Make Me Watch A Musical - 42nd Street

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Last week Warner Brothers released a boxed-set of twenty of their musicals to much fanfare, and since I'm a bit of a musical novice I asked y'all to vote on which three movies from the set I oughta watch and review for you. I reviewed Victor/Victoria on Friday, and here comes number two - 1933's 42nd Street, which was directed by Lloyd Bacon with choreography from the very famous Busby Berkeley. I've actually seen a lot of Berkeley's sequences before, but this is the first time I attempted sitting through one of the actual films that surround them - it was pretty much exactly what I thought it'd be, aka somebody shouting "We're gonna put on a show!" with a cigar in their mouth while chorus girls wave their gams while we pretend not to notice how all the cute chorus guys keep touching each other.

I'm not belittling any of this at all, by the way - it's all a lot of harmless fun. Ginger Rogers wears a monocle for no reason I can discern (it was probably referenced in one of the rat-a-tat witticisms I gave up entirely keeping up with), everybody's constantly hiccuping-drunk, there's a train-full of lesbian sex...

... and the Berkeley number at the end is a dazzler.

Oh yes, it's all lovely, and fine, and in good fun.

All except one insidious horrible beast!

I'm talking to you, Ruby Keeler! Harridan! Horror!

Here are five reasons why Ruby Keeler 

is the worst person who has ever lived.

1. She doesn't knock.

I never wanted to see Dick Powell in his underpants, goddamit. And yet there's good ol' Ruby, traipsing about like she owns the place, and wham my eyes are turned into lava.

2. She just goes to sleep on stage while they're trying to work on the show...

... and then she has the nerve to be all uppity and affronted when they yell at her about it.

3. She can't dance! She's as graceful 

as a pack of elephants stuffed into a chenille slipcover.

4. Yet somehow everybody's blind to her black hole of charisma, so they offer her the lead in the show, and she spends the next five minutes WHINING about their offer. I lost track of how often she has to be shaken out of "it," "it" apparently meaning "everything there is about living, except whining." If you don't want to be there, toots, hit the road!

5. I mean, she lies down in the middle of practice repeatedly! And they offer her the lead, and then all she does is WHINE. Ugh Ruby Keeler is the worst person who has ever lived!
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