Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)

Gold Diggers of 1933 bursts with such energy that it barely gets through its credits before Ginger Rogers enters in close-up singing a show tune. The number, choreographed by Busby Berkeley like the other three routines of the film, is massive, a grandiose paean to money that makes you forget the year in the title until creditors bust in at the song's climax to shut down the indebted production. The disconnect makes the intrusion of reality all the more amusing, more impressive considering how hard it is to top the comic highpoint of the gold-digger song "We're in the Money," complete with looming silver dollar setpieces and costumes of scantily clad showgirls wearing coins over their privates (as if announcing the toll for entry).

The creditors' blunt reminder of the world outside the theater, subsequently seen through the living conditions of the other three leads of the film: ingenue Polly (Ruby Keeler), torch singer Carol (Joan Blondell), and the sarcastic Trixie (Aline MacMahon). Forced to share an apartment, the three stoop to stealing neighbors' milk and have become so despondent over job searches that they've given up looking. And when their old producer, the irascible Hopkins, comes by with plans to make a production about the Depression, the fresh memory of his gaudy, glamorous oblivion suggests that such a show would capture the Great Depression with as much realism as Armageddon does astrophysics. Only the timely intervention of Polly's talented singer-songwriter (and mysteriously wealthy) boyfriend Brad secures Hopkins the money, exciting the girls but also raising suspicions.