FOOTLIGHT PARADE: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1933) Warner Archive

Hollywood really did things up right in the 1930’s. Whether out of some profit-driven altruism to provide the Depression-ravaged public with a means of pure escapism, or simply to exercise its creative muscle in new and ingenious ways, to show off to the competition (lest we forget, the art of film-making then was still a relatively new and highly competitive phenomenon), some of the most exquisite imagery ever captured on celluloid is owed its foundations in the dirty thirties; among these sublime delights, ‘By a Waterfall’ – Busby Berkeley’s mind-boggling aquacade from director, Lloyd Bacon’s Footlight Parade (1933). By now, Berkeley’s military-styled and precision-based ‘choreography’ ought to have been old hat. Indeed, Berkeley had lingered about some time, contributing numbers to several forgettable movie musicals during the infancy of sound before hitting his stride in 42nd Street (made and released this same year, along with another Berkeley treasure trove, Gold Diggers of 1933). Yet, in Footlight Parade the hat trick clicked as never before, perhaps partly because Berkeley’s usual roster of fops, flappers and fools is superbly augmented by the inclusion of James Cagney, as the delightfully roguish hoofer/producer of these lavishly appointed spectacles within a spectacle.  And Berkeley, who could be counted upon to slavishly drive his chorines to the point where both their’s and his own patience were frazzled, on this occasion, creates some of the most geometrically intricate kaleidoscopic patchworks of his entire career. And, of all Berekely’s colossuses, ‘By a Waterfall’ remains the most unique, and, in hindsight, the springboard for an entire cottage industry of pool-themed movie musicals built around Olympic-trained swimmer, Esther Williams over at MGM. Made for $703,000 (or approximately $13,848,667.38 in today’s dollars), Footlight Parade turned a tidy profit of $819,080, continuing Berkeley’s lucky streak of success at the studio.

One can argue, it was only a matter of time before Berkeley came to devise an aquacade of such startling opulence, as the Californian-born Berkeley was certainly no stranger to genius or water, getting his greatest lightning strikes of inspiration during late-night baths, nursing a good bottle of Scotch – though on this occasion, water rather than alcohol proving the perfect conductor for his highly charged muse. Because his results were so audaciously original, Berkeley was afforded a certain latitude of budgetary independence at Warner Bros. But he always felt short-changed by not being allowed to direct the dramatic portions of the movies in which his numbers appeared. Nevertheless, Berkeley got along with director, Lloyd Bacon, mostly because both men steered clear of showing even a passing interest in how the rest of the movie was coming together. Bacon did the merry-making. Berkeley provided the magic. And magical is the way to describe the numbers in Footlight Parade; the sublimely sexual ‘Honeymoon Hotel’, literally ‘kittenish’, ‘Sitting on My Backyard Fence’, aforementioned, spellbinding art deco fountain and poolside, ‘By a Waterfall’, ridiculously lampooned, ‘Ah the Moon is Here’, ‘My Shadow’ and finally, ‘Shanghai Lil’ – that unequivocally illustrates what a supremely fine dancer Cagney was, and his co-star, Ruby Keeler was not!

Keeler’s treatise as a singer/dancer has always sincerely baffled me. Clearly, Berkeley valued her participation on these Warner outings. And audiences certainly flocked to see her, usually paired at some point with Dick Powell – the arbitrary ‘love couple’ destined for the proverbial ‘happy ending’ just before the final fade to black. Too, it should be pointed out Keeler is not ‘dancing’ per say, but rather ‘hoofing’ – the lead-footed derivative and proverbial stepchild to legitimate dance; a holdover from Vaudeville and the absolute antithesis of the likes of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Not that this was ever Keeler’s inspiration or aspiration. So, please - no credible comparison between these two. None necessary, either. But what Keeler brought to Warner’s Berkeley-ana was a sort of unbridled and raw vivacity, unfettered by the usual well-rehearsed finesse. This is not to say Keeler did not practice like hell to learn the routines she performs in Footlight Parade. But if anything, the old adage about ‘practice’ did not ‘make perfect’ Keeler’s art, and seems, at least in hindsight, to have only enriched the notion anyone could – and might – become the next Ruby Keeler. On occasion, I think I even might have thought this!   

As for Cagney – well, it doesn’t get much better than his high-stepping in ‘Shanghai Lil’ – lighter than air, with a spring in his step that proved indisputably Jack Warner had missed the boatload of opportunity when exclusively trademarking the diminutive Cagney as his tough n’ ugly gangster du jour, as Cagney would later come to exhibit far more range and class, and herein, actually gets the opportunity to show both these assets off with marked precision, matched only by Berkeley’s creative genius. And truth to tell, Warner was not even to blame for Cagney’s great (mis)fortune; having switched roles with Edward Woods in the eleventh hour of making 1931’s The Public Enemy – the trail-blazer that effectively launched Cagney as the baddie we all love to root for, but, in hindsight, proved the straitjacket of his own career aspirations. In Footlight Parade, Cagney plays Chester Kent – a bundle of raw energy not unlike Berkeley himself, though his Broadway producer is loosely modeled on Sunset Blvd. impresario, Chester Hale. And Cagney, all bounce and vigor here, is a marvelous addition to the cast of regulars who, on this occasion, almost did not prove as usual. Indeed, Stanley Smith had been hired as the juvenile lead, before cooler heads prevailed to reinstate Dick Powell to the cast. And despite Berkeley’s meteoric popularity after staging the dance numbers for both 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, he too was not the first choice to helm the production numbers in Footlight Parade. No – it ought to have been Larry Ceballos, who later sued Berkeley and Warner Bros. for $100,000 and breach of contract. Ceballos also claimed to have created another number later used by Berkeley in Wonder Bar (1934). Sour grapes? Professional jealousy? Or perhaps, the truth? We’ll never know. The records are sealed. One thing is for certain. There had never been, nor is there ever again to be another genius like Busby Berkeley to work in pictures.

And a word about ‘genius’ in general, and Berkeley’s in particular; the term bandied about so often these days it has lost all original meaning. In its purest form, ‘genius’ used to be ascribed to someone of exceptional intellect or creativity. Rarely has any genius possessed both strengths. And in cinema art it is sometimes difficult to assess singular genius as such – as the craft of making a movie is a collaborative effort, bringing artisans from diverse talents together for a singular endeavor. And genius too, can be so extraordinary it bypasses the public consciousness as avant-garde or ahead of their time. Then, as now, in Hollywood, today’s genius can quickly become tomorrow’s has-been; a precarious seesaw balanced on the public’s insatiable need to see something new – something different – something ‘entertaining’ all of the time. As such, one of the hallmarks of a true creative genius is staying power. What is quite fashionable today may fall out of favor tomorrow. But if it is truly imbued with that spark of…well…genius, then, it isn’t likely to be forgotten, even if it occasionally gets set aside. It may be lampooned or even mocked – the cheapest forms of flattery. It most certainly will be copied, though arguably never duplicated. But in the end, genius never dies: revisited, not simply for nostalgia’s sake, but for an innate fascination and the perennially renewable pleasures it provides.

Movie lovers label this intangible quality as ‘magic’. But there really is no word to quantify what the images of Busby Berkeley have given to us over the generations. From 1930 to 1962 Berkeley dazzled with his confounding geometric kaleidoscopes. During his own time, Berkeley saw his reputation spectacularly rise and almost as dramatically crumble, only to be resurrected in the late seventies. By then, Berkeley had garnered new fans and a newfound respect from both the industry and students studying his work in film schools. More recently, homages to Berkeley have appeared in everything from commercials for Daisy sour cream, The Gap and Old Navy to Disney’s blatant rip-offs for their renaissance animated classics. ‘Kiss the Girl’ from The Little Mermaid (1989), ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty and The Beast (1991), and ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King’ and ‘Be Prepared’ from The Lion King (1994) all owe their inspiration to Busby Berkeley. In fact, his style is so easily identifiable at a glance, anyone attempting to emulate it is forced to reference it as having a Berkeley-esque quality. Even the American Thesaurus of Slang has identified Berkeley’s name as synonymous with ‘any elaborate dance number.’

Yet, all of this lovable nonsense came to Berkeley at a very exacting price. Frequent co-star, Dick Powell once commented, “Buz usually works in sweats…and sweats!” And indeed, Berkeley toiled with an almost religious fervor to achieve his art. And art, it irrefutably remains. Not bad for an uneducated, brash New Yorker whose stint as a drill sergeant in the army during WWI would become the inspiration for his second career as a much sought-after Broadway and Hollywood choreographer. Berkeley’s approach to dance had very little to do with the dancer as artiste. Some of his harshest critics would also argue it has absolutely nothing to do with dance - period. But it had everything to do with the utilization of a dancer’s entire body, often as a mere cog in a great wheel, performing perfunctory movements, requiring more athleticism than Terpsichorean finesse.  Over the years, some have argued Berkeley had absolutely no talent at all, just a self-indulgent thirst for industrialized absurdity, making machinery out of the human form; his camera doing most of the work, his maneuvering minions, just that – never achieving a level of individuality on those endlessly rotating platforms and rising staircases to nowhere.

But Busby Berkeley never professed himself as a great choreographer. A musical number by Busby Berkeley is really all about Berkeley’s fascination with form in lieu of content. His numbers are big – gargantuan, in fact – and mind-boggling in their intricacies. Other studios, most notably, MGM – and occasionally Paramount – tried to mimic Berkeley’s style. In fact, MGM quickly snatched up Berkeley’s contract after Warner dropped him in 1940. But MGM’s glamour and attention paid to its stars never entirely meshed with Berkeley’s vision of the dancer as ‘extra’. Today, Busby Berkeley is primarily known, beloved, occasionally reviled, but most often revered for the ten short years he spent on the Warner back lot. He has been earmarked in the annals of Hollywood history for two trends; the aforementioned geometric placement of his dancers, and, for his equally famed and oft copied overhead crane shot. The Berkeley style is as much an exercise in the proficient micromanagement of a multitude of chorines as a genuine sense of finding the collective in the individual through Berkeley’s stunning use of highly stylized camera movements. Much more than superficial flights into fancy – at the heart of each frothy confection remains a semisweet center of conformity bordering on the fascistic – a ‘parade of faces’ oddly alike and indistinguishable.

In the early years, Berkeley’s legacy was precariously perched. As a dance director he was restricted to training dancers and staging routines. The film’s director – not Berkeley – chose the camera angles; Berkeley’s contributions further blunted by an editor’s decision as to what made it into the final cut. Berkeley wanted total control over this process and was granted it by Samuel Goldwyn for 1931’s Flying High – something of a last-ditch effort to revitalize the Hollywood musical. But after Berkeley began scoring one hit after another over at Warner Brothers, Goldwyn attempted – unsuccessfully – to suspend Berkeley’s release from his contract – claiming he still owed him two pictures. For Footlight Parade Berkeley was given James Cagney – numero uno ‘hot stuff’ at Warner Bros. And although Berkeley and Cagney hit it off professionally, in hindsight, there seems a curious disconnect between ‘Shanghai Lil’ and the rest of the numbers in Footlight Parade; Cagney’s presence, so formidable, it necessitates Berkeley concoct a more intimate number and exclusive showcase for his male star. As Berkeley could not resist indulging in mammoth set pieces, we get ‘By A Waterfall’ is perhaps the most lyrical water ballet ever put on film. Undeniably, it remains one of the most intricate and, for its time, most expensive production number in Berkeley’s career. 

It begins in a faux forest setting, the show within a show starring Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell serenading each other with a few bars of another sublime Harry Warren/Al Dubin melody. Powell falls asleep on the grassy knoll and Keeler disappears behind a rock to disrobe. She dives into a gargantuan pool near a paper mache grotto, complete with water slides and fifty swimmers bedecked in spangled one-piece bathing suits and matching skull caps. For the next ten minutes, Berkeley repeatedly dazzles us with one memorable sequence after the next, the swimmers retreating to an art deco pool, before rising as water sprites atop a massive revolving fountain. Berkeley compounds this mesmerizing spectacle by shooting the fountain girls from every conceivable angle; his overhead symmetry revealing a fetishistic conglomeration of scissor-kicking legs. This iconic moment was so celebrated and enduring, that nearly 50 years later it became the introductory moment in Disney/MGM Studio’s now sadly defunct ‘Great Movie Ride’, sponsored by TCM at their Florida theme park. At another point during his mammoth production number, Berkeley provides a startling overview of a pool, illuminated from within only, the swimmers in silhouette spreading from a hub to create baffling rotations and amoeba-esque geometric patterns, locking ankles around each other’s necks as a cylindrical human chain in perfectly-formed concentric circles beneath the water.

The other outstanding musical moment in Footlight Parade is ‘Shanghai Lil’ – a spirited buck and wing performed in a brothel between Keeler (dressed in silks as a Chinese concubine) and Cagney as an American sailor who departs for the streets where a small army of marching soldiers evoke the U.S. military’s might and its heroes. These give way to a series of placards that form a gigantic bust of President Franklin Roosevelt. Yet, despite all the elephantine staging, it is Cagney’s spirited tap routine that is the highlight here – applied with all the slink and agility of a lynx. Cagney even manages to make something of a dancer out of Ruby Keeler, who briefly accompanies him in his performance atop the bar. And Berkeley, true to his roots, dissolves this intimate moment into a passing parade of expertly choreographed ‘marching men’ in uniform; their footwork most deliberately owing its homage to Berkeley’s own proto-drill sergeant’s acumen, filling the screen from end to end with conformity, albeit, augmented by Berkeley’s own unique vision of men on parade. In some ways, Footlight Parade marks a definite period to the first half of Berkeley’s preeminence at Warner Bros., his subsequent efforts becoming variations on the formulas already patented and perfected herein.

Plot wise, the Manuel Seff/James Seymour screenplay embroils failed director of Broadway musicals, Chester Kent (James Cagney) in an ambitious plan to reinvent himself as the creator of musical prologues – short, live stage productions presented in movie theaters before the main feature. Too late a reprieve for his marriage to Cynthia (Renee Whitney) who jumps ship at the first sign she will have to surrender the fabulous lifestyle to which she has become accustom. Kent also faces pressure from his business partners, Silas Gould (Guy Kibbee) and Al Frazer (Arthur Hohl), and dance director, Francis (Frank McHugh) to constantly create grander prologues to service theaters throughout the country. The situation is further complicated when some of Kent’s ideas are pilfered outright by the competition. Obviously, someone on the inside is responsible for these creative leaks. Ever the workaholic, Kent fails to realize that his secretary, Nan Prescott (Joan Blondell), has fallen hopelessly in love with him, while doing her utmost to protect his interests. This loyalty runs afoul of Gould and Frazer’s skimming more than their fair share of the profits off the top, never to pay Kent what he is worth.

Alas, to Nan’s everlasting disgust, Kent falls for Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd), a gold-digging actress. The only way out is ambitious, yet seemingly impossible: theater chain owner, Appolinaris (Paul Porcasi) has agreed that if Kent can conjure up three new prologues in just three days, he will sign an exclusive contract with him to manage shows in all his theaters. Deeply invested to succeed, Kent begins work, effectively imprisoning his cast and crew in the theater to prevent any more creative leaks. With Nan's help, Kent pays off Cynthia, collects his share of the profits from Gould and Frazer, and, in the eleventh hour, discovers Vivian's true investment in him – merely to get what she can financially. Kent also learns the identity of his ‘leak’ and manages to impress Appolinaris with his three prologues. At the last possible moment, Kent discovers his star dancer is drunk and hastily takes his place to perform ‘Shanghai Lil’ with his star female dancer, Bea Thorn (Ruby Keeler), who is otherwise romantically involved with fellow dancer, Scotty Blair (Dick Powell). Having completely won over Appolinaris, Kent takes his last bow and sincerely proposes to Nan.

Footlight Parade is a sublime fantasy with few equals. The movie’s virtues are entirely wrapped up in Berkeley’s ability to wow us with his sterling gigantism. And this, apart from the thimble of a plot, and some smarmy comic barbs from Blondell and Kibbee, truly excel and rivet our attentions to the screen. The on-screen chemistry between Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler is sidelined on this occasion, favoring the Cagney/Blondell romance, and, of course, intermittently stalled by Berkeley’s paroxysm of innovation, which is, after all, the real star of the picture. And Berkeley punctuates his moments with such deftly execution that we could almost believe he has directed the entire movie – not just its musical sequences. The production values, as always, are baffling; the Harry Warren/Al Dubin songs - sheer perfection, and the staging, attesting to a level of incalculable creative imagination, typifying the very best that Hollywood in its heyday was capable of serving up like a banquet – real soul food for the mind, given the class ‘A’ treatment.

Footlight Parade arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive in a sparkling new 4K remaster – in 1080p – that absolutely belies 86 years have passed since this one hit the big screen. Wow! Are these results impressive. Derived from an ancient nitrate camera negative, the good people at Warner Bros. have produced a safety fine grain master with a glossy silver sheen and ultra-smooth grain structure that brings this bit of Berkeley-ana back from the brink with mesmerizing results. Prepare to be astonished, as they used to say. Contrast is exquisite. The tonality in this gray scale is beyond anything I might have anticipated, having lived with the ‘just okay’ DVD of this movie for the last 14 years. Black levels, shadow and detail – you are sooooo going to be impressed.  I sincerely envy those who have never seen Footlight Parade before because their initial exposure is going to resurrect the wonderment, excitement and joy of going to the movies circa 1933. Better still, the audio has been immaculately restored. What an absolutely wonderful restoration/preservation effort. Extras are all ported over from the aforementioned DVD and include a brief retrospective well worth the price of admission, shorts and a theatrical trailer. Bottom line: very – VERY – highly recommended.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

3