Footlight Serenade(1942).

Footlight Serenade(1942). Musical/comedy film directed by Gregory Ratoff. Cast: Betty Grable, John Payne and Victor Mature.

Champion boxer Tommy Lundy, whose nickname is "The Body Beautiful," is known to be favorite of the ladies. Comedian Slap talks Broadway producer Bruce McKay to put on a musical show starring Tommy. Not everyone agrees with Tommy being connected with the show with his brash personality. Tommy, insists that nightclub singer Estelle Evans, be hired for the female lead.  Dancers Pat Lambert and Flo LaVerne, also hired when Tommy likes Pat's singing.

Pat telephones her fiance, Bill Smith, with the good news she invites him to come to the theater. While trying to find Pat, Bill winds up in a line of job applicants and is hired as Tommy's sparring partner for the show. During rehearsals , Tommy, not knowing that Pat is Bill's girl, becomes interested in her and makes her Estelle's understudy. Tommy finds out that Pat and Bill were secretly together the night before the show opens, he angrily plans to turn the boxing scene with Bill into a real Boxing match.

Footlight Serenade is a wonderful black and white Betty Grable movie. Grable proves that she does not need color to be fabulous..

John Payne (May 28, 1912 – December 6, 1989) was an American film actor who is mainly remembered as a singer in 20th Century Fox musical films, as well as his leading roles in Miracle on 34th Street and the NBC western television series, The Restless Gun.













Fun Facts:

Surprisingly, with her popularity with moviegoers at the time, Betty Grable was billed second to John Payne in this movie. However, poster art for the picture emphasized Betty in full figure. Later that year, Miss Grable would receive top billing over Mr. Payne in their next musical, Springtime in the Rockies (1942).

Twentieth Century-Fox had wanted to borrow Lucille Ball from RKO, but Miss Ball had no interest in playing the secondary part of Flo La Verne.

Unused in the release print, footage of Betty Grable and chorus girls performing "I'll Be Marching to a Love Song" (music by Ralph Rainger, lyrics by Leo Robin) would wind up in the all-star short subject, Hollywood Victory Caravan (1945). In the 1942 feature, a brief bit of this number, serving as the coda, was done by Miss Grable, John Payne, Victor Mature and chorus. Another deletion was a slapstick dance routine by Miss Grable and Mr. Payne.

After this black-and-white production finished, Twentieth Century-Fox would implement the policy of utilizing Technicolor for all future Betty Grable features. The only monochromatic exception would be her guest spot in Four Jills in a Jeep (1944), crooning the standard from 1908, "Cuddle Up a Little Closer" (music by Karl Hoschna, lyrics by Otto A. Harbach -- which she already had performed the year before in the Technicolored Coney Island (1943). Miss Grable would not exempt from the Technicolor clause two black-and-white dramas offered her: The Razor's Edge (1946) (Anne Baxter's Oscar-winning part) and Pickup on South Street (1953) (the Jean Peters role). For Betty's final picture, How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955).

Ironically, in the scene where Ms. Grable is rehearsing dance routines over and over (as she is the understudy) in the event she is called upon to fill in for the leading lady, her friend Flo, played by Jane Wyman, utters the line "You have as much chance of going on as I have of becoming First Lady." Of course, Ms Wyman's husband, Ronald Reagan, did become President, but was remarried to Nancy Davis by that time.

Soundtracks:

"Except with You"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Sung by Cobina Wright



"Are You Kiddin'?"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Sung and danced by Betty Grable



"I'm Still Crazy for You"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Sung by Betty Grable and John Payne



"Land on Your Feet"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger (instrumental only)
Danced by Betty Grable and Hermes Pan


"I Heard the Birdies Sing"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Sung and danced by Betty Grable and chorus

"I'll Be Marching to a Love Song"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger
Lyrics by Leo Robin
Sung and danced by Betty Grable, Victor Mature, John Payne, chorus
This number cut very short; rest used in a Movietone short

"Living High"
(uncredited)
Music by Ralph Rainger