Footlight Parade

This fabulous movie must be viewed knowing that millions scraped together 10 cents to see it and forget the gloomy day-to-day economic conditions during the 30's. Remember, 10 cents bought a loaf of bread back then, so this was a minor luxury for many people. It's testimony to how Hollywood did its best to make the USA feel a little better about itself. You'll note that with the studio system in Hollywood at the time many of the actors and actresses were type-cast in similar movies, e.g. James Cagney, William Powell, Ruby Keeler, Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell and Guy Kibbee . Then too, branches of the U.S. military were always respected with enthusiasm and patriotism as in the use of military precision marching by the great choreographer, Busby Berkeley, at the end.

Footlight Parade is among the best of the 1930's musical comedy extravaganzas. A snappy script and an all-star cast including Jimmy Cagney, the lovely Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, and Ruby Keeler make this film a cut above the rest. Directed and choreographed by the creative genius Busby Berkeley, this film will have you grinning from ear-to-ear from start to finish.

Busby, of course, is the undisputed master of the Hollywood musical with "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "42nd Street" to his credit (as Dance Director). Footlight Parade is graced by hundreds of scantily-clad chorus girls, a Berkeley trademark. The elaborate dance numbers were shot with only one camera and Busby was the first director to film close-ups of the dancers. His obsession with shapely legs and "rear-view" shots is amply demonstrated here. The overall effect is highly erotic and mesmerizing.

Our boy Jimmy Cagney plays Chester Kent, a producer of "prologues" or short musical stage productions that were performed in movie theaters to entertain the audience before the talkies were shown. He's surrounded by crooked partners, a corporate spy, and a gold-digging girlfriend. Although Cagney had a solid background in vaudeville, this was the first film in which he showed his dancing talents. Joan Blondell is memorable as Cagney's wise-cracking, lovestruck secretary. And Ruby Keeler is adorable, as always.

The film climaxes with three outstanding production numbers, "Honeymoon Hotel", "The Waterfall", and "Shanghai Lil", each one a masterpiece and not likely to be duplicated in today's Hollywood where so-called "special effects" have replaced creative cinematography.

Claudia's Bottom Line: Clever and erotic, with some of the best musical production numbers ever put on celluloid. A thoroughly enjoyable Depression era romp.

Stage musicals are having a rough go of it due to the rise in popularity of movies. So musical director Chester Kent (James Cagney) moves to producing prologues, which are short live musical stage productions that are presented in movie theaters before the movies are shown. Chester's prologues are a huge hit but the pressure of having to come up with new ideas is getting to him. To make matters worse, a rival prologue director is stealing many of his ideas. Now he has three days to come up with three brand new prologues and prevent their being stolen in order to land a big contract.

First-rate Busby Berkeley musical from Warner Bros. with a terrific cast and the wonderful choreography Berkeley was known for. Most of the musical numbers are saved for the last half-hour but they're all great. James Cagney and Joan Blondell are lots of fun. They always had perfect chemistry. There's also a lot of snappy pre-Code lines, particularly from Blondell. Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler are also enjoyable. Nice support from solid character actors Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Arthur Hohl, and Hugh Herbert. Fast-paced and highly entertaining. Essential for fans of Berkeley or the great leads.

Not so much a musical as a mating call set to music. But then what else could be expected from three back-to-back production numbers from that carnally-obsessed choreographer Busby Berkeley. "Beside the Waterfall" alone has enough 'flowering o's', half-dressed chorines, and suggestive camera angles to make Hugh Hefner blush and send Dr. Freud into terminal overload. Then too, who else but the mad Mr. Berkeley could convert the complicated matter of sex into a mere conjugation of overhead geometry. There's also "Honeymoon Hotel", a celebration of the no-tell motel, with marching phalanxes of hormonally driven couples all named Smith, and led by a demonic cupid looking like an early Billy Barty. The sight of his tiny legs chasing after a fleeing Amazon is enough to drive Harpo Marx to distraction and cause the audience to doubt the laws of physics. While bringing down the curtain is the marching madness of "Shanghai Lil", where Berkeley proves-- in case you ever doubted-- that race, creed, and bad make-up make no difference to a Chinese bordello. It's sort of an early gathering of the UN, where people from all over come together to discuss the world's number one topic. All in all, there's enough sheer pizzaz, flash, and animal energy in these numbers to light up a thousand dark movie houses.

Sure, Warner Bros. tries to cover the orgy with the fig leaf of two cheerful innocents played by a sappy Dick Powell and a virginal Ruby Keeler. But it doesn't work, because everyone else gets in on the fun, including that human buzz-saw Jimmy Cagney and everyone's favorite sassy dame Joan Blondell. Director Lloyd Bacon proves too he knows what to do, giving us an eyeful of Blondell endlessly rolling and unrolling her hosiery, while the writers pepper the conversation with suggestive one-liners. Yeah, it's a great movie-- good enough to help bring down the heavy hand of censorship the following year, and put an end to damp dreams like "Beside a Waterfall". But not even the Watchdogs of Public Morality could stop Berkeley's deliriously suggestive pageantry that would live on at even that most repressed of studios, MGM. Sure, Astaire-Rogers may have been more graceful and a whole lot more chaste, no doubt producing more sheer polish-- still and all, don't let this unabashedly pagan celebration pass you by. As they say around the owl cage, it's a real hoot.

James Cagney is best known for his tough characters- and gangster roles but he has also played quite a lot 'soft' characters in his career. This musical is one of them and it was the first but not the last musical movie Cagney would star in.

Cagney is even doing a bit of singing in this one and also quite an amount of dancing. And it needs to be said that he was not bad at it. He plays the role with a lot of confidence. He apparently had some dancing jobs in his early life before his acting career started to take off big time, so it actually isn't a weird thing that he also took on some musical acting roles in his career. He obviously also feels at ease in this totally different genre than most people are accustomed to seeing him in.

The movie is directed by Lloyd Bacon, who was perhaps among the best and most successful director within the genre. His earliest '30's musicals pretty much defined the musical genre and he also was responsible for genre movies such as "42nd Street". His musicals were always light and fun to watch and more comedy like than anything else really. '30's musicals never were really about its singing, this was something that more featured in '40's and later made musicals, mainly from the MGM studios.

As usual it has a light and simple story, set in the musical world, that of course is also predictable and progresses in a formulaic way. It nevertheless is a fun and simple story that also simply makes this an entertaining movies to watch. So do the characters and actors that are portraying them. Sort of weird though that that the total plot line of the movie gets sort of abandoned toward the end of the movie, when the movie only starts to consists out of musical number routines.

The musical moments toward the ending of the movie are also amusing and well done, even though I'm not a too big fan of the genre itself. Once again the musical numbers also feature a young Billy Barty. he often played little boys/babies/mice and whatever more early on in his career, including the movie musical "Gold Diggers of 1933", of one year earlier.

A recommendable early genre movie.

8/10

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