Gold Diggers of 1933 is a Pre-Code Warner Bros. musical film directed by Mervyn LeRoy with songs by Harry Warren (music) and Al Dubin (lyrics), staged and choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It stars Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, and features Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks and Ginger Rogers. In 2003, Gold Diggers of 1933 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. (More from Wikipedia)
In Tiny Tim’s version, “Tiptoe through the Tulips” came off as a novelty song, but that is certainly not how the song started out. Written by Al Dubin and Joe Burke, “Tiptoe through the Tulips with Me” was a featured song in an historic film in 1929, Gold Diggers of Broadway and became a #1 hit recording by one of the film’s stars, the “crooning troubadour” and guitarist Nick Lucas later that year. Only the second all-color “talkie” film (and using an early version of the Technicolor process), it quickly became the best-selling film of all time that year, a record that it held for 10 years until eclipsed by (you guessed it) Gone with the Wind. (Sadly, Gold Diggers of Broadway is now a partially lost film; the loose remake, Gold Diggers of 1933 is better known these days).
(March 2013)
