It starred James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell, with featured appearances by Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee, Hugh Herbert, and Ruth Donnelly.

The film's screenplay was written by Manuel Seff and James Seymour, based on a story by Robert Lord and Peter Milne.

In 1992, Footlight Parade was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

He faces pressure from his business partners to continuously create a large number of marketable prologues to service theaters throughout the country, but his job is made harder by a rival who is stealing his ideas, probably with assistance from someone working inside his own company.

Kent is so overwhelmed with work that he doesn't realize that his secretary Nan (Joan Blondell) has fallen in love with him and is doing her best to protect him as well as his interests.

The film became the third pairing of Powell and Ruby Keeler after 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933, the first two Warner Bros. Busby Berkeley musicals.

[15][16] Production took place at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California between June and September 1933, costing an estimated $703,000 to make (equivalent to approximately $16,546,704 in 2023[17]).