Footlight Parade

Chester Kent struggles against time, romance, and a rival's spy to produce spectacular live "prologues" for movie houses. Chester Kent produces musical comedies on the stage. With the beginning of the talkies era he changes to producing short musical prologues for movies. This is stressful to him, because he always needs new units and his rival is stealing his ideas. He can get an contract with a producer if he is able to stage in three days three new prologues. In spite of great problems, he does it. —Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de> With the introduction of talkies, many theater owners are closing down their live productions in favor of the new format. Even those theaters that had live performances between films are getting rid of them. Producer Chester Kent comes up with an idea: if the live acts could be packaged and sold to theater owners, they should be able to reduce costs and make money. He's not the only one who's come up with the idea however and competition is tough. Kent soon realizes that they should try developing 40 minute prologues, live musical numbers to be shown before the movie. His ideas are continually being leaked to his competition. Throughout, his very capable secretary Nan keeps everything going in the office. —garykmcd Chester Kent, Broadway producer, is out of business because of talking pictures, so he starts producing musical "prologues" for movie theatres. Soon the search for new ideas is driving him crazy; his secretary pines with love for him; another secretary is pursued by his juvenile lead; and things get even worse when a spy sells Kent's ideas to a competitor. With some of Busby Berkeley's biggest dance numbers. —Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>