Footlight Parade

 

Choreographer Busby Berkeley

Berkeley on the set

Ruby Keeler

 

 

FOOTLIGHT PARADE        A-                                                                                                      USA  (104 mi)  1933  d: Lloyd Bacon    choreography: Busby Berkeley

The third of a popular series of Depression-era Busby Berkeley musicals released that same year, produced by what was the most pro-New Deal studio, Warner Brothers, using their contract director Lloyd Bacon, who learned how to keep the action moving in the mid-1920’s by making silent comedies for Mack Sennett, coming after 42nd STREET and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, both released earlier in 1933, films that are surprisingly similar in musical plots, while using almost identical casts, yet this is the only one that is pure exhilarating fun from start to finish, starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell, two flat-out scene stealers who started at Warners together in SINNER’S HOLIDAY (1930), which they had also done on Broadway, with this being their sixth film together.  Accentuating the fast-paced 30’s screwball comedy to demonstrate their caustic wit and racy pre-Code humor, while also featuring that rare inventiveness and signature style of Busby Berkely, having spent years on Broadway, Berkeley conceived and choreographed the extravagantly cinematic musical numbers, many evolving into visually ornate geometric patterns, like viewing scenes through a constantly turning kaleidoscope, seeking pure escapism to distract audiences from the troubles of the Great Depression.  In fact, while all three films feature Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, extremely popular at the time, viewed as America’s sweethearts, it was Berkeley’s lavish dance spectacles that brought each of the three films to a spectacular finale, becoming the distinguishing ingredient and most satisfying element in all three landmark films released in 1933, like time capsules of a forgotten era, where the Astaire-Rogers musicals would soon alter the landscape, changing the collective motion in musicals into a more individually-driven artform.  Until the rousing finish of the last half-hour, the entire film is largely a peek behind-the-scenes into theatrical productions still in progress, offering an intimate glimpse into the frenetic world of show business, all work and no glamor, navigating romance and professional rivalries, even a spy in their ranks stealing ideas before the shows can open, revealing the relentless strain of endless rehearsals, with bodies constantly in motion, where you have to make something spectacular happen with very little time, and then do it all over again forced to find compelling new themes.  Obsessed with providing a radically different view from a movie-filmed musical over a staged show, Berkeley was able to get away with plenty in Pre-Code Hollywood, using an entire cast of scantily clad women, expressing a penchant for overlapping female bodies, creating abstract conceptual designs with the female form, like a parade of smiling faces, with the camera zooming in on various female body parts, like legs, facial features, and, of course, bosoms.  Drilling holes in the studio roof for that overhead shot, bodies are then re-assembled into erotic Garden of Eden motifs with flowers or waterfalls, using stairs and platforms to alter the spatial composition, literally exaggerating the sexual objectification of female bodies through a dream fantasy in order to create a luridly erotic voyeurism specifically designed for male audiences, where Berkeley’s dazzling choreography and insanely elaborate set design is creating optical art in human form, where his camera was regularly mounted on a crane swooping from high above, revealing an excess of bodily flesh, where the intricately assembled water choreography in this film resembles Olympic synchronized swimming routines, with women placed side-by-side in carefully devised positions, adding a choreography of synchronized diving into the mix, including an enormously constructed 5-story water slide resembling a pagan phallic symbol that female water nymphs worship at the feet of, like a subversively tongue-in-cheek swipe at the censors in this gaudy and superlatively extravagant 11-minute sequence that sets the stage for the water-themed MGM Esther Williams “aquamusicals” of the 40’s and 50’s.  This is what live special effects looked like before they had computerized special effects, with the film evolving into military formations, as Berkeley’s background training was with military drill teams, designing parade drills for both the French and U.S. armies during WWI.    

Featuring a great script by Manuel Seff and James Seymour, using pre-Code humor that was quite risqué, with multiple references to promiscuity, prostitution, and suggestions of profanity largely unseen again in studio films until the 1960’s, Cagney’s character, Chester Kent, was modeled after Chester Hale, a contemporary of Busby Berkely, a choreographer of Broadway stage, screen, and ice shows.  Already in his 14th film, Cagney had been typecast as a tough guy, but the public had little knowledge of his vaudeville background as a dancer, so they were astonished to see how graceful he was doing various dance routines throughout this film, including the rousing finale, a forerunner to his iconic Oscar-winning best actor role in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942), yet the frenetically paced humor and easy rapport between Cagney and Joan Blondell as Nan, his no-nonsense wisecracking secretary, really stand out.  Set during the Depression when work is scarce, Kent is your consummate workaholic whose professional life is in constant turmoil, writing and producing musical stage shows non-stop.  When movies make the transition from Silent to all-talkies, it nearly puts him out of business, as movies have replaced vaudeville and musical theater, so Kent has to convince uneasy backers that his idea for live musical shows playing in front of talkies can actually work, allowing him only a brief window to put on live music and dance shows in movie houses during an era when they still had stages, creating prologues in front of the main feature, miniature musical numbers running about fifteen minutes, featuring elaborate costumes and scenery and usually tied in some way to the theme of the feature film.  As you might surmise, the prologue era was short-lived, dumped altogether when cheaper B-movies were adopted and became the second featured film attraction, though The Rockettes are a modern-day remnant of this kind of production.  The Warners stock company are on full display here, with Guy Kibbee as Silas Gould, a swindling producer who underhandedly cooks the books by stealing Kent’s profits, Ruth Donnelly as Harriet, his domineering wife who stocks the payroll with family members, including Hugh Herbert is Charlie, Mrs. Gould’s brother, an annoying censor griping about the sizzle that really sells the show, and the admirable Frank McHugh as Francis, a lovable yet chronically complaining and heavily overworked dance director with a high-pitched voice like actor Andy Devine.  Ruby Keeler as Bea transforms from a frumpy secretary to a lead dancer overnight, actually beginning her career working in prologues as a dancer, though she’s not much of a singer, while All-American boy Dick Powell is Scotty, Mrs. Gould’s vocalist protégé who exudes arrogance and unlikely male charm, yet still ends up the lead singer.  But this picture is all about Cagney who dominates the screen, whether it’s delivering his lines with timely aplomb or breaking into spontaneous dance routines, everything that happens revolves around him, providing the heft of the personality of the picture, onscreen nearly the entire time except the musical numbers that exclude him.  Blondell is clearly enamored with him from the beginning, encouraging him every step of the way, a love interest acting as his alter-ego and creative sidekick, but may as well be invisible to him except when he needs her to handle some troublesome business, like kicking out a gold digger after his money, Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd), offering a swift kick to her behind while slamming the door as she quips, “As long as they’ve got sidewalks, you’ve got a job.”  She is an absolute hoot, rarely ever a lead, always a secondary character, an unsung Hollywood legend that never gets her due, but her mastery of dialogue, comic timing and facial expression is simply unsurpassed.  This picture wouldn’t be what it is without her, making 27 films for Warners in 30 months, working particularly well with Cagney, making seven films together, romantically paired in four of them, yet only one, BLONDE CRAZY (1931), was expressly written with the two of them in mind.  She had just married the film’s cinematographer George Barnes (1933 – 1935) prior to the picture, and later married Dick Powell from 1936 – 1945, making ten pictures with him.       

Taking place in a giant, assembly-line production studio, Kent is seen constantly moving between production numbers in various states of completion, making tweaks on the fly, taking long-distance phone calls, fixing shows in movie houses across the country while preparing what to showcase next.  In the 20’s and 30’s, movie houses employed hundreds of singers, dancers, and musicians who were given work after their jobs dried up due to the talkies, yet house spies are routinely stealing his ideas and giving them to a competitor, leading Kent into desperate measures, locking all the players inside the studio for three rehearsal days prior to the live performance, where he would showcase a triple whammy of three different shows in three different theaters on opening night, and if successful, win the right to run prologues in theaters across the country.  The large-scale enormity of these grandiose production numbers would outscale any existing movie house, but the breadth of one’s imagination is certainly challenged by the sheer over-the-top extravagance of the fantasies, an epic achievement never seen before or since, turning this into a mind-blowing viewing experience, especially seen for the very first time.  Despite the superlatives, this film received no Academy Award nominations.  Of these three numbers, Honeymoon Hotel, By a Waterfall, and Shanghai Lil, the first was in fact directed by Larry Ceballos (as Berkeley was off shooting another picture at the time), who received no screen credit, underscoring the faceless nature of behind-the-scenes studio labor, much like the overworked Francis is depicted in the film, viewed as somewhat tepid by comparison, where lovers anonymously sign-in to a hotel under the name of Smith, filled with sexual innuendo and suspicions of out-of-wedlock quickie sex, singing and dancing their way through multi-level rooms and hallways, getting mixed up in some weird interractions, Honeymoon Hotel | Footlight Parade | Warner Archive YouTube (2:50).  But the last two dance extravaganzas definitely have the Berkeley imprint, building an 80-by-40-foot swimming pool lined with glass walls and a glass floor so swimmers could be shot from every conceivable angle, pumping 20,000 gallons of water a minute over the set’s artificial falls, designing nude bathing suits to create the illusion that the women were almost naked, imagined in a luridly suggestive dream fantasy of water nymphs.  The exaggerated abundance of female figures, ornate decorations, and elaborate staging in this final product is a staggering leap from rehearsals, where the results are utterly spectacular, more of a cinematic marvel than a dancing achievement, as the female form is hyper-accentuated through complex choreography, reflecting the Art Deco style of the 1930’s, Human Waterfall | Footlight Parade | Warner Archive YouTube (3:52).  At the New York premiere, the packed audience was so enamored they gave the number a standing ovation.  The final Shanghai Lil number finds Cagney inserting himself in the role when the lead performer ends up drunk, a significant moment, as it’s the only time Hollywood studios allowed the movie director portrayed onscreen top billing as a performer, as the studio formula was for the musical production to overshadow any character’s role, as stories were created for musical numbers, where they wanted to minimize the character and optimize the spectacle.  Cagney is a sailor searching for a lost love through all the girls working as prostitutes along the waterfront bars, including the back rooms of an opium den.  After a brief barroom brawl, the place is cleared by the cops, with Lil popping out of a barrel, none other than Ruby Keeler as a China Doll in stereotypical yellowface makeup speaking broken English, blatantly politically incorrect, while the other women are also dressed in outrageously slinky costumes with overpainted faces, yet the men at the bar, by contrast, represent a kind of universal diversity.  At the sight of one another they dance a euphoric tap dance on top of the bar, Shanghai Lil (Full Scene) | Footlight Parade | Warner Archive YouTube (4:52), with Cagney appearing light and nimble on his feet, eventually breaking out into large-scale patriotic dance numbers accentuating male military dress, where the melodic music of Yankee Doodle and Anchors Aweigh are readily discernable, featuring 150 sailors and chorus girls, with formations resembling the flag, President FDR, and an American eagle, all rallying support around Roosevelt’s New Deal, something that could easily be pulled from YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942), yet Cagney manages to stow her away aboard a ship bound for sea, using a Chaplinesque method of playing cards in flipbook animation to signify their happy journey together.  Reverting back to real life, Blondell exposes the spy and crooked shenanigans with the books, kicks out the gold digger, with Cagney, oblivious to her for the entire picture, suddenly realizing she’s been the one he wants all along.   

City Streets (1931)

CITY STREETS              B+       
USA  (83 mi)  1931  d:  Rouben Mamoulian

This second Rouben Mamoulian film, after the box office failure but critical praise for APPLAUSE (1929), is significant in several respects, as Paramount studios forced the young director to wait a year before offering him another picture, an adaptation of a Dashiell Hammett screenplay with Gary Cooper and Clara Bow as the leads, a romantic couple that gets mixed up with bootlegger racketeers.  Clara Bow suffered a much publicized nervous breakdown and had to withdraw from the movie, much of it based on a lawsuit that Bow initiated against a former secretary named Daisy DeVoe, claiming she stole thousands of dollars worth of clothing and personal items.  While Bow won the lawsuit, the scandalous publicity cost her much more, as the secretary’s trial testimony exposed Bow’s reputation as a woman with a wild and uncontrollable love life, not to mention supposed drug use, unwanted publicity that sent her on an emotional tailspin that all but ended her career.  Since the success of It (1927), Bow was the mistress of Paramount associate producer B.P. Schulberg, where she was his vested financial interest as well, but by 1931 due to major personal problems she left Paramount, her career finished, and within another year Schulberg was squeezed out of the studio as well.  For this film, however, in an era when sex and romance determined stardom, Bow was replaced by Sylvia Sidney in only her second feature, though she was a well known star on Broadway at the time and had been directed by Mamoulian on the New York stage, where she was not only given the lead role but also became the new mistress of Schulberg as well—That’s Hollywood, folks.  During the Depression era of the 30’s, Sidney worked with many of the major lead actors, but her terrific work on this film may have cemented her reputation with gangster movies.  The commercial and critical success of von Sternberg’s Silent film Underworld (1927) is often thought of as the inspiration behind a trend of Prohibition-era Hollywood gangster films that followed, like LITTLE CAESAR (1930), PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), and SCARFACE (1932), while often overlooked is this gangster melodrama that features less onscreen violence, with supposedly ten murders, but not one of them takes place onscreen, released a month before Fritz Lang’s M (1931), containing many of the characteristics that would anticipate film noir. 

Working with cinematographer Lee Garmes, who became associated with shooting the films of von Sternberg, nominated for an Academy Award for MOROCCO (1931), winning the award for SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1933), his expressionistic influence on this film is a major factor on why it’s still important today, as it deals with noirish themes of gangland turf and criminal amorality, where the fate of the individual is challenged by a corrupt world around them, where in the laws of the jungle only the strongest survive.  Mamoulian’s direction shows a greater appreciation for the visual stylization, including elegant tracking shots, where it is arguably the most artistically advanced of the 30’s gangster films, showing momentary brilliance and occasional poetic flourish.  It’s also interesting for Gary Cooper’s portrayal of an underworld criminal, the only known example on film, while it’s also one of the earliest talking efforts, where the sound editing is often clumsy, as the camera rolls before anyone speaks, creating a time gap between characters having a dialogue that slows the pace of the film.  This is the first use of voiceover in an American film, used earlier by Hitchcock in the sound version of Blackmail (1929), as Sidney is alone onscreen with recurring thoughts in her head spoken out loud, where the audience hears the echoing voice of Gary Cooper as she recalls what he said to her earlier, where Paramount executives believed this would confuse audiences and tried to cut the scene, but the director fought for it, also the additional use of off-camera sound, which was also considered innovative at the time.  While Cooper went on to greater fame, it’s Sidney’s performance as Nan that dominates the film, literally stealing every scene she’s in, often pushed to the breaking point, becoming the face of the 30’s aptly called “Depression’s Child.” The audience is immediately intrigued by her love affair with The Kid (Cooper), a rugged guy off the ranch with a talent for shooting, appropriately enough working at a carnival shooting gallery, where their conversation is often drowned out by the massive crowd.  But when they have a romantic moment where they’re quietly alone at the beach, she tells him sees nothing wrong with working with racketeers, as at least they’re guys that make money, including her own stepfather Pop (Guy Kibbee) who works for the biggest bootlegger in town, The Big Guy (Paul Lukas).  The Kid has other ideas and wants no part of a life in crime, including his girl.  But she was born into the business, where in one of the cleverly written early scenes with Pop, he scolds her for coming in late and asks who she was with?  When she refuses to answer, despite being goaded, he bursts out laughing and rewards her with money for learning to keep her mouth shut.    

While Al Capone supposedly loved this film as an accurate portrayal of the underworld of gangsters, where they are continually undermining one another to get ahead, where hits are ordered with subtlety, where the boss’s henchmen have to read between the lines to figure out what he means, and when they knock somebody off, this makes life easier within the organization.  The Big Guy makes this clear right away, asking if Pop is interested in taking over somebody else’s territory, inferring he would like for this to happen, and then walks away while Pop gets involved in a gangland slaying, quickly giving the gun to Nan to dispose of, but she gets caught with the murder weapon and takes the prison rap.  Meanwhile Pop manipulates The Kid into joining the organization by telling him the cops planted the gun on Nan, and they’ll need his help to try to get her out of jail.  Despite promises that the mob will get her out, Nan languishes in jail for two long years, becoming embittered by her experience, where her tough girl persona is convincing, becoming cynical about the whole racketeering operation from behind bars.  This prison sequence shows Sidney at her best, given a hard edge, as she’s wise to the ways of the world and can stand up to anybody.  When she gets out, she’s literally dumfounded to find The Kid working with these same bootleggers, blinded to their real intentions, where The Big Guy throws her a party in her honor, where he uses the occasion to make Nan his girl.  When The Kid stands up to him, “Nobody steals my girl, not even you,” which seems to click a switch in his head where all bets are off and anything can happen, leading to a spectacular fight to the finish, culminating with an exhilarating chase scene up a narrow mountain road that is as thrilling today as when it was made.  Paul Lukas is an interesting contrast to the humble Western manner of Gary Cooper, as he plays the suave and sophisticated Charles Boyer-style villain, well dressed and heavily Hungarian-accented, where it’s easy for the audience to root against such a villainous guy.  Many of these little quirks make this an offbeat gangster film, where Mamoulian uses a staggering array of innovative camera shots and narrative techniques for this film, including an infamous sequence shot from the top of the stairs where The Kid is steadfast in going after The Big Guy and refuses to listen to Nan, despite being draped all over him, where she’s left alone in tears muttering “You fool” over and over again, yet the camera holds the scene in utter silence as she composes herself and paces the floor until an idea comes to her, and she slowly walks across the floor to make a telephone call, where Sidney offers her own praise for the director, “Look, he carried me through that picture.  He was a great teacher and a great director, and I will always be indebted to him for his genius and for his confidence in me.”  In one of her earliest screen appearances, Paulette Goddard can be seen as a nightclub patron, but in perhaps the most bewildering twist of all, once the outcome has been determined, the rising trumpets and blaring horns from Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger Herbert v. Karajan "Prelude to Act I " Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg YouTube (9:49) resound triumphantly over the end credits in one of the more astonishing audience send-offs on record—an enduring classic that will likely leave the audience smiling.