Dames

Breakfasting in their now-fancy digs, sidekick Jack (James Cagney) is suspicious of the girl (Evelyn Knapp) his gambler roommate buddy Nick (Edward G. Robinson) has rescued from suicide, in Smart Money, 1931.

Kooky moral-crusader zillionaire Ounce (Hugh Herbert) and aide (Johnny Arthur) advise cousin Hemingway (Guy Kibbee) that his daughter (Ruby Keeler) must avoid cousin Jimmy (Dick Powell) if they want that inheritance, which she isn’t, song by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal, early in Dames, 1934.

Filthy rich morality nut Ounce (Hugh Herbert) on the train from Buffalo with cousin Horace (Guy Kibbee), who is giddy about the inheritance he’s getting, contingent on good behavior, thus panicked by the fleshy appearance of Joan Blondell as showgirl Mabel, in Warner Bros.’ Dames, 1934.

Moralist Hemingway (Guy Kibbee) has been blackmailed into backing the show nephew Jimmy (Dick Powell) and Mabel (Joan Blondell) are putting on, unaware that his daughter (Ruby Keeler) is trying out under an assumed name, having no luck trying to back out, in Warner Bros.’ Dames, 1934.

A portion of the sizable Busby Berkeley number introducing the Harry Warren and Al Dubin standard written for the film, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler the enraptured couple, worth noting this is all supposed to be happening on a musical theater stage, in Warner Bros.’ Dames, 1934.

Broadway in a slump and the girls suffering, Carol (Joan Blondell), Trixie (Aline MacMahon) and Polly (Ruby Keeler) improvising when Fay (Ginger Rogers ) shows up with a glimmer of good news, wisecracking in Warner Bros. style, in the first in the series, Gold Diggers Of 1933, 1933.

Part of the Broadway show imagined in the narrative, the first segment of a modest Busby Berkeley number, song by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, and arguably one of the few solo pieces ever to take full advantage of Joan Blondell (as “Mabel”) in a Warner Bros.’ musical, from Dames, 1934.

First meeting between the principals, ambulance driver Frank (Robert Mitchum) and Diane (Jean Simmons, title character), the stepdaughter of the patient, in whose bedroom the gas was somehow left on, in Otto Preminger's Angel Face, 1953.

A reformer's daughter wins the lead in a scandalous Broadway show in Busby Berkeley's musical Dames (1934).