Reviews and notes

DAMES might well have been called Gold Diggers Of 1934, since in concept and intent it amounted to the same thing. It also employed much the same talent as the other big Warner musicals - Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are again the young lovers, he an ambitious song-writer who has written a show that only needs a backer, and she his sympathetic romantic inspiration. Joan Blondell is the flip chorus girl who shakes down the ubiquitous Guy Kibbee for the backing money. The story line is even slighter in DAMES than in some of the others, but it is enough to link the Busby Berkeley spectacles.

Of the five songs in DAMES, the three written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren form the basis for the Berkeley routines. Mort Dixon and Allie Wrubel supplied the ballad Try To See It My Way, which is reprised several times as a theme song, and Irving Kahl and Sammy Fain came up with the saucy number When You Were a Smile On Your Mother's Lips and a Twinkle In Your Daddy's Eye. Fain appeared in the picture as a young composer.

The Girl at the Ironing Board is a novelty number; an unusual one for Berkeley since it calls for only one girl, Joan Blondell, a lovelorn laundress singing to the pajamas and the men's long underwear she irons. A forest of laundry begins to swing and sway to her song. Berkeley recalls, 'At the end of the shooting Ray Enright came over and asked if it wasn't easier working with only one person. I laughed and told him to look above him. He did, and I pointed out some fifty men I had in the overhead racks manipulating strings attached to the underwear and the pajamas.'

By far the most memorable item in DAMES is the song and routine, I Only Have Eyse For You. One of the best songs ever written for a film, it is sung by Powell and beautifully staged by Berkeley. Dick and Ruby meet in front of a movie theatre, then take a long subway ride during which they fall asleep. As Powell dreams - hordes of girls appear, all wearing Benda masks of Ruby so that an army of Keelers assaults the eye. Each girl, with a board on her back, bends over, and fitting the boards together, a gigantic jigsaw picture of Ruby's face appears. The next scene is equally devastating as a massive mobile set of revolving wheels is filled with Berkeley girls all made-up and dressed up after Ruby Keeler's fashion. Eventually the commuting couple wake up and realise that they are at the end of the line and with rain falling, Dick carries his sweetheart across the empty railroad tracks.

The finale of DAMES is another all-girl array for the title song. Here is fascinating rhythmic formation. A hundred girls in white blouses and black tights configurate, fragmenting here and there into abstract designs. Berkeley moves above for his celebrated overhead shot and the effect becomes a startlingly kaleidoscopic cacophony of geometric and floral mosaics.
- Tony Thomas and Jim Terry, The Busby Berkeley Book

Back to screening list