FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Lloyd Bacon
James Cagney, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell,
Dick Powell, Ruth Donnelly, Frank McHugh
Cagney plays a producer of stage musicals whose livelihood is threatened by the advent of talking pictures. So he takes to producing prologues: short, lively numbers that play on stage between movie screenings. There's some irony in this. The elaborate routines Cagney's putting on couldn't possibly be done on an ordinary theater stage, and it's movies exactly like "Footlight Parade" that are putting producers like this guy out of business. The will-the-show-go-on story sets up a couple of jaw-dropping production numbers: a pre-Esther Williams water ballet to "By a Waterfall", and the finale, in which Cagney and Ruby Keeler hoof their way through "Shanghai Lil". The choreographer on those was Busby Berkeley. That's all you need to know.
