Busby Berkeley clip show

I was watching something off my DVR recently, and there was enough time after the end of the movie for TCM to include a two-reeler in the rest of the time slot. That short was one new to me, Calling All Girls.

Now, the first thing I noticed is that there was no copyright date on the title card, which kind of surprised me:

The short opens with a narration introducing us to Hollywood and how lots of young women are hopefuls, wanting to make it in Hollywood. But none of them can get much of a job even as an extra, at least not until Warner Bros. decides to make another musical, at which point, they're "calling all girls". The movie then has severl clips from old musicals of the 1930s, starting with the "Don't Say Goodnight" number from 1934's Wonder Bar. There's also two of the Gold Diggers movies and Footlight Parade.

The interesting thing to me is that on looking it up, the short was apparently released in 1942, which is several years after all of the shorts in the musical. They're all Busby Berkeley numbers, and he's credited, although I don't think he was with Warner Bros. by 1942. And why wait this long to package a bunch of musical clips for an anodyne short like this?

I suppose the one worthwhile thing is the clip from Wonder Bar, as that's the musical that almost never gets run anywhere, in no small part for some of the other parts of the movie, notably Al Jolson's blackface number at the end. So this one little bit is about all you'll get.