This was on late one night (or was it early in the morning?) I DVRed it. It is one of those rare films of Fred Astaires that I had not yet seen.(!) As a film that showcased his dancing and singing abilities, it was great. It was choreographed by Hermes Pan. It was considered by Mr. Astaire as one of his favorite films. He shared equal billing with (then) radio comedian Red Skelton in a mostly fictionalized biography of sng-writers from the 1920s. The songs the wrote are among the best standards of the day, and many have survived until today, noteably Whos Sorry Now, Nevertheless, I wanna be loved by you, Give ne the simple life and A kiss to build a dream on. Theres a painful song that is so overtly racist that it bogg;es the brain. It was a novelty song, in other words, not about lost love, or found love, or everlasting love. It was called So long Oo-Long It was using the most awful stero-types about Asians in a wierd way, a Chinese name, with city names from Japan (I guess they scanned better in the rhyme-scheme.) Reading up on Vera Ellen, she was terrific, and I wondered why I had not seen more of her. According to IMDB, she was a troubled soul, plagued by anorexia, even before we knew what that was. (One early magazine article praised her for having the thinnest waist in Hollywood, so sad.)
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 17:35:21 +0000
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