Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

by Guest Blogger, Erich Kuersten (Acidemic)

As cinema lovers and everyone else mull over Obama's state of the union address (replete with dissolute toadlike old power mongers muttering their villainous dissent in the audience), it's tempting to look for a Capra film to compare with, but shouldn't we go back farther, to GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, and Busby Berkley's "Forgotten Man" number? Can't you feel it coming in the air tonight?

Opening with hot chicks (including Ginger Rogers) naked behind gold coins singing "Where in the Money" in Pig Latin, GOLD DIGGERS is as savvy and hip a denouncement of the status quo as hard times can produce. Robert Dudley (the Weenie King!) plays the good-hearted producer who wants to put on a show about "men, walking, hungry, jobs! jobs! jobs!" with heart-of-gold-digger Joan Blondell, the "comic" beanpole Aline McMahon, and normie Ruby Keeler, who--as always--is assigned to sing and smooch with Dick Powell. Of course it turns out Powell's a trustafarian, pretending to struggle in the Village rather than spend some of his trust fund and live a little, but he's got no problem bank-rolling the show, leading to--hilariously!--the entrance of beloved rogues Warren Willian and Guy Kibbee! All they need is some emotional blackmail to get them swinging on a star (note to Obama, send gold diggers to discredit these republican antagonists and all will be well).

Aside from some typically snapless romantic numbers between Powell and Keeler, this is surreal stuff all the way, and the climactic Forgotten Man number ends it with a superb mixture of tears, guts, heart and bang for your dime! I love Joan Blondell's open-hearted, deeply warm and potent mix of sexual and maternal compassion for all these hollow-eyed veterans as they stagger, stagger, stagger looking for jobs jobs jobs! The "Forgotten Man" was, incidentally, the phrase at the time for all the World War One vets who had come home from the war to no job opportunities whatsoever, staggering around hungry, their chests adorned with worthless medals... the only real money to be made was in bootlegging, so if they were honest, they starved.

As with most all of Berkely's numbers,"The Forgotten Man" is really a stand-alone short film that starts out, perhaps, as a stage number on opening night, but soon expands and contracts and zooms in until we're in a whole other universe. Blondell goes from trying to stand up for her beaten-down beau against an unfeeling cop, to addressing the audience, and the world, directly, her hands outstretched in a massive, Brodway belt of a plea. Watching Obama last night I was reminded not of Jimmy Stewart's hoarse fillibuster in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, but Blondell, opening her human heart a mile wide to engulf the nation in a surge of compassion as the music marches inexorably onwards. It's a galvanizing moment when music number, plot, message and fourth wall breaking all merge seamlessly together to create the purest most direct kind of art, and I wanted to present here, on dear Nathaniel's fantastically actressexual blog, in celebration of Miss Blondell and all those brave, forgotten men still treading the pavement for jobs, jobs... jobs.

Birthday Suits: The Blonde and the Bookish

Celebrating cinematic birthdays for 11/29. Which celebrity would you most like to spank today?

Blond³: Diane, Anna and Cathy

1832 Louisa May Alcott wrote the oft-adapted Little Women
1895 Busby Berkeley, legendary choreographer/director. What would the early musicals have been without him?
1898 C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia which were made into unfortunately generic movies. He also wrote The Screwtape Letters which I personally pray will never see the silver screen despite Hollywood's efforts. Some books just deserve the undiluted perfection of their original form. Sir Anthony Hopkins played him in the weepy bio Shadowlands (1993)
1901 Mildred Harris, silent film actress and Mrs Charlie Chaplin (for a few years)
1918 Madeleine L'Engle prolific author, most famous for Wrinkle in Time
1931 Shintarô Katsu the original blind swordsman Zatoichi
1932 Diane Ladd, if you don't love her Oscar nom'ed performances in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Rambling Rose and Wild at Heart, well... what's wrong with you? Please also thank her for birthing Laura Dern
1954 Joel Coen one half of the dynamic duo, the half that's married to Frances McDormand
1960 Cathy Moriarty, Mrs Raging Bull and hilarious Soapdish vixen

1962 Andrew McCarthy, 80s star who specialized in treating Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and dead employers like shit
1964 Don Cheadle, porn star, hotelier, War Machine
1964 Tom Sizemore tough guy actor, 90s regular
1976 Anna Faris, actress, House Bunny, Cameron Diaz mocker

And finally Lucas Black (pictured left) turns 27 today. He was somewhat famous by the age of fourteen (Sling Blade) and continued to prove his skill and solid screen presence as he grew up (All The Pretty Horses, Cold Mountain, Jarhead). He's at a highly castable age now. Come on Hollywood, where are the leading man tryout roles? I'm not sure if The Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift counts ...but then, I haven't seen it. Perhaps he botched his chance? Or maybe the film done him in?