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Ex-Follies girls Jean (Ina Claire in a role Verree Teasdale had played on stage) and her oddly-named friends Polaire (Madge Evans) and Schatze (Joan Blondell) are in every sense of the word past mistresses of the art of gold-digging. At one point, in fact, they discover that all three have had affairs with the same now deceased admirer. Polaire in the film surrenders to love in the person of wealthy David Manners, but the other two, even when Jean is offered marriage by Manners’ father, sail off to Europe to continue on their merrily unregenerate way, as all three did in the play.

This was one of the earliest talkie examples of the “Sally, Irene and Mary” or “Three Female Musketeers” pattern more commonly found in romantic Cinderella films. In his Huff Society program notes for November 19, ’63, William K. Everson calls it “one of the key sources for the Fox trio MOON OVER MIAMI, THREE LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE” This statement is only one-third accurate. The first two films named were actually re-makes of THREE BLIND MICE (’38), all three versions based on an English play that had nothing to do with Greeks.

The Akins work is indeed listed, along with an unidentified play by Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert, as a source for HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE (’53), but the resemblance is minimal. Marilyn Monroe, to be sure, was called Pola and Lauren Bacall Schatz, but Betty Grable was “Loco” typical of the kind of changes made. Transposed out of period to the ’50’s, with the girls as models (who, after all, are highly paid professionals), the whole situation seemed dated, with much of the alleged humor depending on Monroe’s near-sightedness. Perhaps the difference in comedy level can best be measured by the difference between Ina Claire and Marilyn Monroe.

More to the point is Everson’s observation about Greeks: “It literally oozes the spirit of the early ’30’s partly as they really were and wholly as the movies of the period had us believe they were – in its brittle and zippy comments on manners and morals, its careful reconstructions of smoky speakeasies, and in its very much authentically in period dialogue.” (Since it was made in ’32, how could its dialogue be other than authentically in period?)

BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES (’32), written by Anita Loos, starred Marion Davies and Billie Dove, who had actually been Ziegfeld girls, as a rival pair who had grown up together in the slums. The continual contrast between their tenement background and the luxury of Park Avenue penthouses suggests a basic sociological explanation for gold-digging usually not touched on in this kind of film. Dove’s character, Lureen Cavanaugh (born Lottie Cassidy), takes the primrose path and becomes the mistress of playboy Robert Montgomery, but it is true-blue, straight-as-a-die Blondie who (after being seriously injured in a stage accident caused by the other girl) wins him in the end – an ironic twist, considering Davies’ well-known off-screen status. Though one catches glimpses of a few on-stage numbers, BLONDIE was not a musical.

Indeed, after two years in which backstage musicals had been pronounced officially dead, Warners was taking a decided risk in trying to revive them with FORTY-SECOND STREET (’33), but, as any film buff knows, the gamble more than paid off. Though the main plot has nothing to do with gold-digging, Ann Lowell, a minor character played by Ginger Rogers, is a prime practitioner. When she turns up at the first chorus call in a smartly tailored suit, sporting a monocle, carrying a Pekingese and in a phony British accent dropping references to a summer at Deauville, the first muttered comment from one of the other girls is “Lamp Minnie the Mountaineer!”

“That’s Any Time Annie,” another explains. “She only said no once, and then she didn’t hear the question.” A third adds: “I bet her home work’s tough!” Until Ginger and Una Merkel go into their cynical added chorus of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”, little further is made of this character, but she surely revived the comic possibilities of the chorus girl who moonlights (or sunlights) as mistress.

Even before the release of FORTY-SECOND STREET, Warners were planning a follow-up musical, to be called HIGH LIFE, but the January 13, ’33, issue of “Film Daily” announced that the title had been changed to THE GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933. One may infer that when the advance response to FORTY-SECOND STREET exceeded their fondest hopes, the producers, eager to get a successor into the theatres as soon as possible, decided to re-make a proven hit. Since the production numbers would have nothing whatever to do with the story line, they could be spliced into any plot. This seems the only logical explanation of the fact, unique in film history, that a successful musical (GOLD DIGGERS OF BROADWAY) in Technicolor was re-made, less than four years after its release, in black and white, with a different score.

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