directed by Mitchell Leisen, 1934, 89 minutes

Vanities stars Eric Lander (Carl Brisson) and Ann Ware (Kitty Carlisle) announce their marriage. As the show opens a series of accidents forces stage manager Jack Ellery (Jack Oakie) to call in detective Bill Murdock (Victor McLaglen) to investigate.

Anything to get out of the dust. You stumbled into the picture house when it became too difficult to see and breathe. The dirt from a thousand dying farms sucked into the sky then blown back down on God’s earth. People choking to death, pneumonia in Summer, their lungs full of brown grit. The movie has already started, your eyes are streaming but you can hear lots of corny patter. Your vision clears, on screen some high-class brunette is singing as a curtain draws back to reveal an alien world. Hordes of women, not the drab, weary broads that you see every day but slender, athletic bodies that glitter and shine; artfully posed and barely dressed. Some of them proffer expensive cigars.  There is some hoofing and thigh-slapping, cowgirls and cowboys play with lariats. The singer asks, “Where do they come from and where do they go?” That’s a very good question. The dames are heading through an arch decorated with the words “Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world”. One cowgirl almost slips on the polished floor as she hurries through, you grin and settle into your seat. It is summer 1934 and you are watching ‘Murder at the Vanities’.

Musical revues were big business. Paris had the Moulin Rouge, London the Windmill, Broadway had the Ziegfeld Follies, George White’s Scandals and Earl Carroll’s Vanities, an annual event in the early thirties which had run since the twenties. Vaudeville on steroids, the shows offered lavish and risqué musical spectacle. Broadway provided elite entertainment: Admission at 2 or 3 depression era dollars translates to more than 50 dollars today.  Story musicals like Ziegfeld’s ‘Showboat’ (1927) were becoming popular so Carroll combined revue with a whodunnit narrative to revive a tired format. ‘Murder at the Vanities’ opened in 1933 and, like many Broadway hits quickly transitioned to cinema. Movies brought an experience far out of reach for most people to a wider audience who enjoyed seeing how the wealthy got their kicks. On screen, ‘Murder at the Vanities’ captures the scale and atmosphere of Broadway life. Elegant chorines bicker and gossip in the dressing rooms, overcrowded backstage scenes demonstrate how labour-intensive musical theatre could be. At a time when unemployment was rife, they provided paid work for hundreds. The cavalier attitude of the manager to accidents backstage is not just comic effect; when cash was short, huge productions were shoehorned into smaller venues and mishaps were commonplace. The lure of stardom ensured a constant supply of fresh hopefuls eager to escape the daily grind and ‘Murder at the Vanities’ has all the subtlety of a wartime recruitment drive: Female bodies are shamelessly commoditised like joints of meat, complete with prominent price tags they are presented alongside symbols of conspicuous consumption: Perfume bottles and giant pearls like soap bubbles, huge powder cases open to mirror Botticelli’s Venus and her scallop shell. The ranks of uncredited hopefuls on stage in ‘Murder’ include names that went on to bigger things (look out for Lucille Ball, Alan Ladd and Ann Sheridan) but most would get no further than the chorus, some remained “cigarette girls or stenographers”, or ended up much worse. ‘Murder’ offers a stark reminder of the gap between Broadway and reality when a lantern-jawed char woman shuffles out of the Vanities stage door.

On screen the curtains open. Some joe wearing clean, but tattered rags is marooned on a desert island, a huge painted moon behind him, at his feet a sea of ostrich feathers ruffles gently. “Today was so depressing and so long” he sings pensively. Tell me about it, brother. Then the feathery billows part to reveal dozens of stockinged gams. Platinum blonde sea nymphs frolic amongst the waves and the chorus trills like an angelic choir. As the crooner’s sweetheart comes ashore to join him, he opens his arms in welcome and beams. Suddenly he’s in heaven, and so are you.

Mervyn Leroy’s ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’ graced with Busby Berkeley’s spectacular choreography had been a major hit for Warner, Paramount hoped to follow suit but ‘Murder at the Vanities’ flopped. The leading performances are wooden and uncharismatic; Carl Brisson, a Danish ex-boxer, lacks the grace of Astaire or the screen presence of Cagney. The mannered performance style, all fixed smiles and exaggerated gestures, is unintentionally hilarious, better suited to the stage than cinematic closeup. There is more colour in the supporting cast: Gertrude Michael lets rip as ‘blues singer’ Rita Ross, who bullies her star-struck dresser (Dorothy Stickney) and is always looking for a bottle. Lieutenant Murdock is played by London born Victor McLaglen: His Brooklyn drawl may sometimes slip but his quickfire banter with Jack Oakie’s Stage Manager buzzes with gritty thirties argot. Director Mitchell Leisen cameos as orchestra leader; the musical numbers display his strong visual aesthetic but miss the magic of Busby Berkeley. Berkeley embraced the visual possibilities of film, transposing his musical numbers into cinematic space to increase their scale and enhance their beauty. The set-pieces in ‘Murder’ remain much closer to theatre; the quaint painted backdrops and conventional choreography are too static for the unforgiving scrutiny of the camera. References to currency crash, war veterans and depression poverty in ‘Gold Diggers of 1933’ would have broadened its appeal but Leisen creates an effete fantasy world far removed from the drab misery of daily life.

Now the mood has grown darker. Mariachis strum a sultry flamenco as some doll in a huge floppy hat croons about reefer. Hey! haven’t they just made that illegal? Then the background lifts to reveal a crudely rendered cactus with topless (but modest) blonde blossoms. As blood drips onto a bare shoulder one of the cactus flowers screams. It’s murder, what gives?

It wasn’t just the dust that made the thirties dirty. Sex, drugs, and violence remain prominent elements of our imaginative landscape of the Great Depression. Then, as now, Hollywood was perceived as a moral barometer. Just as much bare flesh is on display in Busby’s ‘Gold Diggers’ but Leisen’s film soon gained notoriety as a gross example of Hollywood decadence, released just before the MPAA code cleaned up the dream factory. The code came into force from July 1934, provoked in part by Cecil B. DeMille’s ‘Sign of the Cross’ (1932) which repurposed Christian melodrama to deliver a heady dose of violent titillation. Stage and screen entertainers, like the ever-touring carnies of the circuit lived outside social and moral convention. Many ‘ordinary’ citizens secretly envied their freedom from moral restraint whilst publicly decrying their depravity. In ‘Murder’ performers are disparaged as trained animals (“seals”). Theirs was a precarious existence in the best of times, but during the Depression the breadline was never far away despite government aid from the Federal Theatre Project. The constant backbiting and gossip that features in ‘Murder’ are symptoms of a brutally competitive and desperately insecure lifestyle where addiction and violence were commonplace. Although the Volstead Act had been repealed in December 1933 making it easier to drink yourself silly, new prohibitions had followed quickly. The Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act of 1934 means that ‘Murder’ must portray marijuana as exotic entertainment from south of the border rather than part of small-town America, even though it had been banned in Mexico since the twenties.  Arthur Johnston and Sam Coslow’s plaintive hymn to the therapeutic properties of weed has subsequently gained ‘Murder’ a degree of cult cachet.

On screen the second act has started. Our joe has escaped from his desert island. As he plays some dreary, high-brow piano concerto you consider whether it’s time to make tracks. Suddenly Duke Ellington ousts the orchestra and it’s a hop, then some tin-ear stiff grabs a Chicago piano and starts throwing lead like it’s Valentine’s Day. The chorus line topples like dominos. What a wingding! You stay in your seat.

When Ellington and his Orchestra crash a performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, we are treated to a crass demonstration of thirties racial (and gender) discourse: “Oh lawdy, yes, they have bandanas, they go to market singing dirty hosannas”. Like Presley, this is a cynical attempt to repackage black culture for a white middle-class audience. Our vocalist is white, but she sports exaggerated apron and headscarf, like Tom and Jerry’s Mammy Two Shoes. It’s all safely exotic, set in “Martinique Isle” rather than Idaho or Wisconsin so no need to worry, in any case, the camera is more interested in white legs than black performers and Charles Middleton (soon to be Flash Gordon’s Ming) mercilessly restores social discipline.

Joe’s back, this time togged up like a Wall Street swell; top hat, cane, and all. As he warbles on about “Cocktails for Two” you thank the good lord that Volstead’s dead and gone. The elegant minuet that ensues may not look much like Saturday night at the local gin mill but perhaps it’s time for a few stiff ones to wash away the dust. You can’t recall whodunnit but who cares? There were some swell tunes and snazzy scenery. Time to take a powder and find that bar.

Quotes

“Go back to your bootleg, this legal stuff don’t agree with you.”          Bill Murdock (Victor McLaglen)

“Oh! Mr Ellery!”                                                                                                       Nancy (Toby Wing)

Connections:

Film

‘Sign of the Cross’ directed by Cecil B. DeMille (1932)

‘Gold Diggers of 1933’ directed by Mervyn LeRoy (1933)

‘Search for Beauty’ directed by Erle C. Kenton (1934)

‘Reefer Madness’ directed by Louis J. Gasnier (1936)

‘Meet the Feebles’ directed by Peter Jackson (1989)

‘Cradle Will Rock’ directed by Tim Robbins (1999)

‘Moulin Rouge’ directed by Baz Luhrmann (2001)

Television

‘Carnivàle’ written by Daniel Knauf and others, directed by Rodrigo García and others, HBO, 2003-2005

Reading

Piers Brendon, Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s, Jonathan Cape, 2000, ISBN 978-0224060387

Lee Davis, Scandals and Follies: The Rise and Fall of the Great Broadway Revue, Proscenium Publishers, 2000, ISBN 0879102748

David P. Peeler, Hope Among Us Yet: Social Criticism and Social Solace in Depression America, University of Georgia, 2008, ISBN 978-0820331409

Dorothea Lange 500 FAS Photographs (edited by Marc Rochkind), CreateSpace, 2015, ISBN 978-1512100457