Murder at the Vanities

A topless scene in 2022 is no big deal. A topless
scene in a studio film of 1934 . . . now that’s unusual. 

Murder at the Vanities is one of the last of the official pre-Code movies, having been released in May of 1934. The ‘Vanities’ refers to Earl Carroll’s Vanities, an upscale Broadway revue featuring heaping stage-fuls of glamorous showgirls. “Through These Portals Pass the Most Beautiful Girls In The World” was Carroll’s catchphrase. The movie was adapted from Carroll’s stage show, with its book re-written for the screen.

“Get in there and get your clothes off!” 

The lavish backstage extravaganza is half musical and half who-dunnit; almost every cast member is a murder suspect. Director Mitchell Leisen takes care to show most of them holding something sharp in a threatening manner. Even the old seamstress Jessie Ralph brandishes a pair of scissors.

As the killer is easily guessed, the appeal is in the comedy asides and the staging of a half-dozen song and dance numbers. If they seem tawdry or garish in comparison to Busby Berkeley’s fantastic work over at Warners, it’s most likely because real Earl Carroll numbers are being recreated in all of their tacky glory. Carroll reportedly brought 11 of his first-team showgirls to Hollywood, to serve as eye candy for the giant flesh tableaux.

And the musical numbers are certainly eye-opening. The showgirls don’t do a lot of dancing. They instead pose gracefully, and their costuming ranges from scantily clothed to peek-a-boo draped to out ‘n’ out nude (but holding their arms very carefully). What isn’t cut-away is see-through. It is said that one can spot Lucille Ball, Lynn Bari and Ann Sheridan within the girlie chorus.

Murder at the Vanities was likely one of the pre-Code films that was simply shelved when Code Enforcement came in. Other pre-Codes had nudity, or near-nudity: Paramount fashioned a very racy musical number for their comedy International House of the year before. In this show the beautiful women are the main attraction. It’s much less tacky than Paramount’s own Search for Beauty, where a big-scale athletics scam provides an excuse to stage exercise scenes, etc., with models in revealing outfits. When the Catholic censors singled out individual films to condemn, they usually chose targets with more public recognition value — Mae West’s provocative comedies, and the very adult The Story of Temple Drake.

“Sooth me with your caress, sweet marijuana, marijuana.
Help me in my distress, sweet marijuana, please do.” 

Victor McLaglen is a leering, pea-brained police detective who happens to be present because he expects to be provided with a hot date. Jack Oakie’s hotshot stage manager has a yen for ‘Young and Healthy’ platinum blonde Toby Wing, surely the most available-looking glamour girl of the early 1930s. Kitty Carlisle of TV’s I’ve Got a Secret and To Tell the Truth is young, slim and a good singer. Songstress Gertrude Michael sings about Sweet Marijuana in front of some of the tackiest scenery ever — stage flats representing cactus, with a topless Carroll showgirl in each cactus flower.

Feminist Studies majors: is this the apex of Female Objectification?  All of the staging now seems tacky, with the ever-smiling showgirls used as human statuary. The dressing room scenes look like lingerie ads, and even the relatively modest Kitty Carlisle is given surprisingly low necklines. Toby Wing is one of the most recognizable & sexiest of the Busby Berkeley showgirls. She’s used here for a cheeky running gag — her dumb blonde Nancy squeals every time the busy Jack Okie turns down her offer to dally backstage.

The singing male lead Carl Brisson is solid, handsome, and carries an unchanging grin on his face, perfect qualities for a leading male in a stage musical. Brisson always seems to be smiling, even when he’s being fitted for handcuffs. I realize that even Gary Cooper wore lipstick in films around this time, but on Brisson it really stands out. His big number is the standard Cocktails for Two. As commentator Anthony Stride points out, this performance includes the preamble that reveals that the song is celebrating the end of Prohibition — dates can drink freely again. Cocktails for Two is of course the song forever vandalized by Spike Jones comedy version, with all the sound effects.

In the most elaborate musical number “Ebony Rhapsody” Duke Ellington’s jazz band interrupts a symphonic version of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, the classical piece ribbed by Dolores Gray and ‘Klenzrite’ in It’s Always Fair Weather. The scene isn’t as liberating as one might think, even with a platoon of black dancers ‘from Harlem’ pitching in. Incensed that jazz is intruding where it doesn’t belong, Charles Middleton’s actor mock-slays all the black performers with a blast from his prop machine gun. It’s a weird bit of business, a mini-race war.

Charles Middleton, Jessie Ralph and nervous Dorothy Stickney take turns being likely suspects in the two murders committed backstage. We even see favorite Teru Shimada in the backstage shadows, directed to glance back and forth in a suspicious manner. Victor McLaglen accuses each potential murderer in turn, only to be forced to backpedal on his poor judgment. Donald Meek plays the coroner; he looks older here than he does in his 1940s movies.

Some critics thought Dorothy Stickney deserved more attention for her performance as an emotional maid. She delivers an impassioned speech with a strong racial element, explaining that her anger was inflamed by Duke Ellington’s savage music number, and seeing a hated white performer ‘going wild’ with the black performers on stage:

“I saw her dancing and smiling, and I thought how black and mean she was inside. And then the music got wilder. Everything was whirling on the stage. She was herself then, just a she-devil without a soul. She had no right to live!”

That’s surely one for Donald Bogle.

One musical number concludes with a gag perfect for a 70’s Italian giallo. Posing and smiling in the scenery, one of the nude showgirls suddenly feels blood drops falling on her shoulder. Sure enough, a woman has been stabbed to death on the catwalk far above.