Gold Diggers of 1933 (Warner Bros.) (1933)

ADVANCE FEATURES kvery Type of Beauty in “Gold Diggers of 1933”’ Noted Creator of Dance Ensembles in Musical comparison. Hit Picked Girls To Please Every Taste By CARLISLE JONES RUE feminine beauty is the scarcest thing in the world. Gold and platinum, diamonds and rubies are plentiful by So says Busby Berkeley, dance impressario, stage and screen director, whose novel choruses will be remem which opens at the bered in ‘‘42nd Street’? and who again created the dances and ensembles for the Warner Bros. picture, ‘‘Gold Diggers of 1933,’’ Theatre on Appreciation of feminine beauty is eternal and universal and the search for it has gone on unremittingly for countless generations. In other ages beauty was concentrated in the pagan temples. More recently it was centered on the stages of New York and London. Today it is being collected in Hollywood, destined to ‘ adorn the silver screens of all the world. Berkely conducted a search for feminine beauty throughout Southern Galifornia for ‘‘Gold Diggers of 1933.’’ The Warner Bros. Studio was seriously in the market for youthful feminine beauty, selecting girls not only for ‘‘Gold Diggers of 1933,’’ but with an eye to training them for other pictures. From more than five thousand applicants, he gathered the eighty girls ' who are featured in the choruses of ‘‘42nd Street.’’ He interviewed ten thousand to find girls of really sur —————————— = passing loveliness for Warner Bros. latest musical hit. ‘“Not all of the two hundred girls ‘Gold Diggers of / 1933’? are true beauties in every sense ; of the word,’’ Berkeley ‘“We would be lucky to find even one who appear in explains. / perfect ‘sample’ out of five million “possibilities. But while we look for ] the almost impossible ideal we will ¢ ( find a considerable number of girls who have many claims to real beauty and who possess what is beauty’s most necessary attribute, ‘personal ity’. | Must Have Charm ' } ‘You can call it ‘charm’ or ‘it’ or ‘that certain something’ but a girl either has that on the screen or she hasn’t it and without that the pretti est girl in the world is a flat failure.’’ This most recent search for beauty by the Warner Bros. studio was con’ ducted the theatres in many of the smaller centers of the country. It was Berkeley’s belief that city girls have more attention called to their beauty, when they possess it, and that field proves less productive than the smaller towns where great beauty may go unheralded by the public. The theat#e advertised frankly for girls who wished to try their charms on the truthful camera. Then by a rapid of so handled that the feelings of the girls who were unsuccessful were not hurt, Berkeley sorted and culled the appliIn_ the there can be no compromise. Favoritism has no place. The selection is almost mathematical in its precision on stages of various process elimination cants. business of beauty, with that indefinable thing called ‘‘personality’’?’ the only unknown quantity in the formula. Finding beauty for the screen is as much of a business with Berkeley as is the finding of gold for a prospector and their methods similar in many ways. | Many Stage Tryouts | The first of the new tryouts was held in Huntington Park, a suburb of Los Angeles, on the stage of the Warner Theatre there. The tryouts had been advertised for two days. Ninety-two applicants arrived at the stage door in answer to Berkeley’s call. The tests were made before an interested and enthusiastic audience. Each girl was given a number and Each of the chosen eighteen were given some individual attention by Director Berkeley and the camera. They were photographed in profile and with full face to the camera, in full length and in closeups. The time given each girl before the camera was brief but more extensive than it had been when there were ninety-two of them. The names and addresses of the eighteen girls were taken by a script girl and then were dismissed. The following day, in a projection room, Berkeley studied the test film he had made of the eighteen. From these he chose four he believed might be potential screen material. They were advised to come to the studio stages for further photographic tests and to bring bathing suits along. Up to this time Berkeley had seen the girls only in their own clothes, which might be well or poorly suited to their types. No attempt to have the girls show their ankles, knees or figures was made before the theatre audience. Further camera tests in bathing suits would disclose whether GOLDEN CIRCLE IN "GOLD Picking 200 Chorus Girls for “Gold Diggers of 1933”’ Gorgeous Beauties Chosen For Dance Ensembles Are the Cream of 10,000 Who Had Applied THOUSAND blonde and brunette heads of curls. done up in blue or pink hair-ribbons. Some Some plain. A Two thousand dimpled knees. Two thousand little feet shifting nervously on the bare stage floor. And as someone said, long before there were chorus calls. ‘‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ It was the chorus call for Warner Bros.’ mammoth new mu sical show, ‘‘Gold Diggers of 1933,’’ which opens at the Theatre on Mervyn LeRoy was directing and Busby Berkeley, who had charge of the dance ensembles, had ealled together 1,000 girls from which he was picking his chorus. A thousand young zirls willing and anxious to work. Some of them beautiful, some not so beautiful, some not beautiful at all. All however shapely. They were ringed about the big stage, shoulder to shoulder—as many thousand bathing suits. GERS OF 1933' Many are the moments of splendor at the Strand where “Gold Diggers of 1933,” hailed as the “supersuccessor to “42nd Street,” is holding forth. Many of the stars seen in “42nd Street”? appear in the new musical success, and many more new ones, besides. never named in front of either the audience or the other girls. A long chalk line was drawn diagonally across and won the stage with the camera located at one end. In the order of their numbers, the girls ‘‘walked the chalk line’’ directly up to the camera, stopped a moment there and said: ‘“‘T am number one.’’ Or number two or four, or whatever her number really was. Back of the camera Berkeley and an assistant made rapid notes of the numbers and the impressions they made upon them as they faced the camera. Then the girls were all sent backstage to wait for further orders. Thirty-four girls passed what Berkeley calls this first test. These were called out by numbers and the march to the camera was repeated from a slightly different direction, rather past the camera than towards it, giving the director a chance to view them from a new angle. 18 Survived Eighteen survived this trial. Still known only by numbers, the eighteen girls and the director, assistants and camera crew moved to the mezzanine floor of the theatre while the show went on. The audience had seen the ninety-two applicants reduced to eighteen. As many as wished and who could find places on the mezzanine floor, watched the remainder of the ‘‘process of elimination.?? Cut No.81 Cut45ce Mat i15c their figures matched the beauty of their faces. It is the combination of these that is screen beauty just as it is real beauty. | Two Out of 92 | In the final analysis, Director Berkeley found two girls from this test for the chorus of two hundred in ‘‘Gold Diggers of 1933.’’ And so the tests went on in theatre after theatre until Berkeley had selected one thousand girls. These were given further tests at the studios and gradually eliminated until he finally had his chorus of two hundred. That he discovered real feminine beauty is evident from his ‘‘Gold Diggers’’ chorus. He located lovely figures and pretty faces, beauty of various kinds and types to please all kinds and types of people in the audiences. That kind of beauty is more scarce than gold and rubies. The chorus numbers are part of the mammoth musical and dramatic ‘‘ Gold Diggers of 1933’? which is one of the most spectacular ever staged. There is an unusually strong all star cast, which includes such noted players as Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks and Ginger Rogers. The screen play by Erwin Gelsey and James Seymour is based on the play by Avery Hopwood. Music and lyries are by Harry Warren and Al Dubin and the direction by Mervyn LeRoy. THE END 4 as the stage would hold, in a single line. And at one end of the stage, in a solid block were the others— about seven hundred. The ring would only hold about three hunderd. Ring after ring was formed. And around inside them, slowly, meditatively, walked Berkeley. There was no expression on his face as he pointed first at one and then at another. ‘*You,’’ he would say, without any sign, except a sharp quick look and a pointing of the finger. And the girl indicated would step out and go off to one side. ““You,’’ he pointed again, the same sharp quick look accompanying the word and the pointing index finger. SV ous? ? ‘¢Vou.?”? LHY Ou) 7? He was moving faster now, and girl after girl stepped out of the line and joined the others who had been chosen. But this was not the final choice. This was merely the first of the final choices. The girls had already been chosen from thousands who had applied at what might roughly be spoken of as the preliminaries. None Over Twenty There had been dozens of contests at Warner Bros. theatres throughout the state. There had been mammoth chorus calls held at the stages on the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood—and from all these preliminary groups, the thousand ‘‘trying out’’ had _ been chosen, Not a one over twenty. Most of them with one or two or three or more years of dancing school behind them. Several with pictures to their credit. Some from ‘‘42nd Street,’’ that other sensation. Warner Bros. musical Where do they come from? New York. San Francisco. Chicago. Baton Rouge. Hollywood, you know, is the center of the world for this sort. Not even New York, or London or Paris, has a chorus e¢all turnout like those today in Hollywood. Fully ten thousand girls had applied at one time or another for this particular picture. From them, all that were chosen were two hundred. A narrow margin for success, that. Girls were sent away—droves of them. The discards from the first and second and third elreles. Some of them, of course, stood around to watch and wait for friends who might be rejected from the next sireles formed. And inside the circles, Berkeley, with one or two assistant directors, picked, chose, sorted. And after each circle, the same kindly dismissal. ‘‘That’s all I can use from this syroup, Next circle, please’? Many who were r ; satisfied. ‘“But Mr. Berl. ey—Mr. So and So told me ihat if I mentioned his name to you, you’d be sure to use me! ’? ““T like that! Picking her when she was rejected for ‘‘42 Street’’ and I wasn’t! ’? ee But for the most part quietly moving off the stage, picking up their wraps as they went, a little disappointed, but not cast down. There would be new chorus calls next week. New big musical pictures going into production. Hollywood has found that they pay. That people want music and laughter with lightness. Something to make them forget their troubles of the day. The Last Circle And now the last circle, two or three hundred of them, from which the finals are to be chosen. The lucky girls who were to get from eight to ten weeks’ work in ‘‘Gold Diggers Of°1933.77 But it was late. The studio had long since closed its iron doors behind the last departing day workers. Outside the sun had set and night had fallen upon the Burbank hills. ‘‘Take their names and tell ‘em to come back tonight at eight,’’ said Berkeley, and went off the set. Pads and pencils now, and the assistants scribbled down names and telephone numbers as fast as they eculd. Only the girls weren’t tired. Weren’t they the prettiest and the shapeliest of the thousands who had been looked at? Weren’t they to work for eight or ten weeks? Weren’t they happy? Tired? Not at all. They are the ladies of the ensemble of ‘‘The Gold Diggers of 1933.’? What girl could ask more than that? But the girls chosen for the choruses, the dances, the ensembles are not the whole picture by any means. There is plenty of the spectacular, of music and froth and laughter, of which they are an important part. But there is also romance, drama, with roles so enacted by an all star cast including Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Ned Sparks and Ginger Rogers. Page Fifteen