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42nd Street Overview:

42nd Street (1933) was a Comedy - Musical Film directed by Lloyd Bacon and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck.

42nd Street was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1998.

Academy Awards 1932/33 --- Ceremony Number 6 (source: AMPAS)

AwardRecipientResult
Best PictureWarner Bros.Nominated
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42nd Street BlogHub Articles:

Those dancing feet… ’42nd Street’ (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

By Virginie Pronovost on Jun 16, 2024 From The Wonderful World of Cinema

” Jones and Barry are doing a show! “ ” You’re telling me? “ When I first saw 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), its appeal didn’t quite strike me, and, aside from the final musical number, it left me indifferent. I remember renting the film at Montreal’s Nat... Read full article

Silver Screen Standards: Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (1933)

By Jennifer Garlen on Apr 11, 2023 From Classic Movie Hub Blog

Silver Screen Standards: Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (1933) Every time I watch 42nd Street (1933) I fall in love with Ruby Keeler all over again. Just like Peggy Sawyer, the character she plays in the movie, Keeler was a bright newcomer getting her big break; although she had been dancing on stage... Read full article

Silver Screen Standards: Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (1933)

By Jennifer Garlen on Apr 11, 2023 From Classic Movie Hub Blog

Silver Screen Standards: Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (1933) Every time I watch 42nd Street (1933) I fall in love with Ruby Keeler all over again. Just like Peggy Sawyer, the character she plays in the movie, Keeler was a bright newcomer getting her big break; although she had been dancing on stage... Read full article

THE UMPTEENTH BLOGATION: 42nd Street, 1933

on Jan 18, 2022 From Caftan Woman

Theresa, the CineMaven herself is hosting The Umpteenth Blogathon on January 18th. A tribute to those movies which have an addictive hold on our moving pictures loving souls. Every fan has many such films and HERE we get to gush about one of them. My selection is the energetic, music-filled, cynical... Read full article

42nd Street (1933)

By 4 Star Film Fan on Mar 24, 2019 From 4 Star Films

“Sawyer, you’re going out a youngster but you’ve got to come back a star!” – Warner Baxter to Ruby Keeler 42nd Street essentially feels like hallowed ground even today because it single-handedly gave an entire generation of films plentiful ammunition for tropes while ju... Read full article

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42nd Street Quotes:

Billy Lawler: [to Peggy Sawyer] Hey, I've been for you ever since you walked in on me in my BVD's.
Slim Murphy: Hey got a match?
Pat Denning: Yep... why I guess so... yeah.
Slim Murphy: Don't happen to know a guy named Pat Denning do ya?
Pat Denning: Why yes.
Slim Murphy: We got a message for him. This guy Pat Denning's a pretty wise mug but he ain't wise enough and if he don't lay off that Dorothy Brock dame, it's gonna be just too bad... for Denning, get me?
Pat Denning: Alright I'll tell him.
Slim Murphy: Yeah well...
[punches Pat in the mouth and Pat falls down]
Slim Murphy: that's so ya don't forget.
Mug with Murphy: Yeah
[He and Slim kick Pat then run off]
Peggy Sawyer: Ohhhhh Pat... Pat... Pat... who were they?
Pat Denning: Friends... with good advice.
Dorothy Brock: Now go out there and be so swell that you'll make me hate you!
Ann Lowell: [to chorus girl] It must have been hard on your mother, not having any children.
Julian Marsh: Sawyer, you listen to me, and you listen hard. Two hundred people, two hundred jobs, two hundred thousand dollars, five weeks of grind and blood and sweat depend upon you. It's the lives of all these people who've worked with you. You've got to go on, and you've got to give and give and give. They've got to like you. Got to. Do you understand? You can't fall down. You can't because your future's in it, my future and everything all of us have is staked on you. All right, now I'm through, but you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out, and Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!
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42nd Street Facts
One of the lines in the song "Shuffle off to Buffalo" is "when she knows as much as we know/she'll be on her way to Reno/while he still has dough." Contemporary audiences would have recognized this as a reference to the fairly common practice of moving to Reno, Nevada, for a short-term stay to obtain a divorce. At the time of the movie's release (and for at least twenty-five years afterward), Nevada had some of the most lenient divorce laws in the country, especially compared to New York, where the there were few accepted grounds for divorce, and the standards of proof for those grounds were so high as to be almost impossible (for instance, evidence of adultery had to be in the form of eyewitness testimony or photographic records of the act); and even then, divorces took a year to be final. By contrast, Nevada granted a divorce for almost any reason after only a six-week-residency period.
The groom (Clarence Nordstrom), in the "Shuffle Off To Buffalo" sequence, sings to the bride (Ruby Keeler): "I'll go home and get my panties, you'll go home and get your scanties". In the early 1930s, in the US and Europe, the word for the undergarment "panties" was synonymous with "undies" and applied to both men and women.
Both Harry Warren and Al Dubin are credited onscreen for both music and lyrics, but no songs are credited onscreen. However, Warren wrote the music for all the songs recognized and listed in the soundtrack, and Dubin the lyrics for those songs which were sung.
Henry B. Walthall originally had a large role including a key scene in which he died on stage during rehearsals. Almost all of his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.
As a publicity stunt, a train called 'The 42nd Street Special' traveled from Hollywood to New York City arriving in time for the opening at the Strand theater on 8 March 1933. On the train were Warner contract players who were called to the stage after the movie was shown (according to the review in The New York Times). Included were Joe E. Brown, Tom Mix and his horse, Bette Davis, Laura La Plante, Glenda Farrell, Lyle Talbot, Leo Carrillo, Claire Dodd, Preston Foster and Eleanor Holm.
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