Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

It’s time for trigger warnings for classic Hollywood musicals

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To make classic Hollywood musicals today, you’d need serious trigger warnings to cover everything from gun violence, to misogyny, to rape and kidnapping.

Trigger warnings Hollywood musicalsI’ve always adore classic Hollywood musicals. However, when talking to a friend about some of Fred Astaire’s best dances, it occurred to me that most Hollywood musicals, if they could even be made today, would have to have trigger warnings interpolated on a regular basis. You see, when you really pay attention, it turns out that there’s some pretty ugly stuff going on in ostensibly sunny, happy musicals.

As a public service, I’ve gone through some of my favorite dance sequences and taken the necessary steps to protect you should you ever watch them.

Trigger Warning:  Simulated gun play and mass murder with top hat, white tie, and tails, not to mention tap shoes and a cane:

Trigger Warning: Simulated sword play, assault, and violent death:

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Remember my forgotten man

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Last night, I caught a Busby Berkeley movie I’ve never seen before: 1933’s Footlight Parade, with a charismatic, manically energized Jimmy Cagney as the producer of “prologues,” live stage acts paired with “talking” pictures, all for 50 cents a show. Joan Blondell does a great job as his witty, put-upon secretary, and Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, sing and dance their little hearts out.

Fun though these stars are to watch, the movie isn’t really about them.  Instead, it’s about the Busby Berkeley dance numbers piled up at the end: Honeymoon Hotel, a nudge-nudge, wink-wink number about a hotel that caters to honeymooners as well as those who didn’t quite manage to get married; By A Waterfall, which is the ne plus ultra of all Busby Berkeley numbers, as hundreds of women cavort in pools and fountains (you really have to see this one if you want to know what Busby Berkeley was all about); and Shanghai Lil, which has Cagney looking “high and low” for his Shanghai Lil (Keeler charmingly made up as a Chinese gal). In the last musical number, not only does Berkeley present an amazing melange of races and nationalities (all of which are shown as somewhat sleazy, hanging out as they do in Shanghai bars), Berkeley ends with a blatant tribute to President Roosevelt and his National Recovery Act, including a montage of the American eagle that was the NRA’s emblem (beginning at about 8:00).

Although the homage to Roosevelt and the New Deal is blatant, it’s formulaic. If you want to see what I think is one of Hollywood’s best political statements, watch the following clip of the Remember My Forgotten Man number, which Berkeley created for one of my absolute favorites, Gold Diggers of 1933.  The number starts a bit slowly, but really picks up at 2:30: