Footlight Parade | Human Waterfall | Warner Archive 

I often wonder what happened to the girls in the Busby Berkley movies. Did they marry and raise children(as in your case)? Did they hit stardom? Unfortunately all will have passed on by now. What was your Grandmothers name?

Every time I’ve watched this, I’ve gotten emotional while watching the beautiful happy faces of these young ladies so many years ago, and hoping they all got the best out of life. Hoping all the same for your grandmother

When Ester Williams began making her own movies the swimmers were out of work. However, while grandma was working it provide my dad to obtain bit parts on other movies. He is the child stunt runner for Claude Jarman Jr. in The Yearling with Gregory Peck. The kid running through the woods is my dad. He also was in Heidi, but the scene when grandpa & Heidi slide down the hill, cut out the quick shot of two kids sitting on the fence as they passed by. He also was one of the boys in Boys Town.

@@lindakemer4950 Cool.

It's incredible! You've got the wonderful grandma. ❣️

John Fugazzi we just watched this movie yesterday, and that is exactly what I said to my husband during that scene.

That's a lot of trial and error. Important to remember that it was shot in bits and pieces. The women would only have to learn and do a few seconds of choreography at a time. Any bits that didn't look right would end on the cutting room floor. That said, the visual choreographer needed to have an endless array of ideas to fall back on.

And money

And what a strong swimmer you had to be.

2 words ,,,,, HARD WORK.

You are correct. Even my family in the Reich was completely captivated by this. Will we ever have such splendor again? I think we will.

Absolutely first class❤ Busby was a visionary! The, sequencing, lighting, costumes everything. Golden age!❤❤❤

He was also in the Army during WW1 and apparently he did a lot of parade work during that time.

@Jake Tappert YES!!!! "some weird woke agenda" 😄 😆 🤣

Ok boomer

@Jake Tappert do you realize that back in the day they expressed political views in entertaiment, just like today? Maybe in a more subtle way, but they definetely did. Take the twilight zone. It's filled with political agendas.

I completely agree 😍

They stopped making this kind of movies because people got bored of watching fancy choreographies with no story, no characters, no emotions,

No we would not - The Youngsters

Now I understand too.

saxon954 pagal

My mum was same, told us all these films she saw as a young girl. most amazing films ever made.

I loved watching these as a teen in the nineties and my parent just wanted to watch trashy sitcoms!

Im in high school and i love these musicals. My parents are the rock n roll ones... which i love too

In fact, some of the Warner Brothers musicals (particularly Gold Diggers of 1933) acknowledged the Great Depression and made it a central story point. On the other hand, watching the RKO Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals from the same period, you'd never know the country was in the grip of a depression. You'd think everybody was independently wealthy, wore elegant clothes, and lived in fabulous penthouses and hotel suites!

This continues as a great antidote for the woes of the 21st century....a great escape!

​@@lesliea7394 Pure unadulterated escapism.

Golden Age musicals are so rarely seen the way they were supposed to be seen. It's like looking at Old Master frescoes through the wrong end of a telescope; this genre loses so much on small home screens. To their original audiences- say in a small-town picture house, folks who had never been in a big theater or entertainment venue- the impact must have been overwhelming, like a glimpse of another world.

@@esmeephillips5888 That's why so many of that era's films are so great; filmmakers felt they owed it to their Depression audiences to deliver entertainment that would blow them away.

@@anthonycrnkovich5241 True. Today's Hollywood thinks it must lecture its customers on how to be 'woke'. The Warner Brothers were progressive New Dealers, but they never forgot that movies are about pleasure, not preaching. They were happy to hire Berkeley, who never had a political notion (only pathological ones;-))

bluechocolate wow are you lucky to have seen this on the big screen. I have all these movies on DVD

@@esmeephillips5888 yeah blew their mind these lions of film making x

They were certainly all beautiful!

Northatlantic2012 But were they all clones?

@@bradleycotton3237 Are you?

They were like butterflies, living a short but colorful life. Most would spend a few years in pictures or on the stage, filling crowd scenes with maybe a close-up or two if they caught the dance director's eye. The chances of being lifted out of the chorus into stardom were minuscule. But despite its rigors, the work was more fun than being a stenographer or serving in a shop. Few girls were seriously ambitious. Not many came to grief in Hollywood. They would hit 25, marry and raise families, possibly teach local kids dancing. Some hung up their shoes and never talked about their young days. They were grateful to be out of the Depression. Hoofing and respectable middle-aged suburban home-making did not mix. Anyhow, would their neighbors believe they had performed alongside Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell or Jimmy Cagney? Nobody in the early 1930s thought pictures were more than ephemera. But when TV began to rerun musicals, and later when video recordings came in, many a gray--haired lady could show her grandkids a flash of her youth and beauty. They would know she was telling the truth about having had a moment of glory, when the screen was silver or glowing in three-pack Technicolor.

@@esmeephillips5888 This has got to be the most thoughtful and enlightening response ever written on youtube.

That officially makes your great uncle one of the coolest people ever. I always wondered at the mechanics of that fountain. It telescoped, each tier revolved, and somehow water was pumped through multiple outlets. How did that plumbing work? Any info on that you may have, I’d love to know.

@@gtlfb I don't know the details, but my Great Uncle's last request was to be buried under the giant fountain at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. We did bury him with a reverse osmosis water filter system and a case of bottled water from Hollywood... btw, check out my you tube channel, Jeff Goes Random

Jeff Goes Random that’s awesome that he was a part of it I truly loved watching them in sinc that itself must’ve been hard 😉👍👍

I wouldn’t say all older movies are better, but the classics still have qualities to them that are so beautiful and that’s why when modern films use them for inspiration they end up being nominated and winning oscars like La La Land

@@ninjasavage9875 La La Land ... didn't win the oscar tho hahaha

Ellie Ray lmao why did I say that. La La Land famously lost. I think I meant nominated

Well, musicals were better. Broadway still finds performers who can captivate an audience, but movies have forgotten how to bottle that spirit. The Golden Age, despite all the cinematographic tricks, at heart was a transcription of musical theater and revue, by a flock of exiles from New York in California.

I don't think health and safety now would allow that many in a pool. Now computer generated cast of a thousand one flex hour programmer in 3D.

Yeah? I guess. Was he mean??? How dud he get all these ladies to do that??? Tooooo amazing for words. No explanation needed I guess.

Wow, the cars of that era were lovely.

Dylan Kelly those were the nicest cars ever built. And yes that would be an odd feeling especially if you’d put on your suit for the occasion

I love all the 30's Warner Bros films, but I also love all the 40s Warner Bros films. It's my favorite part of the entire Hollywood Studio System era...

I agree.

Yes, I'll bet they worked very hard in rehearsal after rehearsal. Many of them probably hoped they'd be big stars but having a role like this was incredibly coveted and they likely used it in conversation with people for the rest of their lives.

I bet they were the talk of the rest home in, idontknow, if they were between the ages of 18 and 24, which I'm sure they all were in these numbers in 1933, then they were probably 80 something years old in nursing homes around the 1990s. So yes, they were telling stories about their performance in "Footlight parade" to their nurses, fellow nursing home residents, and visiting kids and grandkids in the 1990s. Sadly, they've probably all passed on by now, and their kids are now almost nursing home age. Those girls were in the same generation as my grandparents, they were in their 80s in the 1990s, and my grandparents all passed on between 1997 and 2011 (grandpop, 1997, other grandpop, 2003, grandmother, 2009, other grandmother, 2011 (age 97)). My grandmothers were 20 and 17 in 1933, about the same ages as the performing girls in "By a waterfall", they were so beautiful. My grandmothers were too when they were young

Twelve-hour days laboring for a kinky bully in smelly water under blazing lights until you were mottled like a turtle, for unremarkable pay. Ah, the glamor of Tinseltown! But it was worth it. History rejoices in the results. Thanks, ladies.

I always thought the extra and the unknowns had the most talent if the movie was done right.

I wonder how many takes they had to do to get it that perfect?

My thoughts also. With a degree of anger and bitterness.

ＦＯＯＴ ＬＩＧＨＴ ＰＡＲＡＤＥ(Lloyd bacon, USA 1933) BY A WATERFALL(fain kahal) GREAT MOVIE THEMES star spangled rhythm footlight parade ＣＤ 60013 1997 by Promo Sound AG My favorite Sound collection！

I totally agree. The fantastic orchestrations from early 30s Warner films were the best. I wish the Vitaphone orchestra had released records too.

Synchronized swimming with shoes on! Over the years synchro and rythmic gymnastics have taken a lot of criticism from many people. But few of those critics understand the intricacies of both sports which actually require FAR more practice time than do football or baseball. This presentation was a great performance which took many, many hours to rehearse. Kudos to the girls and directors for their work whose aesthetic merit remains in evidence after all these decades.

@@merccadoosis8847 They sometimes have shoes, sometimes they are barefoot, like when they jump in.

:-) I was lucky enough to do synchronized swimming from 1986-1990! Not sure any high school has now...