Best Foot Forward was a musical comedy in which Lucille Ball played a movie star invited to a military school dance.
Best Foot Forward was released in 1943, directed by Edward Buzzell and based on a Broadway musical. Lucille Ball played herself, in a fictional version: a film star named Lucille Ball, who was invited by a cadet, Bud Hooper, to a dance at Winsocki Military Academy. The cadet had boasted that he knew her, and the school expected her to attend.
Ball’s appearance at the dance caused a sensation, and the film’s musical numbers, including the title song, showed her as a glamorous star, while also allowing her comic timing to come through. The story was light, wartime entertainment, made at a time when musicals were popular with audiences.
Best Foot Forward was a success, and it remains a charming example of Ball’s work at MGM. It showed her as a star playing a star, and it kept her name in front of audiences during the war years, before her move to radio and then to television.