This mildly amusing confection is worth a look because of two blondes and one over-the-top musical number. Blonde #1 is a bleached Bette Davis as a fashion artist smitten with suave crook William Powell. Davis frequently shrugged off this period of her career as a routine and unavoidable part of her basic training and definitely did not like being dolled up to the extent we see here. She handles herself as well as one can expect, though the sprayed hair, thick makeup and ridiculously overdone outfits conspire to smother her. Blonde #2 is Verree Teasdale who has fun playing a phony Russian duchess. Her fruity delivery of the lyric to the Sammy Fain-Irving Kahal song "Spin a Little Web of Dreams" is a singular vintage movie treasure. The sequence itself, directed by Busby Berkeley, is the chief highlight of the film (a still from it is featured in the opening pages of Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood BABYLON), displaying platinum blondes festooned with varying arrangements of white ostrich feathers, including an overhead shot of rippling white-on-white layers unfolding sensuously to reveal a smiling chorine at the center and a barque rowed by beautiful girls over a "sea" of silken, spangled cloth that undulates like waves.
Review of Fashions of 1934
