Monday, June 24, 2013

Now Playing: JUNE 24, 1933

We have a new box-office champion for Milwaukee this year:


Gold Diggers will have outlasted its precursor, 42nd Street, by a week if it actually does exit on schedule. Back when being Held Over in one of those monster movie palaces meant something, being Held Over a third week really means something!

Now, let's meet this week's challengers. It looks like RKO may be on the right track.


Melody Cruise is an almost disturbingly cartoonish musical, as I discuss in my review. Whatever this film's fate at the box office, RKO was determined to keep on experimenting, and we should hear from them again before the year is out.

Now for the also-rans:


This Fox Film release at least has a star of 42nd Street in Warner Baxter, as well as "A Luscious, Lavish Eyeful of Tantalizing Ladies in the Dance of the Maidens." For those who aren't into that thing, there's a "Terrific Boulder Dam Sequence" billed as the "Supreme Thrill of Motion Pictures." The TCM synopsis tells us that the Baxter character works at Boulder Dam, but if anything terrific, much less supremely thrilling, happens there, the synopsis writer must have missed it.

This one from M-G-M has some high-quality art for a newsprint ad.


Robert Montgomery is a powerful press agent who runs his own speakeasy and tries to turn a would-be suicide into a star, then helps her beat a murder rap. TCM.com has a trailer for this one.



Finally,another RKO attraction:


Get your minds out of the Pre-Code gutter: Ann Carver's profession is the legal profession. Not much difference, you say? Never mind that. The real scandal here is that super-attorney Fay Wray selflessly sacrifices her career after blaming herself for her hubby's legal troubles -- thus helping him beat a murder rap -- how do movie people get in these predicaments? --  because she, the breadwinner, didn't support him enough. Appalling, isn't it?

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