James Cagney was known on the big screen as a street wise tough in Warner Bros. pictures, but for the first time in Footlight Parade we get to see him in his most natural and gifted performance style, as a song and dance man. Made famous by his leading role in Public Enemy, Cagney brought to the silver screen a natural charisma of a man that could command respect and push people around, a born gangster. But truth is he was a man raised to sing and dance on the stage. Warner Bros loved what he brought to their grittier crime dramas, so much so that they held him from using his dancing talents, thinking it would change the audience’s perspective on his otherwise worldly toughness. But with a string of majestic musical pictures being produced by the studio, including 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade offered Cagney a role where he could be tough and still light on his feet, as a determined musical director fighting, and dancing, for his own career. Warner Bros would once again assemble there troops of their majestic musicals, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, choreographer Busby Berkeley and director Lloyd Bacon, and team them with the star power of Cagney, producing an all time classic musical.
Footlight Parade is a musical comedy assembled in the usual manner of a Warner Bros. produced/ Busby Berkeley choreographed film, sharing the story of a musical director trying desperately to make a success out of his new musical prologue production company, capped off with three lavish musical numbers that literally splash on the screen, choreographed by Berkeley. Chester Kent (Cagney) is a musical director who turns to produce prologues (musical acts which at that time played before motion pictures as a package in major movie houses within large cities). It seems no matter what he does his major rival comes up with the same idea he has and gets it out before he can, all thanks to a spy within his own company. So as a last ditch effort he has to produce three acts to impress an owner of a large circuit of theatres, locking down his company to ensure the spy cannot share his secrets. All the while he is aided by Nan (Joan Blondell), his secretary who happens to be in love with him. In it we all watch the playful romance of Bea (Ruby Keeler), a performer turned secretary who goes back to dancing, and Scotty, the juvenile lead on the company that at first looks down on the prim Bea, but is taken by her natural performance as a dancer. The finale of the picture is the three performances, including the playfully risqué “Honeymoon Hotel,” the splashy “By the Waterfall,” and the Cagney starring number “Shanghai Lil.”
The picture is a distinctive film as it is a picture for its time, referencing modern culture of the year circa 1933, but even so the film stands very well as an entertaining piece of celluloid all by itself even today. The prologue was a short lived medium of entertainment during a renaissance of majestic movie houses of the 1930s. Despite this outdated fact, somehow it does not seem to get into the way of your enjoyment as you watch it today. For its time the picture was a sure hit as it satirized the world of entertainment for the audiences of the 1930s. The picture is fun and playful. It fools around with the line of being risqué, a trait many Berkeley films seemed to have while he was with Warner Bros. The romance was sure to bring in the female audience, while the scantily clad dancers, bathing beauties, and the obvious suggestions to sex surely pleased the male audiences.
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| "On the Waterfall" human pyramid fountain, one of the more lavish Berkeley sets. |
Footlight Parade as a musical falls very much in line with the musicals that Warner Bros. was finding success in at that time. The story follows the backstage troubles of stage performing, in this case with producing as well as performing. We once again we enjoy the performances of Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell as a romantic couple in a smaller side story, also as major singing and dance performers in the musical numbers. They made a team that the studio loved to put together. Also a staple to these kinds of films we see a well used character actor from the studio in Guy Kibbee, who again plays a buffoonish comical character that never seems to have his priorities straight as he is distracted by women.
The most interesting draw in this film is its star, the great James Cagney. He had been in movies since 1930, and got in big with the hit gangster film Public Enemy in 1931. The studio would use this persona of his for a number of films to follow, but the truth is Cagney was primarily a performer in musicals on the stage since 1919. His true calling was to dance. Footlight Parade provided an excellent vehicle for him to showcase his dancing skills. His charisma made him believable as a stressed, yet commanding and skilled director, and his natural dancing abilities sold itself. It all paid off in the final number where Cagney commands the screen when he dances and sings with Ruby Keeler in “Shanghai Lil.” This film would change his career as now for the first time, James Cagney got to be the real James Cagney, the multi-talented showman.
The picture would also feature Joan Blondell, one of the highest paid performers in Hollywood around that time. She had already starred alongside Cagney in his breakout hit, Public Enemy, and was featured in success of another hit musical seen just a few months earlier in Gold Diggers of 1933. She was one of the blonde bombshells of Hollywood, a sex symbol that caught the attention of many men, with the help of a very saucy promotional photo of herself sitting in a chair with nothing on; the chair just covering up her womanly areas. She was at the peak of career at this point.
Side characters were filled in by Warner Bros. contract actors which included Frank McHugh and Hugh Herbert. McHugh played the over worked and over-stressed dance director. He provided a source of comic relief in a situation that was simply impossible to do, assembling three shows within three days. Herbert too provided a comic relief, but his character did so by poking fun at the censors of the day, as it was his characters role. At a time when productions were censored state by state, things would be a bit unruly to get it to a point for all to see. This also foreshadowed the future years when the production code would control Hollywood. Jokes are added, including one about putting bras on dolls to show how ridiculous some censors were. Herbert’s mannerisms and “hoo-hoo-hoo”ing would become a trademark of his, but would also be stolen by many others through time.
The humor that Footlight Parade provides is a great joy to watch in a time just before the production code. The film was loaded with sex. The musical numbers are filled with women in little clothing, either in next to nothing or flesh-toned costumes. We watch as women change frantically in front of us, to the thrill of male audience members for sure.. The numbers include strong suggestions to adultery and prostitution. Maybe “suggest” is not the best word for it, as the numbers do everything to heavily manifest it, doing everything but straight out saying it. Jokes are made about women that use sex to make a living. And there is even a moment that made me laugh to see a Joan Blondell delivers a line where she intentionally trips over the work “rich,” referring to another woman, nearly saying another word that rhymes with “rich” and starts with a “b.”
Some would same this is the peak of Busby Berkeley numbers. After his major successes in 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, the profits of which were rolling in at the time of production for Footlight Parade, his budget would be risen by the studio to allow him to be even more creative. He would take his finale performances and really fly with them. “Hollywood Hotel” presents us with just how much Berkeley was able to get away with as the number is about infidelity and affairs that many people have at a hotel. The piece de resistance undoubtedly was “By the Waterfall” as Berkeley produced something he always wished to do, a water ballet. Here we see some of his best human kaleidoscopes of moving bodies as his swimming performs come together to create beautiful images of human art. Shooting from above and even below, playing with lighting and the use of the pretty girls as never before, Berkeley would outdo himself in this number. The third and final number has Cagney and Keeler performing together in “Shanghai Lil,” a takeoff of the soldier overseas meeting and falling in love with exotic women. Not only was Cagney’s dancing skills on show, but Berkeley presented some then modern American ideals of the day. Berkeley, a military veteran that was inspired by the formations of troops, recreates naval officers in military formation, manifesting its beauty and power. Also a very pro-American view is evidenced as a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt is shown and an eagle emblem formation is made to manifest his New Deal, a strategic economical plan put forth by the president to help the public get through the Great Depression. No doubt something like this had to help the film get around the censors. Even though the film showcased adultery, prostitution, and overly revealing clothing, the film ended with patriotic note and the right girl, in Blondell, ends with the hero, in Cagney.Despite it being a bit risqué and dealing with outdated materials of a time gone by, the film is an absolutely wonderful movie to watch. Like any other Berkeley musical, the numbers have nothing to do with the story, but you don’t mind and both the story and the musical numbers are delightful separately, but even better together. It provides a good time capsule for a point is history that is long gone as movie palaces use to package up production with live performances, something I think would be a treat to see in more recent years. The film was a success of its time and treasure in film history. Though not as highly revered as 42nd Street, this film too is one valued by the Library of Congress, elected in 1992 for preservation. But the most important thing that the film provided is James Cagney in a role that propelled him to more musical films, leading him to his only Oscar nine years later in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
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