Born to Dance, M-G-M’s big musical for the 1936 holiday season, offered  audiences laughs, excellent Cole Porter songs and great dancing from Eleanor Powell. It also gave audiences a glimpse of things to come in interior design. Cedric Gibbons (1893-1960), head of the studio’s art department, never shied away from cutting edge, modern sets. Gibbons designs helped to introduced this new style to the American public in the late 1920s.

 

 

By the mid-1930s modern interior design had undergone a seismic change. The era of the crazy angles and geometrics of the late 1920s was over. The Depression brought in streamlining, with its chrome accents and speed lines offering a machine age aesthetic. Concurrent with streamlining another style started coming into vogue, Hollywood Regency. Also known as Hollywood Modern, interior designers Dorothy Draper and William Haines were arguably its best practitioners.

 

Combining a wide range of colors, from vibrant to pastels, metal and glass accents, white plaster frames and mirror covered furniture and walls are hallmarks of this style that exemplifies luxury. Hollywood Regency, a termed coined by Draper, emerged in the late 1920s and reached its peak of popularity in the 1940s. It began to diminish as a trend in the mid-1950s but has not entirely vanished from the interior design field.

 

 

Born to Dance, in production between July to November 1936, highlights the changes happening to interior design in the mid-1930s. The working class world of the “Lonely Hearts Club” hotel and restaurant is clean, sleek and streamlined. While the world inhabited by the Broadway star Lucy James, is pure 1936 luxury.

 

The Plot

Born to Dance uses the typical “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” trope.

 

In this particular case sailor, Ted Barker (Jimmy Stewart), meets an aspiring dancer, Nora (Eleanor Powell), at the Lonely Hearts Club while on leave.

 

Complications arise when Broadway star Lucy James, to get some publicity, visits the fleet. Virginia Bruce plays the star to “bitchy” perfection. During the visit, James’ beloved pekingese, Cheeky, falls over board. All the sailors jump into the river to rescue the dog but it is Barker who gets to Cheeky first.

 

A fake romance is contrived by the star’s producer, unfortunately she actually falls for Barker.

 

Meanwhile, the aspiring dancer becomes the star’s understudy (just like in real life when a brand new to Broadway unknown lands her first show). By this time the infatuated star has forbidden her producer from planting any more stories in the press about her romance, with the threat to quit the show if he does. As Lucy James grows more temperamental and storms off the set, the producer asks Nora to do one of her dances, which she does to perfection. The star seeing that she has been outdone by her understudy fires Nora on the spot.

 

When Ted learns of this, he calls the newspapers imitating the producer and plants a fake story that Lucy James will be marrying her sailor boyfriend. Of course the ploy works and the star quits the show on opening night.

 

Nora goes on in her place and is a huge hit.

 

And it’s a happy ending for all . . .

 

. . .well except for Lucy James.

 

 

The Art Direction

By the mid-1930s with M-G-M releasing forty movies a year, it proved to be impossible for Cedric Gibbons to solely design each film. For Born to Dance, Joseph Wright and Edwin B. Willis worked in collaboration on the art direction with Gibbons.

The Lonely Hearts Club

The Lonely Hearts Club is all sleek, streamlined and fun. The main lobby and soda fountain gleam with light color and chrome accents. And because movies musicals are fantasies, the interior is much larger than the outside of the building.

 

Dominating the lobby are circular settees.  Between them are side tables with a chrome tube chair. On one of the tables is a moderne, opaque glass lamp of geometric shapes topped by a fluted, drum shade. On one entire side of the lobby a double staircase leads to the second floor living quarters. Thin metal posts hold up the railing and decorative metal strips hang, curve and form hearts between them. This makes the set light and airy instead of heavy and overpowering. A border of chrome trim on the staircase walls aids in the streamline feel of the room.

 

 

No hard liquor at the Lonely Hearts Club, just wholesome milkshakes and ice cream sundaes. Nestled under the staircase and balcony is a soda fountain. And the streamlining continues here with lots of chrome accents. Chrome speed lines decorate the banquettes and the front of the soda fountain. The underside of the balcony is fluted and decorated with the same heart motif as the railings. The thin columns supporting it are topped by a capital of three chrome rings. Of course the furniture features chrome as well with its tube frames. The Bakelite floor also helps to make the place gleam.

 

 

On the other side of the lobby is the large registration desk. And like everything else at the Lonely Hearts Club, it is light in color, clean and curved. Blonde wood starting to come into vogue in the mid-1930s is used for the desk.

 

The curve of the desk not only welcomes new visitors to the club with a symbolic embrace, it also mimics the curve of the letterbox wall directly behind it.

 

The reverse angle shot of the desk shows a terrific machine age table lamp in the style of Kurt Versen.

Located directly behind the registration desk is the apartment of Jenny Saks (played by the wonderful Una Merkel). The overall design of this set is moderne, but softened with traditional decorations.

 

No cold chrome tube furniture in here. A moderne table and lamp sits directly next to a wingback chair covered in a floral barkcloth that matches the curtains. A wingback chair of leather is opposite next to a floor lamp / table and shelf unit that is a hybrid of modern and traditional design. A very streamline modern sconce juts out from the wall. A large built in banquette forms the dinning area of Jenny’s apartment.  It is simple, clean design and light in color. A large semicircular window with sheer curtains also helps to make it seem less overpowering.  In this set the M-G-M art department created the idealized apartment for the mid-1930s single women.

 

 

Lucy James’ Apartment

Contrasting the look of the Lonely Hearts Club is the apartment set of Lucy James. Here is where the shift in design begins, away from Streamline Moderne to Hollywood Regency. It is still a modern style, but an adaptation of classicism and traditional designs. One standout feature of the set is the use of lots of white plaster for frames, furniture and lamps. This is a hallmark of Hollywood Regency interior decoration. Dark colors contrast lighter colors and one wall features a huge mirror surrounding the fireplace. The effect of the design is elegant, luxurious and sensuous.

 

 

Even the apartment entry doors highlight the Hollywood Regency style. The outside of the door being black lacquer while the inside is a mirrored surface. Both sides of the door feature an metallic, octagonal, moderne insert.

 

 

Just inside the entrance a white plaster stature in a the classical mode hold a lamp aloft that is dripping in crystals. While a moderne curved half wall opposite acts as a base for a gleaming glass ball column. Showing how the classical offset the modern for this new look.

 

The one place in the apartment where moderne shines is the terrace.

 

 

A fountain built into a circular settee is the focal point of the terrace set. The checker board floor, imitating terrazzo, continues the dark and light color scheme from inside the apartment. And to supply the romantic music is an extremely modern Sparton Bluebird radio of blue mirror and chrome.

 

 

But the impression that lingers of the Lucy James apartment is a showcase for this new style. White painted furniture, tables with smoky glass tops, dripping crystal statue lamps and fur trimmed lampshades are harbingers of interior design trends that will flourish over the next ten years.

 

Club Continental

Born to Dance, being a backstage musical comedy, has the obligatory scene where the characters go out on the town to a fantastic Manhattan nightclub.

 

 

Like most Hollywood movie depictions of a New York City nightclub, the set for the Club Continental is around four times the size what they were in reality.

 

This set is the fantasy of what most non-New Yorkers believed what a Manhattan nightclub looked like. It is chic, moderne, classy and enormous. There were a few huge nightclubs in New York by the mid-1930s, like Billy Rose’s Casino de Paree and the French Casino. But most were cramped spaces squeezed into existing buildings.

The entertainers that are featured at the Club Continental are the real life dance team of Georges and Jalna. And Born to Dance maybe their only film appearance. A large portion of their career was performing at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel dancing to the music of Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra.

 

 

In Born to Dance, one can see the design change coming. The where we’ve been being replaced by the where we’re heading. Within a few years the moderne style that is now known as Art Deco, would come to its end. Hollywood Regency is only one of the style trends to replace it. Other more traditional and conservative styles once again came into vogue. And movie set design would be forecasting and reflecting these changes.  By the time of the release of The Women in 1939, the change is complete.

But with its good and funny script, tuneful songs by Cole Porter and a cast, obviously enjoying themselves, Born to Dance is an entertaining way to spend an hour and half. And its also a feast for your eyes with its top rate set design.

 

 

Anthony & Chris (The Freakin’, Tiquen’ Guys)