Jay, I generally agree with you about the quality of the singing in Gold Diggers of 1933, probably the greatest movie of all time. And if you don’t believe me, just watch the Zipky’s Kentucky Hillbillies scene and then try to explain it. (That’s Ned Sparks as the crusty impresario):

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In the clip I provided, you can easily hear what a good singer Dick Powell was. He came up as a crooner, and it took him years to shake the image of the male ingenue — something he did spectacularly as Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, a bleak and pitiless adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s great noir thriller, Farewell, My Lovely.

But what are we going to do about Ruby Keeler? She comes in flat and behind in the rhythm and proceeds to get worse, going into her dance as if she were wearing wooden clogs instead of hoofer’s taps. In nearly all her movie-musical appearances she was relentlessly dreadful but always of good cheer — which is, of course, why we love her so. If she could make it in showbiz, anybody could.

Then again, it didn’t hurt for her to be married to this guy. Love the fact that they met at Texas Guinan’s 300 Club, which was secretly owned by my gangster, Owney Madden, whose contributions to American pop music have yet to be fully appreciated in the musical community.