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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:

Dorothy Brock: Now go out there and be so swell that you'll make me hate you!
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!
Ann Lowell: [to chorus girl] It must have been hard on your mother, not having any children.
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.
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42nd Street Facts
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.
When it premiered in New York City at the Strand Theatre in March 1933, Variety reported that some of the musical numbers were projected on the enlarged grandeur wide screen.
In the 42nd Street finale, dancers on stage pass a store named Reticker's. It was named after Warner Bros. art director Hugh Reticker, who labored at WB for two decades, but did not get screen recognition until two years after this film was made. It's likely he had a hand in designing this set also.
Lyle Talbot is listed in a modern source for the role of "Geoffrey Waring," but he did not appear.
At the end of the "42nd Street" number, Billy and Peggy pull down a curtain or shade with the word "Asbestos" written on it. This can be a confusing reference to 21st-century viewers, who may only be familiar with asbestos as a mineral composite which is now known to cause the lung cancer mesothelioma, but during the first part of the 20th century, asbestos was an often-used flame-retardant component in building materials. It also would have been a reference familiar to theater people, since live-performance theaters were at the time required to have a curtain made of asbestos that would separate the stage from the audience in the event of an on-stage fire. In that context, the presence of the curtain in the film is the movie's way of implying that whatever Billy and Peggy are going to do behind the curtain, it will surely be "hot."
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