Dames (1934) Joan Blondell, Dick Powell (pre-code) includes trailer torrent download



Dames (1934) 





http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025028/





Directed by 


Ray Enright    


Busby Berkeley   (musical numbers)  


  


Writing credits 


Robert Lord   (story) &  


Delmer Daves   (story)


Delmer Daves   (screenplay)





Multi millinaire Ezra Ounce wants to start a campain against 'filthy' forms of entertainment, like Broadway-Shows. He comes to his relatives families and makes them members od his morale-boosting campain. But Jimmy, another relative is producing a show, starring Ezra's nice Barbara. But he had bad luck with his backer, this person has give him an invalid check. Another of his victims, the show-girl Mabel has the idea of blackmailing Horace, Barbaras father, whom she has met before in a slightly compromising situation to get the money.





Cast


 Joan Blondell ...  Mabel Anderson 


 Dick Powell ...  James 'Jimmy' Higgens 


 Ruby Keeler ...  Barbara Hemingway, aka Joan Grey 


 Zasu Pitts ...  Matilda Ounce Hemingway (misspelled Mathilda in opening credits) 


 Guy Kibbee ...  Horace Peter Hemingway 


 Hugh Herbert ...  Ezra Ounce 


 Arthur Vinton ...  Bulger, Ounce's Bodyguard 


 Phil Regan ...  Johnny Harris, Songwriter 


 Arthur Aylesworth ...  Train Conductor 


 Johnny Arthur ...  Billings, Ounce's Secretary 


 Leila Bennett ...  Laura, Matilda's Maid 


 Berton Churchill ...  Harold Ellsworthy Todd 


 Bess Flowers ...  (scenes deleted) 


 Loretta Andrews ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 De Don Blunier ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Diane Borget ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Dolores Casey ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Eddy Chandler ...  Guard (uncredited) 


 Virginia Dabney ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Frank Darien ...  First Druggist (uncredited) 


 Mildred Dixon ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Lester Dorr ...  Elevator Starter (uncredited) 


 Diane Douglas ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Maxine Doyle ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Ruth Eddings ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Mary Egan ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Sammy Fain ...  Buttercup Balmer, Songwriter (uncredited) 


 Gloria Faythe ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Dick French ...  Man on Ferry (uncredited) 


 Sam Godfrey ...  Ounce's First Receptionist (uncredited) 


 Harrison Greene ...  Henchman in audience (uncredited) 


 Virginia Grey ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Patricia Harper ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Harry Holman ...  Third Druggist (uncredited) 


 Eddie Kane ...  Harry, the Stage Manager (uncredited) 


 Robert Emmett Keane ...  Man on Train (uncredited) 


 Milton Kibbee ...  Reporter (uncredited) 


 Mary Lange ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Ethelreda Leopold ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Lois Lindsay ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Nancy Lyon ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Branche Macdonald ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Larry McGrath ...  Sergeant at Jail (uncredited) 


 Martha Merrill ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Ruth Moody ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Edmund Mortimer ...  Ounce's Second Receptionist (uncredited) 


 Jean Rogers ...  Chorus Girl (uncredited) 


 Henry Roquemore ...  Board Member in Show (uncredited) 


 Cliff Saum ...  Stagehand (uncredited) 


 Harry Semels ...  Newspaper Seller (in "I Only Have Eyes for You") (uncredited) 


 Lew Sherwood ...  Vocal Refrain (uncredited) 


 Eddie Shubert ...  Eddie, Soda Jerk (uncredited) 


 Phil Tead ...  Reporter (uncredited) 


 Fred 'Snowflake' Toones ...  Porter (uncredited) 


 Victoria Vinton ...  Chorus girl (uncredited) 


 Leo White ...  Violin Player on Ferry (uncredited) 


 Charles Williams ...  Dance Director (uncredited) 


 Jack Wise ...  Second Druggist (uncredited) 


 William Worthington ...  Board Member in Show (uncredited) 








Produced by 


Hal B. Wallis ....  executive producer (uncredited)  


  


Original Music by 


Heinz Roemheld   (uncredited)  


  


Cinematography by 


George Barnes    


Sidney Hickox   (as Sid Hickox) 


Sol Polito    


  


Film Editing by 


Harold McLernon    


  


Art Direction by 


Robert M. Haas    


Willy Pogany    


  


Costume Design by 


Orry-Kelly   (gowns)  


  


Second Unit Director or Assistant Director 


Sherry Shourds ....  assistant director (uncredited)  


  


Art Department 


Gene Delaney ....  props (uncredited)  


Howard Oggle ....  props (uncredited)  


  


Sound Department 


Stanley Jones ....  sound recording engineer (uncredited)  


  


Camera and Electrical Department 


Paul Burnett ....  chief electrician (uncredited)  


L. De Angelis ....  assistant camera (uncredited)  


John Ellis ....  still photographer (uncredited)  


Frank Flanagan ....  chief electrician (uncredited)  


Al Green ....  camera operator (uncredited)  


Jack Koffman ....  assistant camera (uncredited)  


Warren Lynch ....  camera operator (uncredited)  


Dudie Maschmeyer ....  chief grip (uncredited)  


Harold Noyes ....  chief grip (uncredited)  


George Satterfield ....  chief electrician (uncredited)  


  


Music Department 


Leo F. Forbstein ....  conductor: Vitaphone Orchestra  


Ray Heindorf ....  music arranger (uncredited)  


  


Other crew 


Busby Berkeley ....  numbers created and directed by  


Lewis Geib ....  technical director (uncredited)  


Robert Lord ....  supervisor (uncredited)  


  





Trivia


The studio wanted Broadway dancer Eleanor Powell for a special dance, but she refused the offer.








In the 'Dames' number, Dick Powell as a Broadway producer doesn't want to see composer George Gershwin, but when asked by his secretary about seeing Miss Dubin, Miss Warren and Miss Kelly, he lets them enter his office. Al Dubin and 'Harry Warren' wrote the music, and Orry-Kelly was costume designer of this picture.





TV RIP





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User Comments   (Comment on this title) 


6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful. 


They're what you see a show for, 14 August 2005 








Author: bk from Buffalo, New York 





One of the nice things about those Warner Brothers Depression musicals is that you can forget some of the sillier aspects of the plot and just enjoy the wonderful nonsense created.





Dames certainly classifies as wonderful nonsense. A wacky millionaire who's a sideline puritan is going to leave a bequest to a cousin and her family providing that they are of good moral character by his ideas. The wacky millionaire is Hugh Herbert and the cousin is Zasu Pitts, her husband Guy Kibbee and her daughter Ruby Keeler. There's another distant cousin Dick Powell who's already out of the will because he's an actor.





Back then theatrical folk were held in some disdain by polite society, though that's hard to believe now. Also some eyebrows might have been raised with Dick's involvement with Ruby. But then again the president of the United States was married to his fifth cousin. I'm sure the brothers Warner knew that full well when Dames was released.





Dames of course is remembered for those wonderful Busby Berkeley numbers and one of the biggest movie songs ever in I Only Have Eyes For You. Introduced by Dick Powell it was never commercially recorded by him though dozens of our best singers have done so. It's a favorite of mine for sure.





Last but not least Dames features the always captivating Joan Blondell who's not above a little blackmail to achieve her ends. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. She's featured in the Girl at the Ironing Board number, a great piece of Berkeley magic.





We can't forget the title song because as Dick Powell sings, it's what you see the show for. And in that finale they're sure enough of them to satisfy any red blooded male. 








18 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-


Slight plot, great music, and Busby Berkley. Isn't that enough?, 18 June 2004





Author: d_j from Oregon








Dick Powell and the music of Warren and Dubin is reason enough to watch this otherwise average musical. Busby Berkley's choreography is an aquired taste - I prefer the elegance of Hermes Pan/Fred Astaire and the expert tapping of George Murphy and Eleanor Powell, or even the highly entertaining Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Shirley Temple duets. But these all came later than DAMES and Berkley's eye-candy style is highly entertaining and, sometimes, memorable.





I never thought Ruby Keeler was terribly talented and her lack of acting ability does show, especially in the company of such accomplished players as Joan Blondell, Powell, Hugh Herbert, and Guy Kibbee. Keeler's acting is passable, if a bit clumsy, and I find her dancing adequate. (She was called, in some 1930s circles, "The Stomper" for her heavy-footed tapping.)





What makes this film a winner is the music. The title song is wonderful and the splendid "I Only Have Eyes For You" is one of the best songs ever written for a movie. That song is fully performed twice, once about midway into the film and, differently, near the end. The later performance is fine, the former one of the screen's greatest musical numbers. Powell sings it with his beautiful high tenor and Berkley provides probably his best ever production. I dare the viewer to not get goose bumps when watching this.





Take away the music and Busby Berkley and you're left with not much except a (mostly) great cast. I give "DAMES" my highest rating for the music and production numbers and a solid middle ranking for the plot. One could do a lot worse than spend 90 minutes with DAMES. 





14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-


The Ounce Foundation of American Morals, 24 February 2001


Author: l from Kissimmee, Florida








DAMES (Warner Brothers, 1934), directed by Ray Enright, with choreography by Busby Berkeley, is another backstage story with more music than plot. The central character is Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert), an eccentric millionaire and founder of the Ounce Foundation of American Morals, who wants to spend his money improving other people's morals. He decides to spend a month at his cousin Mathilda Hemingway's New York home (ZaSu Pitts), to see that she and her husband, Horace (Guy Kibbee) and their daughter, Barbara (Ruby Keeler) have been living clean moral lives. If so, the family then will inherit his $10 million. Aside from not liking women (!), the only other thing Ezra cannot tolerate is show people. It so happens that Barbara is in love with Jimmy Higgens (Dick Powell, in an energetic performance), a playwright/ composer who hopes to find a backer for his show, "Sweet and Hot," and her father, Horace, has encountered Mabel Anderson (Joan Blondell), a stranded showgirl, in his train compartment, leaving her money and his business card with a note written in the back "please do not mention this unfortunate incident to a soul." After Mabel meets up with Jimmy and his troupe, and learns that Barbara is the daughter of the "sugar daddy" Horace, she comes upon an idea of how to get the money from him to back Jimmy's musical show. Yes, by doing some gold digging.





Songs featured in the story: "When You Were a Smile on Your Mother's Lips, and a Twinkle in Your Daddy's Eye" (possibly the longest title for a single song/written by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain); "I Only Have Eyes For You" (by Harry Warren and Al Dubin) and "Try to See It My Way" (by Mort Dixon and Allie Wrubel). For the Broadway production numbers, all written by Warren and Dubin, and running about 10 minutes each, first comes Joan Blondell dressed in turn of the century clothes performing and singing with other laundry girls to the amusing "The Girl at the Ironing Board" which includes one witty lyric, 'When I'm off on Sundays, I miss all these undies'; followed by "I Only Have Eyes for You" sung by Powell to Keeler, with girls using picture puzzles of Keeler that later fit together to form one gigantic picture of Keeler's face; and "Dames" sung by Powell, performed by a parade of pretty chorines dressed in white blouses and black tights doing their geometric patterns, tap dancing, and Berkeley going crazy with his camera tricks, facial close-ups, leg tunnels, etc. Before the show meets up with a riot started by Ezra's stooges, Blondell comes out center stage in baby clothes singing "Try to See It My Way, Baby" along with other chorines.





I find DAMES acceptable entertainment, although some of the comedy may be trite, with both plot and production numbers starting to repeat themselves. While many critics mention that Ruby Keeler lacks in acting ability, I find her bad acting very noticeable here more than in any of her other movies, past and future, especially when she plays angry and jealous over Powell's attention towards Blondell. This is one of those rare exceptions that I did find her performance annoying than likable. It's interesting to note however that with all the songs, she doesn't get to sing any of them (excluding briefly talking her lyric to "Eyes for You"), and tap dances a minute or two to piano playing to the tune "Dames" during a pre-Broadway tryout. DAMES also marks the fourth and final Powell-Keeler-Berkeley collaboration. In the age of 1930s screwball comedy, Pitts, Kibbee and Herbert fit their character roles perfectly, and all manage to later get drunk after drinking Dr. Silver's Golden Elixer. Also in the cast are Leila Bennett as the bewildered housekeeper, Laura; Johnny Arthur as Billings, Ounce's personal secretary; and songwriter Sammy Fain appearing as songwriter, Buttercup Baumer. One final note, "I Only Have Eyes For You" should have at least been nominated for Academy Award as Best Song of 1934





12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-


In the Depth of the Great Depression, 16 March 2006





Author: B24 from Arizona








No one who lived through the Great Depression could possibly take seriously negative comments on the quality and content this film written by youngsters with no sense of its historical context. To lament its silliness or find fault with what seem now to be crude mechanical cinematographic devices just begs the question.





This movie could not be recreated in the twenty-first century even in the smallest part. In the first place, musicals are now passé. The drag parody of the title number "Dames" in 1988's film Torch Song Trilogy is proof of that. Moreover, its stock characters (Hugh Herbert, Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts) were simply reprising common comedic roles of the day, completely unsuited to the harsher and more cynical models now in vogue. And Ruby Keeler's numbers lack totally the athleticism of our contemporary dancers.





What we can appreciate about the movie is how it fits nicely into the Busby Berkeley oeuvre. After his huge successes of 1933, this example is a fitting continuation to his development as a moviemaker. The catastrophic effects of the Great Depression like mass unemployment, hunger, wholesale uprooting of communities, and abject poverty affecting the lives of millions of ordinary Americans could be forgotten for a few pennies spent in the local movie house. It played to the needs of its time.





Interestingly, the packaging of female pulchritude in the film also fits with that time. What today seems borderline pornographic or insulting to women was accepted without much fuss in 1934. Indeed, any student of Freud could have a field day deconstructing some of the Berkeley images.





As to the music, it is simply classic. Dick Powell's phrasing is a model of tenor sensibility in an age of Big Band baritones. One has to accept that continuity or theatrical presentation is not a factor. Each number stands or falls entirely on its own as seen through the lens of the camera. As an early prototype of the Hollywood musical, Dames was and is a smash hit. 








4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-


Simply Swell!, 20 October 2004





Author: d from United States








Great songs and production numbers make this snappy musical a must for fans





of 30s films. Great cast has Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Guy





Kibbee, Hugh Herbert, Zasu Pitts, Leilah Bennett, Johnny Arthur, and Berton





Churchill in top form. Dick Powell sings "Dames" better than Harvey Fierstein! and Joan Blondell gets a couple numbers here: "The Girl at the Ironing Board" and a reprise of "Try to See It My Way, Baby." Ruby has only one dance number but sports Joan Crawford eyebrows! Pitts, Kibbee and Herbert are terrific in solid support of the stars. The Busby Berkley finale is one of his best as the "dames" go thru their paces in geometric patterns of leg art. The film's big song is "I Only Have Eyes for You" and is well done by Dick Powell----who is unjustly











3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-


Best of Berkeley and Conscious Moral Ambiguity, 22 April 2006





Author: t from United States








*** This comment may contain spoilers ***








It's true that you'll wait through much of this film for the production numbers, its greatest attraction to contemporary viewers.  However, that's not a problem.  In contrast to the chaotic plot of Gold Diggers of 1935, this plot has both point and some worthy comic performances from Zasu Pitts, Guy Kibbee, and especially Hugh Herbert.  In fact the film's thematic point, missed in most reviews, distinguishes it from other films of this genre.  





We expect in these films for Dick Powell to be the dashing (if fruity) hero who wins the girl in the end.  The end here is not so simple; Powell wins the girl, but we never hear what he whispers in Ruby Keeler's ear when she asks if he loves her, and his caddish behavior throughout the film suggests that all's not well that ends well.  Caddish is too tame to describe his awful, fast-talking disregard of everyone but himself. The film gives no reason to suspect he loves Keeler any more than he loves Joan Blondell. Shortly after singing, "I Only Have Eyes for You" to Barbara (Keeler) for whom he wrote it, he sings it to Mabel (Blondell) while excluding Barbara just within earshot. Powell makes quite clear that "dames" are interchangeable, and the show must go on, even if it requires victimizing his "sweetheart's" parents and even if it means firing the girl he supposedly loves. 





In fact, all the characters in this film behave miserably.  Kibbee is a father ready to sell out, not only his values (he seems to have none) but his daughter for an inheritance, and the daughter has as little regard for the feelings of her parents. Zasu Pitts as mother is emotionless, frigid, and similarly self-centered. Rich Uncle Ezra is hilariously dimwitted, an aggressively ignorant upholder of right morals. Nobody is reformed in the end, and the only reason the show goes on is that the "moral majority," who would block the show and the marriage get too drunk to care.  However, it is the failings of the supposed heroes and heroines that are most telling. These people all deserve each other, and the future can't be as promising as the Hollywood ending might imply.





Of course, it is Berkeley's production numbers that will lead you to this film, and they all come near the end in rapid succession.  They are worth the wait.  Berkeley's surreal images comment on the shallowness of the characters. Could it also be that Berkeley recognized Keeler's lack of talent when he gave her almost no chance to sing or dance? The final dance sequence may be the single most extravagant and outrageous Berkeley ever directed.  The kaleidoscopic effects, through the legs dolly shots, use of mirrors and transitions will dazzle lovers of this medium.  One should be amazed at how some of these shots were accomplished with the bulky equipment of the day. You haven't seen the best of Berkeley until you've seen Dames. 








Trailer - recorded from TV to DVD, ripped to AVI





And She Learned About Dames





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