Gold Diggers of Broadway is a 1929 Warner Bros. comedy/musical film which is historically important as the second two-strip Technicolor all-talking feature length movie (after On With the Show, also released that year by Warner Bros). Gold Diggers of Broadway was also the third movie released by Warner Bros. to be in color; the first was a black-and-white, part-color musical, The Desert Song (1929). Gold Diggers of Broadway became a box office sensation, making Winnie Lightner a worldwide star and boosting guitarist crooner Nick Lucas to further fame as he sang two songs that became 20th-century standards: "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" and "Painting the Clouds with Sunshine."
Based on the 1919 play The Gold Diggers – which was also turned into a silent film of the same name in 1923, now lost – Gold Diggers of Broadway utilized Technicolor, showgirls and sound as its main selling points.
It earned a domestic gross of $3.5 million, extending to over $5 million worldwide (adjusted for inflation in 2007 this would be a gross of around $60 million). The original production cost was approximately $500,000. This film was so popular that it quickly became the top-grossing film of all time in 1929 and held this record until 1939. It was chosen as one of the ten best films of 1929 by Film Daily. As with many early Technicolor films, no complete print survives, although the last twenty minutes do, but are missing a bridging sequence and the last minute of the film. Contemporary reviews, the soundtrack and the surviving footage suggest that the film was a fast-moving comedy which was enhanced by Technicolor and a set of lively and popular songs. It encapsulates the spirit of the flapper era, giving us a glimpse of a world about to be changed by the Great Depression.
Because the film is considered a partially lost film, the loose remake, Gold Diggers of 1933, is the most frequently seen version of the story.
Read more about Gold Diggers Of Broadway: Plot, Cast, Production, Songs, Advertising, Preservation
Famous quotes containing the words gold and/or broadway:
“I am a lantern—
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)