I can see it now. Pretty girls in black face. "Slaves of Old Africa." White men capture them.
Yes, and at least another scene could be interpreted as "racist," in which Cagney, observing a bunch of black kids on an urban street being cooled off in the summer heat with a fire hydrant, mouths his idea of "water falling on beautiful white bodies" for his new stage show.
And yet, there are at least two scenes featuring African-Americans participating with whites in some of the musical numbers; one scene near the end shows a black sailor in the company of a white woman (implied to be his "escort.")
So obviously, the racist elements of FOOTLIGHT PARADE are at least partially offset by such "progressive" scenes as I related above.
Warner Bros. knew that even the most well executed, tasteful dance number of 40 half clothed black women would have meant that numerous cinemas -most probably in the South-would not have allowed the film to be showed.
The movie has so many cracks at the entertainment industry that I like to think, Chester said it as a jab at venues that put on such shows. The idea surely was no more original than the other themes he poo-pood as stale and moth-eaten. In fact, dancing half nude slaves whether Egyptian, Persian, AFrican, or other indistinct oriental antique unchristian culture was pretty been there done that.
AS far as the tastefulness of the line, in an age when Blacks couldn't sit with, dine with, live with, marry whites, does anyone think the writers were concerned the line would dismay?
No other whites were concerned because many of them felt the same way back then. If you've ever seen the movie "Ghost world" which came out about 2001, there's a discussed issue about racism where the characters are talking about racism being much more out in the open way back in old days. But he's not saying that it's gotten better so much, what he says is "people still hate each other, they just know how to hide it better".