“Gold Diggers of 1933”

“Gold Diggers of 1933”

Monday Night Movies in the Park Kicks Off July 8

The Camden Public Library again hosts Monday Night Movies in the Park for your summer evening entertainment! Thanks to the support of The First and Allen Financial, the Library will again show movies in the Amphitheatre at dusk on Monday nights starting July 8. The first movie of the series will be the ’30s classic “Gold Diggers of 1933,” starring Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, Ruby Murray, and other stars of the early 1930s. The show starts at 8:30; bring blankets or chairs for seating. The movies are free but donations will be accepted, thanks!

Here is the schedule for the summer:

July 8, 8:30, “Gold Diggers of 1933” (B&W; 97 min.)

July 15, 8:30, “Beetlejuice” (PG; 103 min.)

July 22, 8:20, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” (B&W; 118 min.)

July 29, 8:15, “Holes,” (PG; 117 min.)

Aug. 5, 8:15, “The Sting (PG; 129 min.)

Aug. 12, 8:00, “The Mummy,” (1999; PG-13; 125 min.)

Aug. 19, 7:45, Rain makeup night.

The dueling themes for the summer music series are “The 1930s,” to help us celebrate the Amphitheatre which was inaugurated in 1931, and the Summer Reading Program theme, “Groundbreaking Works.” “Gold Diggers of 1933” satisfies both categories!

“Gold Diggers of 1933” is a musical comedy that includes show tune favorites “We’re in the Money” and “Pettin’ in the Park.” A first-rate cast, a first-rate director—and oh, those show girls and dances! This is, of course, another Busby Berkeley dance triumph.

“Gold Diggers of 1933,”  from a review by Michael Coy:

Made in the year when the global economic crash hit rock bottom, and the first signs of recovery began to appear, “Gold Diggers” is very much a product of the Depression. Bread lines and penury are all around, but there is a jaunty air of optimism, too: “the long-lost dollar has come back to the fold.”

Polly, Trixie, and Carol are three vivacious and attractive showgirls who room together and scrape a precarious living by getting hired for each new Broadway musical as it crops up, and riding their luck until it closes — which is often before it even opens. On the fringe of their group hovers Fay, the smart blonde with the waspish tongue (Ginger Rogers). The girls are “gold diggers” and they waste no opportunity to batten onto rich men. It is hinted during the course of the film that showgirls inhabit a shadowy region, and the harsh economic realities of 1933 force the girls to regard their good looks as a marketable commodity.

A kind of innocent carnality runs through the film. Fay thinks nothing of changing clothes with Carol, Trixie bathes with the door wide open, while Carol preens herself in the scantiest of negligees. The girls contrive to embarrass a rich snob by having him wake up in Carol’s bed.  It is in the show numbers, however, that the real naughtiness is on display. Busby Berkeley had had a phenomenal impact earlier in the year with his staged routines for “42nd Street” and a similar (but more risque) format is used here.

Ruby Murray and Dick Powell once again team up as the ingenue lovers, this time playing Brad and Polly. Murray is all coy charm and Powell’s tenor voice is magnificent. Ginger is, as always, a beautiful and intelligent performer. Watch her pull off the gibberish verses in “Money” and breezing through the comic dialogue in the apartment scene. Joan Blondell as Carol is simply adorable. Her sad face during the trick played on Lawrence is enough to tell us that she is falling in love. Her performance as The Spirit of the Depression in “My Forgotten Man” is one of the great images in cinema history.