Footlight Parade

Footlight Parade is a 1933 American pre-Code musical film starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell and featuring Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert and Ruth Donnelly. The film was written by Manuel Seff and James Seymour based on a story by Robert Lord and Peter Milne, and was directed by Lloyd Bacon, with musical numbers created and directed by Busby Berkeley. The film's songs were written by Harry Warren (music), Al Dubin (lyrics), Sammy Fain (music) and Irving Kahal (lyrics), and include "By a Waterfall", "Honeymoon Hotel" and "Shanghai Lil".
In 1992, "Footlight Parade" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot.
Chester Kent (James Cagney) replaces his failing career as a director of Broadway musicals with a new one as the creator of musical numbers called "prologues", short live stage productions presented in movie theaters before the main feature is shown. He faces pressure from his business partners to continuously create a large number of marketable prologues to service theaters throughout the country, but his job is made harder by a rival who is stealing his ideas, probably with assistance from someone working inside his own company. Kent is so overwhelmed with work that he doesn't realize that his secretary Nan (Joan Blondell) has fallen in love with him and is doing her best to protect him as well as his interests.
Kent's business partners announce that they have a big deal pending with the Apolinaris theater circuit, but getting the contract depends on Kent impressing Mr. Apolinaris (Paul Porcasi) with three spectacular prologues, presented on the same night, one after another at three different theaters. Kent locks himself and his staff in the offices to prevent espionage leaks while they choreograph and rehearse the three production numbers. Kent then stages "Honeymoon Hotel", "By a Waterfall" (featuring the famous "Human Waterfall") and "Shanghai Lil", featuring Cagney and Ruby Keeler dancing together.
Cast.
Cast notes:
Production.
Cagney, a former song-and-dance man, actively campaigned the executives at Warner Bros. for the lead in "Footlight Parade", which became his first on-screen appearance as a dancer. Cagney had only fallen into his gangster persona when he and Edward Woods switched roles three days into the shooting of 1931's "The Public Enemy". That role catapulted Cagney into stardom and a series of gangster films, which throughout his career, Cagney found to be as much a straitjacket as a benefit.
Cagney's character, Chester Kent, was modeled after Chester Hale, a well-known impresario at the time, and the offices where he worked were based on the Sunset Boulevard offices of the prologue production company Fanchon and Marco in Los Angeles.
Although early casting reports had Stanley Smith playing the juvenile lead, that role eventually went to Dick Powell, and the film became the third pairing of Powell and Ruby Keeler after "42nd Street" (1933) and "Gold Diggers of 1933", the first two Warner Bros. Busby Berkeley musicals. Berkeley was not the original choice to choreograph – Larry Ceballos was signed to direct the dance numbers, and sued Berkeley and the studio for $100,000 for breach of contract when he was not allowed to do so.
Dorothy Tennant, rather than Ruth Donnelly, was originally tapped to play Mrs. Gould. Other actors considered for various roles included Eugene Pallette, George Dobbs and Patricia Ellis.
"Footlight Parade" was shot at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California, and cost an estimated $703,000 to make (approximately $13 million in 2012 dollars). It premiered on September 30, 1933, with a general release on October 21.
The film made a profit of $819,080, making it one of Warner Bros.' most successful films of the year.
Promotion.
As with many other pre-Code films, including musicals, promotional materials featured scantily clad women on movie release posters, lobby cards and promotional photographs, as seen of Joan Blondell.
Pre-Code era scenes.
The film was made during the pre-Code era, and its humor is sometimes quite risqué, with multiple references to prostitution and suggestions of profanity largely unseen again in studio films until the 1960s, when the Production Code collapsed. For example, Dick Powell's character is being "kept" by Mrs. Gould until he falls in love with another girl.
Joan Blondell tells her roommate, who tries to steal Cagney away from her, that as long as there are sidewalks, the roommate will have a job. In the Shanghai Lil number, it is clear that Lil and all the other girls are prostitutes working the waterfront bars along with scenes of an opium den. A character played by Hugh Herbert acts as the censor for Kent's productions, constantly telling Kent certain parts of his production numbers have to be changed. His character is portrayed as buffoonish and comical, saying disagreeable lines to Kent such as "You must put brassieres on those dolls..." (referring to actual toy dolls) "...uh uh, you know Connecticut." In one scene Nan introduces Vivian Rich as "Miss Bi... Rich".
Accolades.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: