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Footlight Parade
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Footlight Parade | |
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| Directed by | Lloyd Bacon |
| Produced by | Robert Lord |
| Written by | James Seymour Manuel Seff |
| Starring | James Cagney Joan Blondell Ruby Keeler Dick Powell Frank McHugh |
| Release date(s) | September 30, 1933 |
| Running time | 104 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Footlight Parade is a 1933 musical film starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell (whose character is almost autobiographical), Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly and Guy Kibbee. The movie was written by Manuel Seff and James Seymour from a story by Robert Lord and Peter Milne. It was directed by Lloyd Bacon.
The film has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
The spectacular musical numbers, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, include By a Waterfall, Honeymoon Hotel, and Shanghai Lil. Future stars Dorothy Lamour and Ann Sothern are among the bevy of beauties in these mammoth productions.
Footlight Parade tells the story of a man (James Cagney) struggling to replace his earlier career as a Broadway musical producer with a new career as a creator of short musical numbers called "prologues," presented in movie theaters as live stage productions before the main feature, in the era of talkies. He faces enough pressure from his business partners to create marketable prologues on a large volume to service theaters throughout the country. But he also has a rival who is stealing his work, who may be assisted by someone working on his own production team.
The film is considered one of the Pre-Code era. Considering the year of production and the popular perception that the musical genre is more family-oriented, the film's humor is quite risqué, with multiple references to prostitution and suggestions of profanity largely unseen in studio films until the 1960s (when the Hays code collapsed). The number Honeymoon Hotel, in which Billy Barty, as a leering dwarf in a hotel, gives Dick Powell a can opener to open Ruby Keeler's dress, was hilariously suggestive.
Footlight Parade at the Internet Movie Database
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