Footlight Parade

Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans

Privacy Statement	Visitor Agreement

Joan Blondell

FOOTLIGHT PARADE

Warner Bros./Vitaphone, 1933. Directed by Lloyd Bacon. Camera: George Barnes. With Joan Blondell, James Cagney, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert.

Click for larger image


Click for larger image

Chester Kent, a successful producer of musical comedies, finds himself out of work with the advent of talking pictures. His wife leaves him when he breaks the news to her, but he's not down for long. He convinces his two partners, Sy Gould and Frazer, to join him in producing prologues, live performances to be presented before the movies are shown, and soon he has more business than he can handle.

Everything does not function smoothly, however. As soon as Chester thinks up ideas, his competitor, Gladstone, beats him to the punch. Added to this is the fact that his partners seem to be cheating him out of his share of the profits. Throughout all the chaos, he depends on his loyal secretary, Nan Prescott, who is madly in love with him, even though he doesn't realize it. Instead, to Nan's disgust, he has fallen for Vivian Rich, a gold digging actress.

Then, theater chain owner Appolinaris agrees that if Chester can come up with three new shows in three days, he'll sign all his theaters with him. Frantically, Chester sets to work, locking everyone in the studio to prevent leaks. With Nan's help, he pays off his ex-wife, collects his share of the profits, discovers Vivian's true nature, finds the leak and stages his three prologues. The first two numbers are a big success. Then, at the last minute, Chester has to go on as the lead in the third because the star is drunk. He performs splendidly, gets the contract and after his last bow, he proposes to Nan.

American Film Institute Catalog

The stars that hang high over Shanghai, lighting James Cagney's sultry search for Shanghai Lil, also reveal one more side of his astonishing versatility. For Mr. Cagney, who used to be a gentleman of the ensemble himself, has not forgotten all he learned in the chorus of The Grand Street Follies. His song-and-dance number in the closing minutes of Footlight Parade at the Strand is almost the sole compensation for a dull and turgid musical film.

In the staple commodities Footlight Parade rumbles along with the elephantine splendor of its kind. The dance geometrics are complex enough to daze the unmathematical mind. There are enough beautiful girls to sink the Hippodrome stage, and they are smart, too. In the shattering climax they defile patriotically to form the Stars and Stripes, Mr. Roosevelt, and the Blue Eagle. The songs prattle innocuously of first nights in the Honeymoon Hotel. They rhyme "loving" with "turtle-doving," and blissfully declare that by a waterfall "I'm calling you-oo-oo-oo."

The librettists have more to answer for. The book is an awkward rewrite of the backstage romances of three years ago, and the gags, when they are not dipping hopefully into vulgarity, wheeze with the discomforts of age.

Its manufacturers, by crowding the screen with these musical comedy extravagances, might have achieved liveliness and an illusion of speed and thus kept the minds of its auditors off the film's basic aridity. But it is not until Footlight Parade has been struggling through its plot for more than an hour that the fragments of song, costumed nymphs, and technical virtuosity are finally integrated in a complete performance.

Mr. Cagney is a producer of motion-picture stage units in the story, frantically overworked, beset by the spies of rival producers, harried by acquisitive women, and betrayed by greedy employers. Joan Blondell, his secretary, is secretly in love with him, although he is much too occupied to realize it. With familiar backstage clamor the film describes the agony, confusion, and suicidal haste required to prepare three units in as many days. When the juvenile gets drunk, Mr. Cagney is forced to play the lead in the big "Shanghai Lil" number himself, and he steals the show. The other players include such reliable Warner performers as Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee, and Frank McHugh.