Footlight parade

Set against the backdrop of Hollywood in the 1930’s, James Cagney stars as a Broadway musical comedy producer/director who finds himself without a job due to the arrival of talkies. He devises an inventive way of keeping the loan sharks at bay, by creating prologues that can precede the talkies themselves, riding on the coat tails of the very thing that put him out of business in the first place. The comedy and drama of the film is derived from the activities of the players who are part of Cagney’s troupe producing the prologues. There’s the gold digger (Claire Dodd), the disgruntled ex-wife (Renee Whitney), the secretary with secret artistic abilities (Ruby Keeler), the faithful Girl Friday (Joan Blondell) who stands by the man who doesn’t know that she loves him, the long suffering personal assistant (Hugh Herbert), and the young protegee (Dick Powell). Numbers created and staged by Busby Berkeley and include hits such as “Honeymoon hotel”, “Shanghai Lil” and “By a waterfall”. This was the third of Warner’s backstage musicals released in 1933, the other two being “42nd Street” and “The Gold diggers of 1933”.