If you look at the movie poster or watch the trailer for this film, it is clearly--and unabashedly--marketing the fact that it contains hundreds of women, many of whom were used in Busby Berkeley's huge production numbers. "Dames" also contains hints of pre-Code scandal and nudity--just hints.This Depression-era film, with its energetic dancing, upbeat songs, and extravagant displays of youthful enthusiasm and beauty was designed to take viewers away from the realities outside the theater doors. And it does that very well.Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, and a wonderful cast of character actors including Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts, and Hugh Herbert thespiate (that must be a word) through a script that holds together but is largely inconsequential, except to provide a contrast between the opprobrium of Hugh Herbert's (Ezra Ounce) character, which is directed at the impropriety of the theater, and the onstage (and on screen) entertainment.The entire film is held together by the glue of two great songs: "I Only Have Eyes For You" and "Dames". Dick Powell is the perfect vocalist (of his day).The other "star" of the film is Mr. Berkeley's imaginative staging and camera work, including zooms, camera movement and special effects that are start-of-the-art in 1934.This is a classic because it provides a view of its era, and stylistically it is a paragon of its genre. After "Dames", there will be better scripts, better dancing, better effects, etc., but it encapsulates the spirit of its time.

"Dames" is another vintage Warner Brothers' Broadway dance musical about the show that must go on in spite of the circumstances. Several show-stopping musical numbers occur during the last half-hour with Busby Berkeley orchestrating them with his own distinctive trademark movements. Director Ray Enright keeps the action moving at a snappy pace. Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are the couple here to watch while Joan Blondell has a field day as a sexy theater girl who isn't beneath blackmail. Guy Kibbee is the sympathetic schmuck caught between Blondell's conniving blonde and Hugh Herbert's moral stalwart. The theme of censorship runs throughout Delmar Daves's predictable but interesting screenplay. Of course, you want to see Dick Powell succeed, but you feel sorry for poor Guy Kiddee. Happily, "Dames" serves up a happily-ever-after ending. You also get the feeling that something isn't right with the upstanding moral stalwart who wants to demolish dens of depravity. Once you see what he guzzles to rid himself of the hiccups, you'll laugh. As the primary villain, screwball multi-millionaire Erza Ounce emerges as a figure of derision. You'll get a hint of this while he is traveling by train and tries to walk past a fat woman and accidentally—or so he contends—trips on her and sits on her lap momentarily.When he isn't fighting an uphill battle to land a role in a Broadway musical, singer Jimmy Higgens (Dick Powell) romances Barbara Hemingway (Ruby Keller of "42nd Street") who turns out to be his thirteenth cousin. The dramatic conflict grows out of the clash between prudish tycoon Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert) who abhors the stage and Higgens who has labeled him the black sheep of the family. Nevertheless, Jimmy is desperate to break into Broadway, even if he has to come up with his own book. Uncle Ezra has decided to divide up his $35 million fortune. He plans to give $10-million to Horace Hemingway (Guy Kibbee of "Captain Blood"), but Horace must measure up to Ezra's high moral standards.Meanwhile, Horace is married to Mathilda (Zasu Pitts of "Mr. Skitch"), and they sleep in separate bedrooms as was the standard in Hollywood during the 1930s. Ezra is such a prude that he doesn't trust women and refuses to let them enter his bedroom. He resides in Buffalo, New York, and presides over three major businesses: The Buffalo Security Bank, St. Lawrence Waterways, Ltd., and the Empire Insurance Company of Buffalo. Horace visits Ezra in Buffalo and they take the train to New York. During the train ride, a career oriented hoofer, Mabel Anderson (Joan Blondell of "The Public Enemy"), sneaks into Horace's sleeping compartment. How Mabel gained access to Horace's compartment is never explained. This is just a complication to add another character to the story. Actually, it constitutes a flaw in the otherwise flawless plotting. Naturally, Horace is mortified and doubly so because Ezra will disown him when he discovers his adulterous behavior. Horace manages to bribe Mabel with a hundred dollar bill.Meanwhile, Jimmy and his collaborators, songwriters Jonathan Harris (Phil Regan) and Buttercup Balmer (Sammy Fain), give Broadway producer Harold Ellsworthy Todd (Berton Churchill of "Stagecoach") a rendition of their music. Todd raves about the music and their youth. He hands Jimmy a check for $5000 at about the same time that Mabel saunters into the office. Mabel reviles Todd for the cheapskate pr0oducer that he is and he flees. Mabel wants to know more about Jimmy's song and dance musical, much to the chagrin of Barbara. Jimmy runs Barbara, Jonathan, and Balmer out of the office and plays her a number. Mabel decides to revisit poor Horace. As Horace, his wife, and Ezra are about to retire for the evening, Horace enters his bedroom and finds Mabel tucked into bed awaiting his arrival. She threatens to scream if he doesn't fork over $20-thousand. Ezra and Matilda hear a fragment of the scream and Horace tells them that it was his water pipes singing. Ultimately, despite all his bickering with Mabel, Horace winds up giving her $25-thousand. Imagine Horace's surprise when he learns later that Barbara will appear in the show.As it turns out, Ezra suffers from a bad case of the hiccups. He has everybody scrambling around New York trying to find him Dr. Silver's Golden Elixir that will cure him. The first bottle contains a hefty percentage of alcohol and later bottles contain even more alcohol. When Jimmy's show opens, Barbara cannot make it in time to perform the musical numbers so Mabel steps into her place. The number with Mabel singing to clothing hanging on a clothesline outdoors is amusing and innovative. Meantime, Ezra brings an army of well-dressed henchmen to the play to break it up when he finds it intolerable. The signal for them to rush the stage is when Ezra waves a handkerchief. Bulger, Erza's bodyguard, brings more bottles of Dr. Silver's magical elixir, and Ezra gets so stinking that he forgets his own plan. At one point, Mabel waves her scarf at him from the stage and Ezra responds with his handkerchief and his henchmen disrupt the play. Everybody but Jimmy and Barbara wind up behind bars, but Ezra has changed his mind and doesn't want to reform society."Dames" is an above-average, but predictable dance comedy.

Warner Bros. musical comedies from the 1930s tend to be lightweight romps known for their ensemble casts, their silly gags, and of course the imaginative choreography of Busby Berkeley.In DAMES (1934), Hugh Herbert is an eccentric millionaire who promises cousin-in-law Guy Kibbee ten million dollars if he and his family (wife ZaSu Pitts and daughter Ruby Keeler) prove to be of the utmost moral standards. He even organizes a committee to raise morality in the cesspool that is New York City by abolishing things like actors and the theatre.Of course, in a movie like this, somebody's gonna want to put on a show, and that somebody is Dick Powell, actor/songwriter and the black sheep of Herbert's family tree. Powell and Keeler are in love, but it's okay because they're only thirteenth cousins or whatever.With ten million dollars on the line, Kibbee and Pitts can't afford to make a wrong impression when Herbert comes to stay with them. Little do they know that their daughter is part of Powell's "obscene" theatre troupe. Here ZaSu Pitts is a prudish, disapproving housewife, which is a bit of a departure from her usual "oh, dear..." characterizations. Kibbee is great as always, this time faced with catastrophic scandal when he unexpectedly finds the alluring Joan Blondell in his bed.Ah, Joan Blondell. Joan Blondell is always terrific and she steals the show this time as a hard-up actress with a genius for blackmail. She's a hoot in her scenes with Kibbee and she blows her co-stars off the screen the minute she enters a scene.Personally, I've never been a big fan of Ruby Keeler, but she stars in a lot of these Warner Bros. musicals. She's sweet enough as the love interest, although she lacks personality and speaks with a distracting accent.The cast is solid all around and there's some great comedy in the script. My favorite running gag is the character of Herbert's perpetually drowsy bodyguard (played by Arthur Vinton). And Herbert is always referring to his sin-eradicating foundation by its unwieldy abbreviation "the O. F. for the E. of the A. M."DAMES follows the pattern laid out in earlier WB musicals like GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (1933) and FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933) of back-loading Berkeley's musical numbers in a half-hour block at the end of the film. Berkeley's choreography is creative as always, but not as memorable as his earlier work.In "The Girl at the Ironing Board" Joan Blondell dances with a bunch of laundry hung out to dry. (Did somebody say "puppeteered long johns"?) "Dames" is a celebration of feminine beauty and a trippy kaleidoscopic showcase of dozens of anonymous peroxide-haired chorus girls.The most enduring hit from DAMES is "I Only Have Eyes For You" (later popularized in a doo-wop version by The Flamingos), which is staged as a nonsensical, dream-like number featuring giant cut-outs of Ruby Keeler's face.A minor quibble that I have with these Busby Berkeley movies is that the numbers are often presented in-story as stage productions, while Berkeley's choreography is so purely cinematic (using camera tricks and movements) as to be completely impossible to present on stage. Berkeley's job was to wow the cinema-goers, obviously, and not the fictitious people attending Dick Powell's opening night. But it's still an interesting point. When the director cuts to a shot of the theatre audience applauding, I know they couldn't have seen the same thing I saw.I tend to be harsh on these Busby Berkeley/Warner Bros. musicals, but while DAMES has its weaknesses, it's a fun romp with a great cast. Joan Blondell is reason enough the see this film and Berkeley's crazy ideas are always fascinating.6.5/10

A wonderful musical comedy, fitting in well with 42nd Street, Golddiggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, and Golddiggers of 1935. Of the five, I would place this one tied for second, behind Golddiggers of 1933, equal to Footlight Parade, and just a hair better than 42nd Street. If you have seen none of them it would be good to start with this one. Then I would go to 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, saving the masterpiece Golddiggers of 33 for last. (Golddiggers of 1935 is quite a bit inferior.)The first strong point is the excellent comedic plot, better than that in 42nd Street, about the same as Footlght Parade. Guy Kibbe is wonderful as always, Hugh Herbert and Zasu Pitts are great. The three of them really steal the show, at least as far as acting and plot go. The jokes come quickly and can easily be missed. I would hazard a guess that some viewers will no longer get the joke in the name of Hugh Herbert's character, "Ezra Ounce." Joan Blondell is gorgeous and smart as always. Dick Powell is the same as in all the movies - which is absolutely fine! I love his voice. I find Ruby Keeler a delight to look at and watch. It's true, as others have commented, that she really doesn't do a heck of a lot in this one, though she is on screen quite a lot. Some people seem to love to put down her acting or dancing. OK, so she's not going to star in King Lear or Antigone. So what? Get over it! That's not the point. She is very appealing. Similarly, I like seeing her dance. She doesn't have to be as good as Cyd Charisse. Get over it!The real appeal of all five of the movies I've mentioned here, and the real star, is Busby Berkeley. It is amazing to read one or two of the reviews written here in the last decade by people who, I suppose, are rather young and set in their ways. How anyone with half a brain can watch this movie and not be absolutely blown away is unbelievable to me. Truly, such a person is blind. Maybe not in the sense of passing the eye test for a driver's license, but blind nonetheless. Surely Busby Berkeley was the most unexpected creative genius in the history of film.Let me echo something another poster has written. Though I was born long after the great depression ended, it was still a living reality in the minds of my parents, and something I absorbed somehow when growing up. Maybe a byproduct of the difficult economic times we are living through now will be a greater sensitivity on the part of some people to those times and the culture produced in those times. It does seem that some of the negative reviewers here need to broaden and deepen their appreciation, not just of movies, but of humanity.But I digress. This is a wonderful, fun, eye-popping movie, full of great songs and fantastic choreography. Enjoy.henry