42nd Street is pretty much the template for backstage musicals from A Chorus Line to All That Jazz (hmmm ... everything from A to ... A ... but you get what I mean). The production shows some vaudeville heritage still hanging on with lots of awkward one-liners and wry comments shoehorned into the script. Some of them are funny; most aren't, at least as used. Once we get to the Busby Berkeley numbers ... wow! This was still early in his cinema career so the numbers aren't as extravagant as they later became but they already have his signature style with tracking shots, overhead shots of chorus girl geometry, and expanding beyond the limitations of the stage even during numbers that, in the story, take place on a stage.
The staging of the number 42nd Street itself is a doozy, exploring the denizens and happenings on that street as the backdrop to a Ruby Keeler song and dance number is worth the price of admission all by itself.
42nd Street was made in the "Pre-Code" era when the Production Code, while it already existed, was implemented with only 'light touch' enforcement. The censors did insisted on a change in the language of one song, which was done in such away as to make it glaringly obvious what the original lyric was and pointedly call attention to the change.
And in a change from the novel the movie is based on, the director and his right hand man were ... straightened out ... for the movie. The censors didn't have to ask for that change. The movie has some racy innuendo but the producers weren't going to limit their audience and summon censorious wrath by keeping that element intact.
42nd Street (1932)
Director: Lloyd Bacon
