General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Dames

Dames is a 1934 American musical comedy released by Warner Bros. Pictures, directed by Ray Enright with musical numbers staged by dance director Busby Berkeley, and starring Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Ruby Keeler.¹ It belongs to the cycle of Warner Bros. backstage musicals of the early 1930s, and Variety reviewed it as "the 1934 edition of 'Gold Diggers.'"² The film is remembered chiefly for its three closing production numbers, including the debut of the standard "I Only Have Eyes for You."

Key fact	Detail
Release	1 September 1934 (US, per AFI); UK release 16 August 1934, BBFC classified 22 August 1934 at 91 min 48 s¹^•³
Credits	Directed by Ray Enright; written by Delmer Daves and Robert Lord; Warner Bros. Pictures¹
Stars	Joan Blondell (Mabel Anderson), Dick Powell (Jimmy Higgens), Ruby Keeler (Barbara Hemingway), with ZaSu Pitts, Guy Kibbee, and Hugh Herbert¹^•⁴
Songwriters	Harry Warren, Al Dubin, Mort Dixon, Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal, and Allie Wrubel; copyright registered 30 October 1934 (LP4987)¹
Production schedule	Began 28 March 1934; Berkeley's musical scenes completed 3 July 1934; dramatic sequences finished mid-April¹
Pairing record	Fourth film pairing of Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, and their last collaboration with Berkeley⁵
Modern ratings	60% Tomatometer from 5 critics and 64% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.0/10 on IMDb⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The story turns on an inheritance and a hypocrisy. Horace P. Hemingway, his wife Mathilda, and their daughter Barbara stand to inherit ten million dollars from Mathilda's eccentric cousin Ezra Ounce if their lives can pass his moral scrutiny.¹ Ezra, who campaigns against "filthy" forms of entertainment such as Broadway shows, cannot tolerate theater, so Barbara's romance with Jimmy Higgens, an aspiring actor and distant member of the Ounce family, puts the fortune at risk.⁶

The complication that finances the show is a blackmail plot. Mabel Anderson, a showgirl, sleeps in Horace's train compartment and then uses the compromising situation to force him to back Jimmy's new Broadway show.¹ Ezra responds by assembling a gang of hoodlums in tuxedos to crash the premiere of the show, Sweet and Hot, on his signal.⁷ On opening night, Ezra, Horace, and Mathilda attend intending to condemn the performance, but the numbers win them over.⁶

Production

Warner Bros. moved quickly after the success of Gold Diggers of 1933, with producer Hal Wallis planning a follow-up while that film was still in theaters.² Production began on 28 March 1934, and the work was split in the studio's usual fashion: Enright directed the dramatic sequences, completed in mid-April, while Berkeley staged and filmed the musical numbers, finishing his scenes on 3 July 1934.¹

Berkeley's move from Samuel Goldwyn to Warner Bros. had consequences: according to news items in The Hollywood Reporter, Goldwyn sued the studio over his services, Berkeley having last worked for Goldwyn on The Kid from Spain (1932).¹ Warner Bros.' publicity department coined the term "cinematerpsichorean" to describe Berkeley's choreography, a word the studio also used in press releases for the film, advertised as Warner Bros.' "fifth musical triumph."¹^•⁸ At Hal Wallis's request, the characters "Johnny Harris" and "Buttercup Balmer" were named after two men who owned a string of theaters in Pennsylvania.¹

Warner Bros. also publicized the film through a one-reel Vitaphone short, And She Learned About Dames (1934), in which Berkeley tells a young studio visitor that his numbers "really can't be described"; Kibbee and Herbert appear as themselves, and Keeler, Blondell, and Pitts appear in scenes from the feature.⁵

The production numbers

The film's final act is the opening night of Sweet and Hot, presented as three Berkeley numbers.⁶ In "The Girl at the Ironing Board," Blondell sings the title role while nightshirts wired to move like men dance around her, a sequence the 1934 Wampus Baby Stars back up in chorus.¹^•⁶ "I Only Have Eyes for You," sung by Powell to Keeler, multiplies her face across the screen, dissolving the romantic premise into a kaleidoscopic spectacle; reviewers have described it as beginning as a subway serenade and becoming a fantasy detached entirely from the stage the story pretends it occupies.⁹^•⁶ The title number, "Dames," is Powell's celebration of the showgirl, following the chorus through their morning routine of waking, bathing, and primping.⁶^•⁴

Released a few months after the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, the film has been read as a playful rebuke to the new censorship regime: its plot mocks a moral crusader, it jokes about censorship directly, and its numbers remain openly risqué, even though one musical number reportedly did not make it to the screen under the Code.⁷

Songs and afterlife

The score is credited to Harry Warren and Al Dubin, with additional songs by Mort Dixon, Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal, and Allie Wrubel.¹ "I Only Have Eyes for You" outlived the film by decades as a standard, with hit versions by The Flamingos in the 1950s and Art Garfunkel in the 1970s.² In 1989 the song won an ASCAP Award as Most Performed Feature Film Standard.¹⁰ Contemporary critical scores are modest but favorable-leaning: 60% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer and a 7.0/10 user rating on IMDb.⁴ The film has remained in circulation on home video and streaming, including a 2006 DVD release and availability on HBO Max.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Musical and music films (individual works) › Musical films of the 1930s to 1960s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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