Footlight Parade and the Backstage Musical

Lead characters from Footlight Parade (1933)

Footlight Parade belongs to a series of movies that are referred to as "Backstage Musicals", which were quite popular in the early 1930s. The plot always revolves around the production of a show or play, and all the troubles the protagonists have to go through to make that happen. Their impressive musical numbers (courtesy of the great Busby Berkeley) and their witty and risque humour made me fall in love with these movies, and so I was quite excited when I had the chance to see one of them on the big screen.

Here in Melbourne we have a traditional single-screen movie theatre called the Astor, which regularly screens old and new movie classics. Last weekend they had a showing of another great backstage musical called 42nd Street. There was something really great about seeing an 80-year-old film presented in a movie theatre like this: For me, this is the closest I can get to actually travelling in time, to step into the shoes of a person from the 30s and to experience a film in much the same way they might have. And maybe it has something to do with the film being musical comedy, but something about the humour travels so well. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it is a pre-code film, produced before the introduction of very restrictive regulations on that would affect movie productions well into the 50s and 60s. It is quite surprising when watching these movies now to see how risque and full of sexual innuendo a lot of the jokes are: In a way I think these films have much more in common with today's humour and are thus much more accessible than many movies that would come in the decades later.

It makes me kinda sad that so few people get to see these films anymore, because I think they are great and everybody should have seen at least one. Check out some clips on youtube and give it a go! 

Footlight Parade: youtu.be/EjHunTgbJSU
42nd Street: youtu.be/f2OaJv0NBB8 youtu.be/gFgZAr_0eVc
Gold Diggers of 1933 (another great one): youtu.be/JlClq5RT2Gw

Here I have drawn the lead characters from my favourite backstage musical, Footlight Parade, which I think just has the greatest cast and the most spectacular musical numbers (human waterfall, nuff said).
Actors left to right: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler

(Sometimes I feel weird about drawing fanart for a movie that has been out 2 or 3 years already, but what is that compared to a movie that has been around for 80 years!)