Nan finds him asleep in his office chair, with a cat nuzzled by his side, and when she wakes him up, he looks around, remembers, and shouts, “Cats!” The night before, he’d seen an alley cat, liked its grace, decided it would make a great idea for a prologue. The first idea we actually hear from him is a doozy. I would’ve killed to see the Russian Revolution one. At one point we see this list in his office: Kent works day and night trying to think up themes for his prologues before Gladstone steals them. Now we’re into the scrambling portion of the film. And guess how long all of the above took? Seven minutes. It went bankrupt in 1976.)Īll of this sets up the rest of the movie. Grant Co., which owned a chain of Twenty-Five Cent Stores around the country. 1917 regarding the purchase of a lot by the W.T. The first reference in the New York Times came in Nov. (*For the curious: “Chain stores” were, if not a new phenomenon, somewhat new nomenclature in 1933. “The chain-store idea solves everything!”* Returning to Frazier & Gould, he sells them on producing prologues that play around the country, not just in one theater, thus diminishing their cost. “We buy in big lots.” Kent snaps his fingers. After Kent’s wife serves him divorce papers-“I’m used to good clothes and everything that goes with it!” is one of the more endearing things she says-Kent goes to a drug store to buy some aspirin and wonders off-handedly why it costs only 18 cents when next door it’s 25. Kent sees the harem number and says, “Hey, why don’t I do that for you?” but Frazier and Gould tell him they’re already phasing out prologues. The Rockettes got their start with prologues, while one of the impresarios was a guy named Chester Hale, upon whom Cagney’s character is based. Basically it was a bit of vaudeville between movies in the early days of talkies.
#FOOTLIGHT PARADE FULL MOVIE MOVIE#
I never knew about “prologues” before this movie but here’s a primer. Except after the picture is over a mini-musical stage number begins, set in a harem (with, BTW, a superhot uncredited dance lead). Then they take him to a B-movie starring John Wayne so he can see for himself. (*Ironic given all the flesh in this movie.) Si: They deliver the show in tin cans and we got nothing to worry about. … Flesh is a dead issue.* We’re in the picture business. Si: Talking pictures-that’s what they want. Kent and Thompson drop by the producers’ office and discover it’s all over. Why would talking pictures end stage musicals? But is this too smart? Kent directs stage musicals. Thompson doesn’t think so: “Looks like I’m assistant to a guy out of a job,” he says. He says talking pictures are a fad-like mah-jongg. “Footlight” begins with a news ticker informing Kent and Thompson (and us) what I assume everyone in 1933 knew-SILENT PICTURES ARE FINISHED-but Kent’s not convinced. So is our hero, this great musical idea man, not the brightest bulb? You know those scenes in movies where they make the protagonist seem sharp by making them right on an historical moment-like Michael Corleone anticipating the Cuban Revolution in “The Godfather Part II”? They do the opposite with Kent.
And this after separating from a woman so rotten she deserves the grapefruit in the face Cagney delivered to Mae Clark in “Public Enemy.” How does he reward her? By dating her friend, Vivian Rich (thin-eyebrowed Claire Dodd, forever playing the other woman). Who figures all this out? Kent’s secretary, Nan Prescott (Joan Blondell), who’s not so secretly in love with him. And there are profits, but Kent’s partners, the production team of Si Gould and Al Frazier (Guy Kibbee and Arthur Hohl), are cheating him. Turns out Gladstone is stealing all their stuff because Kent’s trusted assistant, Thompson (Gordon Wescott), is a spy. Also because he might not be that smart.īetween Gladstone stealing all our stuff and you saying there are no profits, I’m getting pretty well fed up. And he’s scrambling because new technology (talking pictures) has made his talents outmoded (kinda sorta), so he’s struggling to keep up. His mouth moves faster than our minds.Ĭagney’s character, Chester Kent, talks fast in part because he’s scrambling. Has anyone in the movies ever talked as fast as James Cagney talks in “Footlight Parade”? Cagney’s patter is always rat-a-tat-tat, but here it’s so zippy it makes Cary Grant’s dialogue in “His Girl Friday” seem positively pensive.
0 kommentar(er)
