NFR Project: 'Footlight Parade' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Footlight Parade’

Dir: Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley

Scr: Manuel Seff, James Seymour, Robert Lord, Peter Milne

Pho: George Barnes

Ed: George Amy

Premiere: Oct. 21, 1933

102 min.

Another great Warner Brothers musical. It’s another backstage affair, the plot of which factors in the new appeal of talking pictures, and the assertion that stage entertainment is superior, as demonstrated in sequences that, ironically, could only be realized on film.

Jimmy Cagney gets away from his gangster persona here, playing a song-and-dance man trying to make out in a new economy, right in the middle of the Great Depression. Perhaps Broadway doesn’t want musicals, but movies could feature live-entertainment prologues to selected pictures (an actual practice that persisted for years). These he produces, with the help of his long-suffering secretary, played by Joan Blondell, a dance director played by Frank McHugh, and a couple of opportunistic money men (Guy Kibbee and Arthur Holl).

Into this mix gets tossed the juvenile romantic team. Dick Powell plays the handsome young tenor, and Ruby Keeler plays a prim secretary who decides to let her hair down and go on the stage again. All these forces come together when another production company keeps stealing all their ideas, and they must rehearse intensely in secret in order to take the theatrical world by storm – staging three premieres in one night, at three different theaters, to sign up the owner of a chain of movie theaters (Paul Porcasi).

This they do, and how. The song-writing team of Warren and Dubin, still hot from the success of 42^nd St., wrote “Honeymoon Hotel” and “Shanghai Lil,” while the team of composer Sammy Fain and lyricist Irving Kahal, wrote the rest.

The real catalyst for this genre-changing film is the four dance numbers staged by Busby Berkeley, also lauded after his work on 42^nd St. The inventive and visionary choreographer extended his work with intricate patterned dancing with extraordinary camera shots – from above, mainly, but below and through and around his dance corps. He shot carefully, using only one camera so that no one else could re-edit his work.

Each musical number quickly moves beyond the limitations of a stage show into a cloud cuckoo land of outright fantasy. In the first number, newlyweds Dick and Ruby check into the hotel of the titles, dancing in ensemble with a crowd of others who are all registered under the name of Smith (a nod to the obvious hanky-panky going on). Famed little person Billy Barty is here, as a strangely disturbing child.

“By a Waterfall” is easily the showstopper of the night. Again, Dick and Ruby cavort, this time on an elaborate soundstage woodland, pierced by streams and chutes of water. Before you know it, woman in dazzling swimsuits are diving, swimming, posing, floating in and out of intricate patterns.

The film’s closing number, “Shanghai Lil,” is noticeable primarily for its showcasing of Cagney’s singing and dancing talents. He’s quite good, and when his character is forced to take the leading man’s role at the last second, he jumps right in and deservedly gets the spotlight. (Ruby here is Shanghai Lil, another instance of Hollywood “yellowface”.)

Of course the kids triumph, the business is saved, and Cagney realizes what a fool he’s been and gets together with Joan Blondell. In the depths of the Depression, anything that was cheery, like this film, was a welcome respite from the harsh realities of daily life.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Gold Diggers of 1933.