"Dames" was the last of the big four Busby Berkeley / Ruby Keeler musicals but was by no means their best. For the first song "When You Were a Twinkle in Your Daddy's Eye and a Smile on Your Mother's Lips" I was disappointed. I just adore old musicals - the sillier the plot the better - the compensation is usually all the wonderful songs. There was a bigger emphasis on comedy in "Dames". The ensemble cast, instead of having wisecracking, jaded chorus girls like Aline MacMahon, Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel, had top billed Joan Blondell as Mabel, a calculating leading lady, who is not above blackmailing doddering Guy Kibbee. Instead, tried and tested comics like Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert and Zasu Pitts are the stars.
Ezra Pound (Hugh Herbert) has decided to give relations Matilda and Horace Hemingway (Zasu Pitts and Guy Kibbee) $10 million dollars if he can see that they are leading a blameless life. Their daughter, Barbara, (Ruby Keeler) is in love with Jimmy Higgins (Dick Powell) - the bad apple of the Pound family tree. He is in show business (shock, horror!!) and has a show he wants to produce called "Sweet and Hot". Powell's character is a lot more abrasive than in his earlier Berkeley films.
Coming back on the train with Ezra, Horace encounters showgirl, Mabel, (Joan Blondell) asleep in his sleeping car. Back at the Hemingway house Ezra gets a bad attack of the hiccups and Barbara is sent to find some "Dr. Silver's Golen Elixir". It is 55% alcohol (triple strength is 79%) and is the cause of a few gags toward the end of the movie. She finally finds a chemist who has a bottle and also runs into Jimmy, who serenades her with "I Only Have Eyes For You". It is later turned into a great production number as Jimmy serenades Ruby while walking about New York City and taking the subway. It is a gorgeous number with dozens of Rubys in beautiful frilly dresses on a set with a cascading wheel and moving stairs. It is one of Berkeley's most beautiful productions.
When Jimmy thinks he has a backer for his show, Mabel reappears and exposes him (Berton Churchill) as a "four flusher". Mabel then requests an interview with Horace Hemingway, hoping to blackmail him into backing Jimmy's show. Some of the lines are very funny. "that's all the money I have in the world" says Horace as he hands over $25,000 dollars", tart Mabel replies "I'd cry but I don't have a handkerchief".
Of course Barbara thinks that Jimmy and Mabel are more than "just friends" so she auditions under the name of Joan Gray and after a spirited tap dance to the song "Dames" she is hired. When Barbara is late on opening night - Mabel goes on in her place - in the awful (in my opinion) "The Girl at the Ironing Board" number. It is set in a laundry around 1900 and Mabel sings about the trials and tribulations of finding love in a laundry (there is also a reprise of "Shuffle Off to Buffalo").
"Dames" is a spectacular number which starts as Powell sings about the reasons people go to see a show - Dames!!! The production then shows a day in the life of a chorus girl, getting up, doing exercises, bathing, getting dressed - ending in the most extraordinary, psychedelic, kaleidoscope of black and white geometrical and flower shapes. After that Blondell sings a burlesque type number "Try to See it My Way Baby" that fortunately is stopped before it is half way through - it is a really screechy number.
The film finishes with the usual clincher between Keeler and Powell but because Blondell was top billed she gave Keeler a few anxious romantic moments.
Very Recommended.
5 out of 6 found this helpful