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Footlight
Parade (1933)
In director Lloyd Bacon's and Warner Bros' musical
- the third backstage musical from Warner Bros in 1933 (after 42nd
Street and Gold Diggers of 1933):
- the famous number "Sittin' on a Backyard Fence" featuring
chorines dressed in cat-suits
- the many pre-Code jokes and risque situations, such
as Nan Prescott's (Joan Blondell) quip at three o'clock in the morning
to her opportunistic, gold-digging roommate Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd),
who was attempting to steal her drunken beau, theatrical producer
Chester Kent (James Cagney) away from her - she kicked Vivian out
the door: "Now you scram, before I wrap a chair around your
neck!...Outside, countess. As long as they have sidewalks, you've
got a job!"
- the three fantastic and extravagant finales (meticulously
choreographed by Busby Berkeley) performed back-to-back at the conclusion
(created as musical numbers or "prologues" for movie theatre
owners to provide for their patrons before film shows):
"Honeymoon Hotel," "By a Waterfall," and "Shanghai
Lil"
- the film's 9-minute bawdy "Honeymoon Hotel" sequence
that featured married (?) couples (all anonymously named Smith) preparing
for the evening, along with hapless newly-wed honeymooners Bea Thorn
(Ruby Keeler) and young crooner Scotty Blair (Dick Powell); many
other lingerie-wearing female brides who had been shacked up for
a week (with their grooms) offered advice to nervous newlywed Bea
- they knocked on her door and supported her in song: "I've
been notified there's a little bride All alone in number two I think
we ought to see her through, I will, Me, too. We've been here a week
When you're here a week then you're qualified to speak. Let's tell
her what it's all about, My dear, will you come out?...Wait a while,
you'll want to stay forever At the Honeymoon Hotel"; unfortunately,
the newlyweds had to put up with her lecherous brother 'Little Boy'
(midget Billy Barty) who almost shared their wedding night
- the 10-minute racy pre-Code "By a Waterfall" number
featuring an elaborate aquacade of 100 bathing-suited girls/chorines
(clothed to appear naked) performing amazingly intricate dances
and artistic patterns in the water while shot kaleidoscopically
from overhead - and including one segment in which dozens of legs
of floating swimmers were unzipped and zipped - and then in the
climactic finale, the swimmers formed a revolving 70 foot high
human wedding cake/fountain formation
- the exotic "Shanghai Lil" number (providing
commentary on Paramount's Shanghai Lily character (Marlene Dietrich
in Shanghai Express (1932) from
the year before) with Ruby Keeler in stereotypical Chinese makeup
and a jet-black wig, portraying a prostitute in a backstreet opium
den and brothel on the waterfront of Shanghai, sought by a tap-dancing
sailor (James Cagney) looking for his long-lost love Lil in the
vice-ridden bar - featuring a fantastic tap-dance duet between
the two across a bar counter and on a bar table
- the closing shots of an imperialistic US Navy drill
and marching team, the Stars and Stripes flag, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, and the NRA's Blue Eagle
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"Sittin' on a Backyard Fence"
"Now you scram..."
Backstage
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