42nd Street (1933)

Slim Murphy: Hey got a match?
Pat Denning: Yep... why I guess so... yeah.
Slim Murphy: Don't happen to know a guy named Pat Denning do ya?
Pat Denning: Why yes.
Slim Murphy: We got a message for him. This guy Pat Denning's a pretty wise mug but he ain't wise enough and if he don't lay off that Dorothy Brock dame, it's gonna be just too bad... for Denning, get me?
Pat Denning: Alright I'll tell him.
Slim Murphy: Yeah well...
[punches Pat in the mouth and Pat falls down]
Slim Murphy: that's so ya don't forget.
Mug with Murphy: Yeah
[He and Slim kick Pat then run off]
Peggy Sawyer: Ohhhhh Pat... Pat... Pat... who were they?
Pat Denning: Friends... with good advice.

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Billy Lawler: [to Peggy Sawyer] Hey, I've been for you ever since you walked in on me in my BVD's.

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Ann Lowell: [to chorus girl] It must have been hard on your mother, not having any children.

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Both Harry Warren and Al Dubin are credited onscreen for both music and lyrics, but no songs are credited onscreen. However, Warren wrote the music for all the songs recognized and listed in the soundtrack, and Dubin the lyrics for those songs which were sung.
This film, released on March 9, 1933, single-handedly rescued the movie musical, which had been considered a money losing proposition since mid-1930. Early "all talking, all dancing" musicals typically suffered from severe camera restrictions coupled with poor musical staging, soured the public on the genre in general (Universal's huge losses from the lively King of Jazz had put an unofficial moratorium on the musical) and no other studio wanted to risk producing one. Warners, at the time of the film's release, had Gold Diggers of 1933 nearing completion and pre-production plans were well underway for Footlight Parade, all utilizing the talents of Busby Berkeley. The success of this film would convince Radio Pictures to produce Flying Down to Rio (released that December). Other major studios would continue to shy away from musicals throughout 1933, although Paramount would proceed with plans to produce the lavish Murder at the Vanities toward the end of the year.
One of the lines in the song "Shuffle off to Buffalo" is "when she knows as much as we know/she'll be on her way to Reno/while he still has dough." Contemporary audiences would have recognized this as a reference to the fairly common practice of moving to Reno, Nevada, for a short-term stay to obtain a divorce. At the time of the movie's release (and for at least twenty-five years afterward), Nevada had some of the most lenient divorce laws in the country, especially compared to New York, where the there were few accepted grounds for divorce, and the standards of proof for those grounds were so high as to be almost impossible (for instance, evidence of adultery had to be in the form of eyewitness testimony or photographic records of the act); and even then, divorces took a year to be final. By contrast, Nevada granted a divorce for almost any reason after only a six-week-residency period.
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