Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936)

Gold Diggers of 1937 is a 1936 Warner Bros. movie musical directed by Lloyd Bacon with musical numbers created and directed by Busby Berkeley, and starring Dick Powell and Joan Blondell, who were married at the time, and Victor Moore. The film features songs by the teams of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg and Harry Warren and Al Dubin, and was based on the play Sweet Mystery of Life by Richard Maibaum, Michael Wallach and George Haight, which ran very briefly on Broadway in 1935. Warren Duff wrote the screenplay, apparently with the assistance of Tom Warren, who's billed as "Screenplay constructor".

Gold Diggers of 1937 was the fourth in Warner Bros.' series of "Gold Digger" films, following Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), which is now lost (with 1923 version), Gold Diggers of 1933, which was a remake of the earlier film, and the first to feature Busby Berkeley's extravagant production numbers, and Gold Diggers of 1935. It was followed by Gold Diggers in Paris (1938).

Synopsis

Meek, aging, hypochondriac stage producer J.J. Hobart (Victor Moore), who always thinks he is about to die, is going to mount a new show, but his partners Morty Wethered (Osgood Perkins) and Tom Hugo (Charles D. Brown) lost the money for the show in the stock market. On the advice of chorus girl Genevieve Larkin (Glenda Farrell), they insure J.J. for a million dollars, so that when he dies, they will have the money they need to produce the show. Genevieve's friend, ex-chorus girl Norma Perry (Joan Blondell) is sweet on insurance salesman Rosmer "Rossi" Peck (Dick Powell), and he writes the policy.

Actors