{"id":166970,"date":"2021-03-25T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T10:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=166970"},"modified":"2023-03-06T08:48:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T13:48:59","slug":"remember-my-forgotten-women-the-dire-worlds-of-sucker-punch-and-gold-diggers-of-1933","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=166970","title":{"rendered":"Remember My Forgotten Women: The Dire Worlds of Sucker Punch<\/i> and Gold Diggers of 1933<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThis piece appeared first on Oscilloscope Laboratories “Musings” blog, and then was published in Volume Two of their series of books, compiling many of the pieces from that blog. I had been wanting to write this piece for literally years and I am so pleased I finally was given the opportunity. Since its inclusion in the book, the piece was taken down from the blog. I publish it here in excerpt with the permission of editor Scott Tobias. You can purchase the full volumes on the Oscilloscope site<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Remember My Forgotten Women: The Dire Worlds of Sucker Punch<\/em> and Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em><\/h1>\n

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Halfway through my first viewing of Zack Snyder\u2019s Sucker Punch<\/em>\u2014-as I tried to disengage from the negative criticism floating around the film, as I admitted I was not only getting sucked in, I was actually moved\u00a0by all of it-\u2014a confused thought drifted into my head: \u201cAm I crazy, or is this a little bit like Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em>?\u201d (That\u2019s a rhetorical question, although I can already hear the response.) The thought was so ludicrous it felt like a hallucination, not to mention a sacrilege, but it kept nagging at me. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes after that, there\u2019s a scene where the evil pimp-orderly Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac) comes into the rebellious girls\u2019 ratty dressing room to read them the riot act. On the wall is a collage of old movie posters, and I got a brief flash of the words \u201cGOLD DIGGERS\u201d behind his head. I paused the film, and squinted at the screen. The posters I could make out were:<\/p>\n

— Night and Day<\/em>, the 1946 biopic about Cole Porter, starring Cary Grant.\u00a0
\n— Blues in the Night<\/em>, the 1941 film about a guy putting together a jazz band.
\n— My Dream is Yours<\/em>, the 1949 musical where Doris Day replaces a singer in his popular radio show.
\n— Thank Your Lucky Stars<\/em>, the 1943 film about a wartime charity show, starring Eddie Cantor as himself.<\/p>\n

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Most notably, though, there was not one, not two, but three posters for various \u201cGold Diggers\u201d films. (There were many in the \u201cfranchise\u201d: The Gold Diggers<\/em> (1923), Gold Diggers of Broadway<\/em> (1929), Gold Diggers of 1933\/1935\/37<\/em>\u2014released in each respective year, and Gold Diggers in Paris<\/em> (1938).) The posters created bristling antlers out of the word \u201cGold Diggers\u201d flaring out around Oscar Isaac\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

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These posters were obviously deliberate choices. Each movie is a musical about\u00a0a musical, films about creating music, about putting on a show. The posters are a statement of intention. Or, at least, a statement of aspiration. They place Sucker Punch<\/em> in a continuum, and, in a way, tell us how to watch. <\/p>\n

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\nStarting out with a shot of a gloomy old-fashioned proscenium with dark curtains, Sucker Punch<\/em> is a version of the \u201cbackstage\u201d musical, complete with dance rehearsals filled with the pressure of putting on a good show. Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em>, the best of the Gold Diggers<\/em> films, casts a shadow longer than Sucker Punch<\/em> can ever hope to do, but the two films operate in similar ways, using dizzying artificial worlds of fantasy as a bulwark against the harsh realities of life beyond the lights. But something happens in both films: the \u201cfantasies\u201d also shine the spotlight onto urgent social and political concerns. They are not just escapes from reality–they expose<\/em>\u00a0reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nThe four scrappy tap-shoed \u201cGold Digger\u201d girls (Joan Blondell, Ginger Rogers, Ruby Keeler, and Aline MacMahon), trying to survive in a pitiless world aren\u2019t dissimilar to the five scrappy leotard-wearing girls in Sucker Punch<\/em> (Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung), trying to escape the confines men\u2014-and a lunatic society\u2014-have put on them. <\/p>\n

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\nThe characters in both films discover escape hatches through elaborately staged \u201cnumbers”. In Gold Diggers<\/em>, it\u2019s the kaleidoscopic vision of choreographer Busby Berkeley; in Sucker Punch<\/em>, it\u2019s the alternate universes Babydoll (Emily Browning) creates whenever she dances. These numbers (both films have four apiece, another dovetail) reflect and distort the action going on just offstage. They are meta-commentaries on material that is already somewhat \u201cmeta.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Critics scorched the earth with their reviews of Sucker Punch<\/em>, so much so that one might be inclined to tiptoe into the landscape tentatively, but this is ridiculous. You don\u2019t have to \u201cdefend\u201d a movie as though it’s a criminal. Beware consensus. At the time of its release, there were a handful of critics\u2014-Danny Bowes, Sonny Bunch, Kim Morgan, and Betsy Sharkey, among them\u2014-who wrote about the film in a way I found intriguing. In their words, Sucker Punch<\/em> sounded ambitious, bold, and maybe a little bit dumb. But also interesting. Ambitious failures are often more compelling than connect-the-dots successes. <\/p>\n

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\nThe queasily mixed messages of Sucker Punch<\/em> are part of its unnerving mood. The film really gets and shows enormous empathy for the double-bind of women, the \u201cdamned if you do\/don\u2019t\u201d realities of sexuality, the survival techniques women create to deflect how the world sees them. The film goes after the gaslighting culture where women are, metaphorically, either in a mental institution or a brothel. It is a world run by men with a vested interest in keeping women divided and conquered. <\/p>\n

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\nOne of the best parts of Sucker Punch<\/em> is the cooperation and sympathy among the women. Even when they argue, there is space for different opinions. Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em>, too, doggedly refuses to pit the women against each other. Even Ginger Rogers, the only one who\u2019s truly a \u201cgold digger,\u201d is treated with eye-rolling humor by the others. It\u2019s far closer to the actual reality of \u201cfemale friendship\u201d than a catfighting-competition.<\/p>\n

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Sucker Punch<\/em> pursues its targets with a CGI-generated sledgehammer wielded by a ponytailed girl in a babydoll dress. Its vision is hallucinatory and exaggerated, but the exaggeration makes its points in a refreshingly clear way. The world is one of Dickensian depravity poured through the paranoid filter of Ken Kesey.<\/p>\n

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Babydoll is thrown into an institution for the criminally insane, after accidentally killing her sister during a scuffle with their evil stepfather. Oscar Isaac, with Errol Flynn mustache, plays the subversive orderly, assuring Babydoll\u2019s stepfather a lobotomy has been scheduled for next week. He leads Babydoll into what is known as \u201cthe theatre,\u201d a gigantic echoing space where the other patients act out their aggressions, all under the watchful eye of Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino). Jon Hamm arrives to perform the lobotomy and Babydoll launches into a fantasy where the asylum is actually a brothel\/strip club, with trapped girls \u201centertaining\u201d high-rolling clients. The other girls\u2014-Sweetpea (Cornish) and her sister Rocket (Malone), Blondie (Hudgens) and Amber (Chung)\u2014-take Babydoll under their collective wing. In a cavernous rehearsal room, Babydoll is told by Gugino\u2014-a den-mother who clearly started out as one of them\u2014-to dance. <\/p>\n

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\nBabydoll sways back and forth and suddenly an entire world erupts, a world where she fights (and slays) a trio of gigantic samurai-robots. She is given the tools for her escape by a character who shows up in each fantasy called Wise Man, played by Scott Glenn. <\/p>\n

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\nWhen the \u201cnumber\u201d stops, everyone in the rehearsal hall is breathless and awestruck. <\/p>\n

Babydoll is called upon to dance again and again to distract their male captors as the girls gather the items they need to break free. Each “dance” creates a different universe, depending on the item they seek: map, fire, knife, key. After the Samurai-Robot Ballet comes the Steampunk-Nazi-Battle of Leningrad, the Fire-Breathing Dragon Tussle, and the Ticking Bomb on a Speeding Train Finale. <\/p>\n

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\nIn each, the girls transform into an Inglourious Basterds<\/em> team of misfit Commandos, swaggering through danger, obliterating anything in their path. Zack Snyder\u2019s imagination is on bombastic overdrive, and all of the actresses bring real feeling to the table. The film is Gothic horror, melodrama, and a video game, propelled by real trauma.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nThe Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em>, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, with four now-classic numbers choreographed by Busby Berkeley, clues us in early on that this will not be your regular \u201clet\u2019s put on a show\u201d musical:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat’s the show about?\u201d
\n\u201cThe Depression.\u201d
\n\u201cWe won’t have to rehearse that.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cRemember My Forgotten Man,” the explosive final number (more on that in a bit), is referenced early, by Barney (Ned Sparks), the producer of the show, who paints a word picture to the listening chorus girls:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s what this show is about. The Depression. Men marching, marching in the rain, men marching, marching, jobs, jobs, and in the background Carol, the spirit of the Depression, a blues song – no, not a blues song, but a wailing, a wailing, and this gorgeous woman singing this song that will tear their hearts out, the big parade, the big parade of tears.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The cold wind of the grim \u201830s reality whips underneath the door of the standard musical. The three main characters\u2014-Carol (Joan Blondell), Trixie (Aline McMahon), and Polly (Ruby Keeler)\u2014-live in a dingy apartment, and all sleep in the same room, cramped in single beds. They steal bottles of milk chilling on other people\u2019s fire escapes. They can\u2019t pay their rent. When a meeting with a Broadway producer comes up, only one of them can go because there\u2019s only one nice dress among the three of them. <\/p>\n

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\nThis is a backstage story, yes, but the stakes are more dire than \u201cWill I become a star? Will the show be a hit?\u201d They want the show to be a hit because it means they can pay rent, eat, buy their own milk. When Carol calls her friends to tell them the show’s a go, she sobs the news, her sobs filled with pure animal relief. On opening night, the composer Brad Roberts (Dick Powell) refuses to fill in as the lead of the show, and Trixie scolds him in no uncertain terms:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what it means if this show doesn\u2019t go on? You know what it means to the girls in this show? Those poor kids who gave up jobs and won’t ever be able to find another one in these times? Those kids who\u2019ve been living on nothing, starving themselves for the 6 weeks we’ve been rehearsing, hoping for this show to go on to be a success? They\u2019re counting on you. You can\u2019t let them down. You can\u2019t. If you do … well, God knows what\u2019ll happen to those kids, they\u2019ll have to do things I wouldn\u2019t want on my conscience.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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This bleak picture of what failure will actually look like, including the specter of prostitution, licks at the heels of the spunky survival-minded girls and give Busby Berkeley\u2019s numbers an electric charge, destabilizing the cliches of the genre. The dance numbers comment on, undercut, illuminate, all of the themes and experiences of the four girls.<\/p>\n

In \u201cWe\u2019re In the Money,\u201d the opening number, Ginger Rogers, in gigantic closeup, sings those sarcastic lyrics with a huge smile on her face, dressed in an outfit made up of gleaming coins, with a huge coin over her crotch area.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s not subtext. That\u2019s text.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The \u201cPettin\u2019 in the Park\u201d number is racy, considering what \u201cpetting\u201d meant in the lingo of the era. It\u2019s not just about sex, but public sex. <\/p>\n

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Everything is hunky dory, with couples of all ages and races canoodling in the park, but then when they disrobe after a rainstorm Billy Barty (dressed as a lascivious baby, to creepy effect) ogles them, to the degree that the women all put on corsets of tin, safe from the handsiness of men. In the final moment, though, Dick Powell whips out a can opener and pierces the tin on Ruby Keeler\u2019s back! <\/p>\n

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\u201cPettin\u2019 in the Park\u201d starts as totally sex-positive, and then Barty shows up and things get creepy. Sex isn’t fun anymore. Society is the bed of Procrustes again. The corset tin of the double-bind.<\/p>\n

“The Shadow Waltz” is a dream of beauty and escape and art for art’s sake, the exact opposite of the reality for our four main characters. Seemingly hundreds of women, playing violins that glow with neon tubes, float through pitch blackness. It is pure fantasy, made piercingly sad by the reality of the offscreen life of these dancers. <\/p>\n

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\nThe lack of escape from their unattractive options leads to embracing the reality of Reality–cold and harsh–in the famous final number, \u201cRemember My Forgotten Man.\u201d All fantasy vanishes. The world is too serious for that now. The number is a head-on confrontation with tough truths, political and social, followed by a vision of powerful unity and collective mourning. It is a furious indictment of a society sending boys and men off to war and then abandoning them when they return, traumatized and clogging up the bread lines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The number explodes all that came before it, and the reverb continues today. (Jack Warner hadn\u2019t planned on closing out the film with \u201cRemember My Forgotten Man,\u201d but once he saw it he knew it couldn\u2019t appear earlier. Nothing could follow it.) The film bursts its seams. All of the personal stories in the film (Why doesn’t Brad want to go onstage? Will J. Lawrence Bradford get the stick out of his ass? Will Carol and Trixie’s stunt go too far? Will the show be a hit?<\/em>) are obliterated into dust by \u201cRemember My Forgotten Man\u201d\u2019s vision of endless ranks of \u201cmen marching, marching in the rain, men marching, marching,\u201d with Joan Blondell (and Etta Moten, in the beginning of the song) crying out in mourning and anger.<\/p>\n

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\nFilmed in possibly the most harrowing year of the Depression, \u201cRemember My Forgotten Man\u201d is what Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em> is actually about. Everything else was just prologue. In that final number, Gold Diggers of 1933<\/em> throws open the doors, lets in the winter wind that\u2019s been howling all along, and tells us what\u2019s really on its mind.\u00a0The number ends and so does the movie, leaving you blasted apart. <\/p>\n

Matthew Kennedy, in his Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes<\/em>, calls it “perhaps the most socially urgent song ever conceived for an American musical film.\u201d Indeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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