Theatre 2023: 42nd Street

The musical play 42nd Street is an adaptation of the 1933 black and white movie of the same name, which in turn is based off of a similarly titled 1933 novel by Bradford Ropes.  Located in the heart of Manhattan’s entertainment district, 42nd Street has become synonymous with live theatre in New York City, especially at Times Square where it intersects with Broadway Avenue.  The book and the movie probably went a long way in cementing this connotation.

Bradford Rope’s story describes the backstage politics and power dynamics of Broadway in the roaring 20s.  He writes about chorus girls (and boys) subjected to casting couch tactics, the self-proclaimed “male gigolo and man-whore” Pat Denning who accepts money from various wealthy benefactors including the past-her-prime star Dorothy Brock, who herself has an elderly sugar-daddy Abner Dillon financing her latest show, mobsters for hire to separate Pat and Dorothy, the young male lead singer Billy Lawler whose influence over his gay director and lover Julian Marsh results in the firing of any perceived competition, and the fresh-faced but hardly naïve chorus girl Peggy Sawyer who juggles several suitors but ultimately prioritizes career advancement over love and marriage.  Much of the action revolves around the casting, rehearsal and performance of the Broadway show “Pretty Lady” which features tap dancing numbers that were extravaganzas in the vein of The Ziegfeld Follies.  To simulate the sound of the tapping on the page, Ropes would write “Ticka Tack Toe .. Ticka Tack Toe”.  This was not the best written book in terms of literary style or dialog but there were enough gems in the narrative to be mined to produce an Oscar nominated film that was the most profitable movie in 1933 and is now considered a classic.

While the movie version of 42nd Street takes some plot points and main characters from the book, it significantly bowdlerizes the seedier elements of Ropes’ novel, replacing them with traditional wholesome Hollywood tropes of the time.  The famous director Julian Marsh is still mounting the revue show “Pretty Lady”, but he is no longer gay.  Instead, he is ill, and this is likely his last show, making him desperate for it to be a success in order to financially secure his retirement.  The timeframe is moved to the early 1930s in the heart of the Great Depression in order to heighten the desperation of all involved for the show to be a hit.  As in the book, Dorothy Brock is still the star of the production,  which is financed by her rich, older benefactor Abner Dillon while secretly seeing her true love Pat Denning behind Abner’s back.  Marsh sends thugs to rough up Dennings to keep him away from Brock.  But in the movie, Denning is now an honorable man who is in love with Dorothy yet chafes against taking money from her and seeks to make it on his own.  The main narrative follows the old standard storyline where naïve but ultra-talented ingenue Peggy Sawyer is plucked out of the chorus line to become a star and save the show when Dorothy breaks her leg and cannot perform.  Billy Lawler is also no longer gay but now is Peggy’s supporter and love interest.

Although many taboo subjects from the book were eliminated, this movie was “pre-Hayes Code” so there were still some racy scenes that might not have been included a few decades later.  One of the experienced chorus girls named Ann Lowell is nicknamed “Anytime Annie”, about whom the male choreographer Andy Lee quips “She only said no once, and then she didn’t hear the question”.  As a prank on Peggy while she is looking for the casting director at the tryouts for Pretty Lady, Ann and some other showgirls send her into Billy Lawler’s dressing room where he is semi-clad in his underwear (in the requisite “meet-cute” scene).  During the tryouts, the women are called upon to lift their skirts so that the director can inspect their legs.  Director Julian Marsh is physically aggressive with Peggy, grabbing her repeatedly as he tries to whip her into shape to replace Dorothy on short notice.  At one point he even yanks her into a kiss to help her get in “the right mindset” for a love scene.   None of this would be acceptable in today’s “Me-Too” environment!  In another scene at Peggy’s rooming house, a woman in a negligee can be spotted in the background sneaking her lover out of her room.  It is interesting how much sexual inuendo was allowed in movies in the 1930s compared to the puritan decades of the 50s and 60s when you could not even show a married couple sharing a bed or use the word pregnancy.

The movie 42nd Street is deemed a musical, but there are only five songs, and they are only sung as part of rehearsals or performances of Pretty Lady.  There is no bursting into song with lyrics to advance the main plot.  Even the “show within a show” has no real plot but is rather a series of standalone numbers meant to showcase the tunes written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin including “Shuffling off to Buffalo” and the eponymous finale song “42nd Street”.  The main draw of the movie is the series of spectacular dance sequences choreographed by Busby Berkeley including a large cast of dancers creating kaleidoscope-like geometric patterns which he filmed from overhead and from below to create incredible images. Two memorable lines came out of this movie—“By tomorrow, I’ll either have a live leading lady or a dead chorus girl”, and “you’re going out a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star!”. Up and coming stars Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell starred as Peggy and Billy respectively and would go on to be paired in many more musicals including The Golddiggers of 1933 and Dames.  A young (pre-Fred Astaire pairing) Ginger Rogers plays the experienced chorus girl Ann Lowell who catches Abner’s eye after he dumps Dorothy and is first offered the starring role.  She turns it down saying that she did not have the chops to carry the show but suggests Peggy instead.  In light of the explosion in Rogers’ film and dance career shortly after, this statement seems so ironic.

As part of our 2023/2024 Mirvish subscription series, we watched a touring production of London West End’s latest revival of the live musical 42nd Street.  This show was first staged on Broadway in 1980, winning the Tony awards for Best Musical and best choreography for that year.  To expand the show into a full-fledged musical, in addition to using most of the songs from the 1933 movie, popular tunes from other movies of the time including other Keeler/Powell collaborations were added.  Songs including “We’re in the Money”, “Shadow Waltz”, “Dames” and “With Plenty of Money and You” were used to beef up the performances within Pretty Lady, although this show-within-a-show still has no real plot.  But now, more in the fashion of contemporary "book" musicals, songs are sung by the characters of 42nd Street to advance the main storyline.  When Dorothy feels like she is losing Pat, she sings the torch song “Only Have Eyes For You”, and when the cast goes on the road to Philadelphia for pre-Broadway tryouts, they sing “Getting Out of Town”.  In addition to more songs, changes to some of the characters and plot made the musical flow more cohesively than both the movie and the book.

Instead of two male producers for the show as in the book and movie, the musical has male and female producers, Bert and Maggie, who are also the songwriters and who act as comic relief both in 42nd Street and in Pretty Lady.  Peggy is portrayed as being much more naïve and forms relationships with Maggie and chorus girls Ann, Lorraine and Phyllis, who take her under their wings.  In the number “Go Into Your Dance”, Peggy impresses the others and proves her remarkable talent at tap dancing, which clarifies the later scene where Ann recommends Peggy for the lead to replace Dorothy.  In the movie, this came out of the blue and made no sense at all.   Another major plot change involves how and why Dorothy falls and breaks her leg.  In the movie, Dorothy trips in a drunken stupor and jealous rage as she assumes that her beloved Pat is two-timing her with Peggy.  In the musical, Peggy bumps into Dorothy during a number in Pretty Lady and causes her to fall.  This results in Dorothy demanding and Julian immediately firing Peggy.  To set up this scenario, Peggy is portrayed as being klutzy and always bumping  into people, which didn’t make sense to me since she is supposed to be such a gifted dancer.  The plot device is weak, but the firing sets up the big production number “Lullaby of Broadway” when Julian and the cast realize that they need Peggy to save the show and rush to the train station to convince her to return.

In the performance that we watched, two staircases that sat innocuously on either side of the stage during the rehearsal scenes are pushed together and with the help of some video magic, the Philadelphia Broad St. Station appears right before our eyes.  In general, the set design for this show was gorgeous with its Art Deco backdrops and the costumes worn during the Pretty Lady numbers were equally spectacular.  Add to that the stellar dance performances and what you get is a light-hearted, fun period musical whose sole purpose is to entertain, which was just what we needed to kick off the holiday season.

One small point of note is that being a touring road show, the cast of this production was significantly smaller than the West End revival that played in the Royal Drury Lane Theatre from 2017-2019 and which was filmed for streaming access in 2018.  While the Toronto version of the show only had 5 extra chorus girls and 8 chorus boys in the ensemble, the West End production had over 20 girls and 12 boys.  Their ensemble alone outnumbered the entire Toronto cast.  Thus by necessity, the dance numbers that we watched were on a much smaller scale than those of the original.  But the great choreography and talented performers in our show made their presence seem so large that we did not feel lacking.

It is interesting to compare Pretty Lady’s grand finale number 42^nd Street in the movie versus the musical.  In each case, it is a big production piece featuring Peggy and Billy singing the jazzy tune although in the movie, it is sung with a peppy cadence while in the musical, it is sung with more of a slow, sultry jazz rhythm (which I liked better!).  The song is meant to convey the atmosphere of the iconic street where you can “Hear the beat of dancing feet”, but also “where the underworld can meet the elite”.  Both the lyrics and the dance number show that it is not just all good times and song and dance on the street, but that there is a seedy, dangerous side as well.  In the movie version, in the middle of a dance sequence that features all types of people on the street, a woman is physically assaulted and murdered.  In the musical version, the shock factor of the scenario is toned down a bit as a purse snatcher is shot dead by the police.  The final words of the song sum it all up – “Naughty, bawdy, gaudy, sporty Forty-Second Street”.  Once again for this number, there are noticeably fewer people in the musical than the movie, and even fewer people in the touring production than the revival version.

The final scenes in both the movie and the musical focus on director Julian Marsh as opposed to the book which ends on the perspective of the newly minted star Peggy Sawyer. In the movie, Marsh stands alone outside the theatre and morosely listens as patrons walk by praising Peggy while diminishing Julian’s role in the show’s success. In the musical, after Peggy gently rebuffs Julian’s mild romantic overtures and leaves to attend a celebration party with the rest of the cast, he sings the final reprise of 42nd Street.  It feels like an eleven o’clock number and leads one to question who is intended to be the main protagonist of this musical—is it Peggy or Julian?  The question is further complicated in the final bows.  In the Toronto production that we watched, Peggy is clearly the star and gets the final bow while in the filmed West End version, it goes to the actors playing Julian and Dorothy who come out together.  Maybe this is just attributed to who were the bigger named actors in each version of the show, but it is still a bit perplexing what was the actual intention of the show creators.

Nonetheless, this was an enjoyable and visually stunning musical that left us happily humming and tapping our feet as we went home.  I always thought that it would be fun to learn to tap dance, and this just fueled my fantasy.