42nd Street (1933)

During the early 1930s, the British magazine Film Weekly produced dozens of four card sets on popular films. Today a film special with a Film Weekly set for the classic film musical 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), produced by Warner Bros. Among the stars are Warren Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent and the upcoming Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers and Dick Powell. The biggest star of the film however is dance director Busby Berkeley and his daring and dazzling camerawork. In 1934, the film was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity postcard for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) with George Brent, Bebe Daniels, and Warren Baxter.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity postcard for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) with George Brent, Bebe Daniels, Ruby Keeler and Warren Baxter.

Kaleidoscopic patterns of female flesh

42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) is the original depression-era back stage musical. Noted Broadway producers Jones (Robert McWade) and Barry (Ned Sparks) are putting on Pretty Lady, a musical starring Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels). She is involved with wealthy and sleazy sugar daddy Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee), the show's financial backer, but while she is busy keeping him both hooked and at arm's length, she is secretly seeing her old vaudeville partner, out-of-work Pat Denning (George Brent).

Renowned Broadway producer/director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is hired to put together the musical revue. Marsh is quite ill, and he must make his last show a hit, in order to have enough money to retire on. He is a difficult task master working long hours and continually pushing the cast to do better. When Brock breaks her ankle one of the chorus girls, naive newcomer Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) from Allentown, gets her big chance to be the star. The show's juvenile lead, Billy Lawler (Dick Powell), takes an immediate liking to Peggy. (In the original novel Julian and Billy are lovers. Since same-sex relationships were unacceptable in films by the moral standards of the era, the film substituted a romance between Billy and Peggy.)

What makes 42nd Street special is the dazzling and daring choreographed and filmed musical numbers by Busby Berkeley. He still overwhelms audiences with his larger-than-life lavish entertainment. Berkeley elaborately engineered colossal geometrically patterned dance routines. Berkeley evidently loved his chorus girls, and aimed his camera at their beautiful legs. When the chorus girls leave their dressing rooms and are coming down the stairs for opening night, Berkeley puts his camera under the stairs and shoots up their dresses as they pass. Further along, all the chorus girls are shown in a spectacular array of rhythmic movement, kaleidoscopic patterns of female flesh. In one musical number they form an arc and Berkeley tracks right through their legs all the way around the circle. Once the production code was strictly enforced in Hollywood after 1934, shots like this were never seen again.

42nd Street has three great musical number in the last twenty minutes of the film, 'You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me, 'Shuffle Off To Buffalo' and of course '42nd Street'. They were written by the powerhouse songwriting team of composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin. The script was written by Rian James and James Seymour, with Whitney Bolton, who was not credited, from the 1932 novel of the same name by Bradford Ropes. 42nd Street (1933) was Ruby Keeler's first film, and the first time that Busby Berkeley, Harry Warren and Al Dubin had worked for Warner Bros. Director Lloyd Bacon was not the first choice to direct – he replaced Mervyn LeRoy when LeRoy became ill. LeRoy was dating Ginger Rogers at the time, and had suggested to her that she take the role of the gold-digging chorus girl 'Anytime' Annie.

The story of 42nd Street is typical Warner Bros. in the Depression years: both hard-hitting and humorous. The film combines stunning musical numbers with a frank story about the desperation of people whose lives depend on putting on a hit show in trying times. Mordaunt Hall, the famous critic of The New York Times called the film "invariably entertaining" and, "The liveliest and one of the most tuneful screen musical comedies that has come out of Hollywood". 42nd Street has a tough urgency seldom found in musical films of the time. It struck a nerve with a world in crisis and became a huge hit. Warner already had a follow-up  – Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, Busby Berkeley, 1933) – in production before the film's release, and the success of both films permitted a higher budget and more elaborate production numbers in Warner's next follow-up, Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley, 1933).


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity postcard for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) with Ruby Keeler and George Brent.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity postcard for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) with Guy Kibbee and Ginger Rogers.

Sources: Emanuel Levy (emanuellevy.com), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Imported from the USA: Bebe Daniels

Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later, she was the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and she also sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.


French postcard by Cinémagazine Edition, Paris, no. 452. Photo: Paramount.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4811/1, 1929-1930. Photo: RKO Radio Pictures. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


French postcard, no. 290.

Charming and spunky

Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man.

That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco.

By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910). It is the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films.

At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915).

Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.”

After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.


Italian postcard, no. 166. Photo: publicity still for Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920).


British postcard. Photo: publicity still for The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4812/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Radio Pictures (RKO). Publicity still for Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929) with John Boles.

A 20-year-old veteran film actress

In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell.

At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release.

Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque.

Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-colour Technicolor.

The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 51592, 1930-1931. Photo: Radio Pictures (RKO). Publicity still for Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929) with John Boles.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5158/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Radio Pictures (RKO). Publicity still for Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930) with Lloyd Bridges.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 368-3. Photo: Paramount-Film.


French postcard by Europe, no. 379. Photo: Paramount.

Box office draw

Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released.

Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realised what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931).

The Maltese Falcon was based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and starred Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. It was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez.

In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3395/1, 1928-1929.


German postcard. Ross Verlag, no. 4003/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Paramount.


German postcard. Ross Verlag, no. 4109/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Paramount.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6498/1, 1931-1932. Photo: First National Pictures. Publicity still for Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931).

Hi Gang!

Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. By then, she had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they had adopted.

In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre.

A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver.

The couple stayed in London, broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WW II. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S. Truman for war service.

In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband Ben, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film was The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955).

Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.


Trailer Rio Rita (1929). Source: perfectjazz78 (YouTube).


Scene from The Maltese Falcon (1931) with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade, Una Merkel as Effie Perine and Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly. Source: egosomnio (YouTube).


Trailer 42nd Street (1933). Source: Victoria Mentz (YouTube).

Sources: Stephan Eichenberg a.o. (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.