Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)

What is a post-musical? I’ve been trying to define this to my husband ever since we saw Chicago on Broadway. His teenage daughter and I loved it, he hated it — all for the same reasons. It’s heartless, the heroes are unlikable, their predicaments amoral, and like the real world of theater the backstabbing and scamming take backseat only to money and fame. And at it’s heart the musical numbers lead you through dark corners of the soul.

Gold Diggers of 1935 is post. Set in a wealthy resort hotel, the mood is set immediately as employees are told they will not be paid, but receive only tips. Every bellhop and waiter, desk clerk and maid is expected to fleece their clientele. Little surprise that nice-guy Dick Powell dumps his sweetheart for $500. No hard feelings as his fiancee also moves on to greener pastures — green as in money, to marry a wealthy playboy known for big payoffs to his ex-wives. Another woman, hired as a personal secretary plays her boss for a fool and blackmails him with a fake love letter. Meanwhile, a theater director embezzles from his sponsors and his set designer.

Topping it off is Busby Berkeley’s epic movie-within-a-movie. Lullaby of Broadway features a woman who is literally danced to death by rows tapping marching sieg heil-ing hoofers in a dizzying nightclub of art deco stairs and platforms.