administration.ĭear little Miss Ruby Keeler was never better than she is playing the Chinese hooker, “Lil.” She hardly even watches her feet as she dances, which was one of her signature flaws. wholeheartedly supported the uplift dictated by the F.D.R. You’d never see something so working class oriented coming out of MGM, of course. FDR was the new president and hopes were so high that he’d pull the nation out of the Depression. There’s also the NRA eagle–the logo of the controversial National Recovery Administration of the New Deal.
I also get a thrill when the military dancers do a “card section” presentation of Roosevelt’s image. Here the black guys are sitting at the bar and singing with the others. You would never see blacks integrated into a social scene in other films of the period unless they were porters on a train or maids in a big house. Note the African guys mixed into the scene with white and Asian prostitutes. “Shanghai Lil” is the best production number in the picture. (Berkeley directed John Garfield in “They Made Me a Criminal” six years later and had the Dead End Kids singing “By a Waterfall” as they took their showers.) Think of the huge pools and three-story tall fountains for “By A Waterfall,” for instance. There is no way the supposedly staged “theater prologues” could have been produced in any theater on earth, of course. “Footlight Parade” is fascinating on so many levels.
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