find a secret place with all lost films ever made. in the hidden vault of Jack Warner perhaps (just joking)?