1001 films you must see before you die- Part II: 1930-1934

James Cagney is of course best known for his sympathetic, even lovable, gangster in such films as Public Enemy and White Heat (well, he is not quite so lovable in the latter). What is less well known is that he shone in a variety of other kinds of roles during his long career, up to and including Shakespeare's Bottom.
One of the genres in which Cagney was most successful was the movie musical. Later in his career, he was even able to combine his talents by playing gangsters in musicals such as Love Me or Leave Me and Never Steal Anything Small. Probably the best of his musicals, though, was 1933's Footlight Parade. As Chester Kent, producer of live musical prologues to films during the early days of the "talkies," he dances and sings, and in typical Cagney fashion also gives the impression of being in at least five places at once. This despite having to contend with a dishonest competitor, a couple of even more dishonest colleagues, a grasping ex-wife, a nervous director ready to have a breakdown at every turn, and constantly increasing demands on his time.
Cagney is more than ably assisted by a superb supporting cast: Joan Blondell as the (of course) hard-boiled secretary who is secretly in love with him, Ruby Keeler as the shy office assistant who blossoms when returning to the stage, Dick Powell as the romantic leading tenor of the prologues, Frank McHugh in a sterling performance as the flamboyant yet thoroughly masculine director, and Claire Dodd as Blondell's scheming sister who sets her sights on Cagney. Such a fine cast assures that the energy level of the film never flags.
However, the real raison d'etre of Footlight Parade are the four big Busby Berkeley musical numbers: "Sittin' on a Backyard Fence" which appears in rehearsal halfway through the film, and the three prologues, "Honeymoon Hotel," "By a Waterfall" and "Shanghai Lil," which paradoxically appear at the end of it. Ruby Keeler, a great dancer, a little less talented as a singer, appears in all four of the numbers, and Dick Powell in the first three. Cagney steps into "Shanghai Lil" at the last second, replacing a frightened and drunken leading man, and so of course we are in for the fistfight that is a feature of almost every film Cagney ever made. The four musical numbers are all delightful, and I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite from among the four; probably whichever one I am watching at the moment.