Footlight Serenade (1942)

Bruce McKay: She's closed up more nightclubs than the chief of police!

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Tommy Lundy: Will you come into my dressing room? Said the spider to the fly.
Pat Lambert: Oh, thank you, Mr. Spider, but I'm very, very shy.

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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, 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. Miss Grable would not exempt from the Technicolor clause two black-and-white dramas offered her: The Razor's Edge (Anne Baxter's Oscar-winning part) and Pickup on South Street (the Jean Peters role). For Betty's final picture, How to Be Very, Very Popular, Color by DeLuxe was employed.
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.
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. 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.
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