Word: footlighting
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...When Hollywood revived musical films three years ago, dancing was monopolized by Director Busby Berkely and his imitators. The height of their inventions was reached in Footlight Parade, which showed a chorus massed to represent the U. S. flag. When Dancer Fred Astaire first appeared in Hollywood, he was deemed too lacking in acting ability and sex appeal to do more than a momentary turn in Dancing Lady, for which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer borrowed him from RKO. That bit made Astaire one of the five biggest box-office names in the industry. Teamed with Ginger Rogers?an almost equally capable...
...year in Manhattan and London, RKO's most apparent change was to insert an accent and an extra e in the last word of the title. This should cause no greater harm than mispronunciation among cinemaddicts. For the rest, the picture sticks to the pattern of its footlight original, with satisfactory results. Fred Astaire is still the centre of whatever plot there is. A dancer on a European holiday, he pursues a young lady (Ginger Rogers) who is seeking divorce from an absurd geologist. There appear the impediments customary in musicomedy romance. Astaire is mistaken for a professional corespondent...
...hove not seen "Forty-Second Street," "Gold-Diggers of 1933", or "Footlight Parade", you will enjoy the long, elaborate dance numbers, interpolated gags, and songs of "Wonder Bar". The plot, which is, of course, unimportant, includes an affair, a stabbing, a suicide, and a happy ending...
...Footlight Parade" seems to suffer from a comparison with "Forty Second Street," or the golddigger balderdash. The plot is thin, the songs are only fair. Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, and James Cagney are adequate in their parts. But they show a superior attitude to all the implausible nonsense: It is not in good taste, nor is it just to the public if great artists are insincere. What deserve praise are the photography and the ensemble dances on such a large scale that, were he living, Ziegfeld would feel like a cheapskate if he saw them...
...companion show, "Footlight Parade" furnishes in the way of female bodies, what the opener does its best to provide in the way of stalwart males and it needs must be said that it succeeds in this if in nothing else. The picture has already been reviewed but for those latecomers who missed it, let it be said that it has Jimmy Cagney's stacatto, Joan Blondell's blondness and Ruby Keeler's senseless simper. The plot means nothing. You can see the show and understand it if you drop in while waiting for the subway. If you like spectacles, extravagance...