“FOOTLIGHT PARADE.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20331, 14 June 1934, Page 3

“FOOTLIGHT PARADE.”

Plaza to Show Lavish ■Musical Comedy.

“ Catherine the Great ” will conclude its successful season at the Plaza Theatre to-morrow night.

“ Footlight Parade,” one of the most spectacular musical comedies yet made, will be the featured attraction at the Plaza Theatre on Saturday. Ruby Keeler (Mrs A 1 Jolson), Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee, Joan Blondell, James Cagney and other old favourites appear in the big cast. In most musical films the music is paramount, but in “ Footlight Parade ” there is a definite story —in fact several stories^—drama, humour and good acting, and the musical numbers, elaborate as they are, are incidental to the plot. Three of the numbers are perhaps the best batch ever put upon the screen, each different, each w*ith catchy music, and each superlatively done. “ Honeymoon Hotel,” “ By a Waterfall ” and “ Shanghai Lil ” are numbers which will not readily be forgotten. The cast is enormous. The film deals with the work of a great firm making prologues for cinema theatres, and hundreds of people are seen in action during the unwinding of the plot, reaching its climax in the beautiful and novel “By a Waterfall ” number, which is probably the most unusual spectacle ever put on the film. It features scores of beautiful girls in a giant marble tank, and is set to very attractive music. The cast is much the same as that of “Gold Diggers of 1933,” with the addition of James Cagney, who sings and dances and reveals unsuspected qualities Box plans at the D.I.C.