Alec B
Occupies a strange space between pure fantasy and a realistic portrait of the daily work of show business. Cagney gives remarkably complex performance given how silly the whole thing is.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/09/24
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David K
This is a terrific movie. Yes, the plot is thin but it's not about the plot. It's all about all of the great songs and Busby Berkeley choreography. Truly a one-of-a-kind figure in Hollywood. All the regulars - Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, the fabulous Joan Blondell, and the great Jimmy Cagney doing what you don't get to see Cagney do that much - sing and dance. What a treat!
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
04/28/23
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Audience Member
A classic pre-code zinger. There's plenty of flesh and even a wedding night scene with the couple in one bed! Cagney proves he can dance and even sing with the best of them, he and Blondell are irresistible, Powell and Keeler sing and dance their way to stardom, and the Busby Berkeley production numbers have to be seen to be believed. They don't make them like this anymore.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
Audience Member
FOOTLIGHT PARADE (Warner Brothers, 1933), directed by Lloyd Bacon, with dance direction by Busby Berkeley, is the third of the Warner Brothers backstage musicals, following 42nd STREET and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, and while the plot by now is getting predictable with the show must goes on theme, the production numbers that take up the last 40 minutes of film make up for it. Movie tough guy James Cagney stars as Chester Kent, a famous director of stage musicals on Broadway, who finds he might be out of the job because of the advent of talking pictures, which is becoming big business over the now passé' stage shows. Kent, who works for Al Frazier (Arthur Hohl) and Silas Gould (Guy Kibbee) productions, comes up with the idea of staging "prologues," (musical shows that precede a feature movie), but the hardest thing for Kent to do is to think up how to have them presented. During the course of the story, Kent has female troubles: his wife, Cynthia (Renee Whitney) who wants to divorce him; Nan (Joan Blondell), his loyal secretary who secretly loves him; and Vivian (Claire Dodd), a former friend of Nan's out to gold dig on Chester, almost becoming a fly in her web. As Kent burns himself out in prologue preparation, he finds his ideas are being stolen by an employee who gives it to a rival producer; and Kent's other secretary, Bea (Ruby Keeler), a former vaudeville headliner, returns to the stage after getting groomed up from a bespectacled homely sort with close-cropped hairdo to a charming looker with liberated ideas, mainly because she now has her eye on a young protégé, Scotty (Dick Powell), who gets promoted to leading man of the Chester Kent prologues. During the dress rehearsals, songs "Ah, the Moon is Here" and "Sitting on a Backyard Fence" (written by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal) are performed. Then with his female problems resolved, Kent succeeds into keeping his staff rehearsing day and night before the Broadway tryout night in order to prevent his ideas from ever leaving the theater.
The highlight of the movie begins with the curtain rising, followed by three lavish production numbers back to back, which gets better with each passing performance. The first prologue is the somewhat mediocre "Honeymoon Hotel" (written by Harry Warren and Al Dubin) with Powell and Keeler as a couple who musically encounter comedic and romantic moments while on their honeymoon in a hotel in Jersey City; "By a Waterfall," (written by Fain and Kahal) the second prologue, starts with Powell and Keeler singing the tune before it changes into a lavish water ballet with hundreds of bathing beauties doing geometric patterns and perennial twisting snakes effects before forming into a human fountain. This number alone, worth the price of admission, predates the MGM/ Esther Williams swim musicals by a decade, but without going overboard. The final prologue, "Shanghai Lil" (written by Warren and Dubin) features Cagney (substituting for an appointed leading man who becomes drunk), as Bill in Shanghai who looks high and low for his Shanghai Lil (Keeler). After a barroom brawl, he finds her, sings the title song and goes into a tap dance number before the bugle sounds recalling all sailors to return to their ship. This is highlighted by military march formations and shot gun salute. All three prologues run about ten minutes each.
What makes FOOTLIGHT PARADE interesting to see today is looking back at when it was made (1933), only a few years after talking pictures have taken over the screen, and how advanced the choreography has become since the 1929/30 movie musical days, thanks to Busby Berkeley. Character actors, such as Frank McHugh as the assistant dance director; Hugh Herbert and Ruth Donnelly; along with Billy Barty participating in two numbers, all do their best in the comedic moments. Inasmuch as Joan Blondell and Claire Dodd were screen beauties in their day, somehow the headdress they were presented here make them appear a bit older than their true age. And look closely in the earlier portion of the story where Cagney, Kibbee and Gordon Westcott go into a movie theater to watch the finish of a "talking" picture that's playing, a western featuring John Wayne, Frank McHugh and Marceline Day in THE TELEGRAPH TRAIL.
Thanks to frequent television and theatrical revivals over the past decades, FOOTLIGHT PARADE has, and remains, a favorite movie musical past-time.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
Full Review
Audience Member
My favourite movie... EVER! The last 30 minutes are absolute bliss, with 3 Busby Berkeley numbers carefully choreographed and beautifully staged. Light, funny and upbeat with a glimpse into the ever-tiring life of show business.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/20/23
Full Review
William L
The pre-Code musicals of the early '30s are pretty similar in form, creating a few technically impressive pieces late in the runtime and building threadbare, melodramatic plots around them to meet the base requirements of a feature film. Footlight Parade opts for a complex web of romantic entanglements that are each barely touched on and include characters that look so similar you'll have trouble keeping them in order. The film relies on spoken word song for a surprising proportion of its numbers, and shows its age a bit more clearly than some of its contemporaries in terms of racial perceptions, popping up at unexpected moments that make you turn your head. The most redempive parts of the film are the impressive choreography (which only shows up for the final half hour) and Cagney, who displays a versatility and showmanship that you wouldn't expect based on his better -known films, apart from Yankee Doodle Dandy. If I were looking for a representative of this style of film, Footlight Parade would not be my first choice; others reach greater heights in their showmanship and have more creative stories. (2.5/5)
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/14/21
Full Review
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