Preservation
Gold Diggers of Broadway was filmed using the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system and released on ten reels of full frame 35mm nitrate film, two-component imbibition prints by Technicolor, with accompanying Vitaphone soundtrack discs. The discs, including the overture, have survived, but until around 1986 nothing was thought to have survived from the prints. At that time, an original print of the final reel, minus the final minute, was donated to the British Film Institute. It was faithfully copied to safety film and thus preserved. Nearly ten years later, another reel was discovered in Australia, the end of the distribution line. It proved to be the penultimate reel, featuring the "Tip-toe Through the Tulips" production number. It was missing a short bridging sequence. Only three brief fragments from earlier reels are known to survive: a few seconds from the "Song of the Gold Diggers" number, in black-and-white and with superimposed text, in the trailer for Gold Diggers of 1937; a 35mm nitrate fragment from the same number, running about twenty seconds, found included with a toy projector bought on eBay; and another 35mm nitrate fragment, also running less than a minute, from a non-musical scene featuring Lightner and Gran, which was found with fragments from another film in a small museum.
Although the film's copyright was renewed in the late 1950s, it does not appear to have been shown on television. 16mm prints of early Warner Bros. films, including sound-on-disc films, were made in the 1950s for distribution to local television stations, and some two-color Technicolor films now survive (in black and white) only because of those prints. It is unclear why this film is not among them. Because it was one of the studio's greatest successes and was then less than thirty years old, it appears unlikely that it was simply overlooked. It may be that a sufficiently complete set of picture and sound elements could not be located at that time.
Two excerpts from the film were to have been released as bonus features on the 80th Anniversary 3-Disc Deluxe Edition DVD of The Jazz Singer, but due to an error only one was included. The excerpt identified as "Tip-toe Through the Tulips" is actually the finale, and the excerpt identified as the finale is actually a ballet sequence from The Rogue Song, another two-color Technicolor film for which only fragments of the picture element are known to exist.
The correct pair of excerpts can be found on the Warner Bros. DVD release of Gold Diggers of 1937.
| Reel(s) | Preservation |
|---|---|
| 1 - 8 | Film presumed lost, soundtrack discs exist. |
| 9 | Film survives nearly complete, soundtrack disc exists. |
| 10 | Film survives except final minute, soundtrack disc exists. |
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