If Joan Was Your Great-Grandmother, Lucky You

Footlight Parade (1933)
directed by Lloyd Bacon
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

It isn't just the Yankee doodle tribute to Man of the People FDR that makes Footlight Parade a great example of Hollywood's love for the common American. There is, of course, enough patriotism in Busby Berkeley's musicals to resurrect the United States from the depths of the Great Depression by sheer enthusiasm alone, but Berkeley's own New Deal - his patented "parade of faces" - did more for the industry's anonymous, forgotten beauties than any director last century's side of QT. Instead of a Rockettes-like string of legs and fancy frocks, the women in Busby's chorus lines are each treated to a soft-focus, pretty-as-a-picture close-up that only the movies can provide. If your great-grandmother had been in Footlight Parade (instead of speaking Polish in South Texas), you could go back to the movie on DVD today and find her. That makes Busby a generous man: the great gifter of thousands of stars.