BEFORE: First I have to apologize for watching "Leap Year" in 2018, which is NOT a leap year, and now I'm watching "Easter Parade" when that holiday doesn't occur until April 1. Clearly this is not a normal calendar year, with Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday coinciding, and then Easter's going to share a calendar square with April Fool's Day. Has this ever happened before? I know that occasionally Easter can take place in March, not April, but I don't ever remember it coinciding with another holiday like this. Last year I was able to tie-in the Fred Astaire chain with St. Patrick's Day when TCM ran "Finian's Rainbow" (I only had to skip a few days to make things line up right) but I guess I can't be that fortunate two years in a row.
Sure, I could sit on this film until April 1, but my possibility of linking to it then becomes quite remote - I got really lucky with the Leslie Caron link to "Daddy Long Legs", how can I possibly link back to Fred Astaire again? As it is, I also have Astaire scheduled to appear in "Ghost Story" and "Holiday Inn", but those seem more like Halloween-y and Christmas films, and currently I have no way to link to them, but maybe I can figure something out before October or December. Then again, my whole linking process might be outdated or impossible by then, you never know. But I refuse to watch those films so very out-of-season.
Because it's bad enough that I have to watch an Easter-themed film here, at the START of Easter season, the second day of Lent for chris'sakes, just because I've got other Easter movie plans, and I don't think I can circle back around to Fred Astaire again. (Then I thought, maybe flip this film with tomorrow's, so that I can at least say it's on the first Friday of Lent, which is a thing, and I could do it, just use a different entry to the Howard Keel chain. But then I reconsidered and flipped it back again, I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end, I'm still staring down a break in the chain next week.)
Tomorrow, February 16, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", it's the nominees and winners for Best Original Story. What? How is that a category, Best Story? That's certainly not a category now, but apparently it was a category between 1928 and 1956, which must have morphed into Best Original Screenplay. So I guess it's just old-time films today on TCM, which is fine, because I'm doing the classic Hollywood musicals thing myself now, with Fred Astaire and Howard Keel coming up.
Other discontinued Oscar categories include: Best Assistant Director, Best Dance Direction, and (I assume) Best Blackface Make-Up.
6:00 am "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934)
8:00 am "One Way Passage" (1932)
9:30 am "A Guy Named Joe" (1943)
11:45 am "My Favorite Wife" (1940)
1:30 pm "Mystery Street" (1950)
3:30 pm "White Heat" (1949)
5:45 pm "Action in the North Atlantic" (1943)
8:00 pm "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)
10:30 pm "The Champ" (1931)
12:15 am "A Star Is Born" (1937)
2:15 am "Boys Town" (1938)
4:00 am "Vacation From Marriage" (1945)
Another tough category for me, perhaps because of the date limitations on this category. I've only seen three: "My Favorite Wife", "White Heat" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". I watched the 1979 film titled "The Champ", but not the 1931 film, and I watched the 1954 and 1979 versions of "A Star Is Born", but not the 1937 version. Another 3 out of 12 brings my total up to 63 out of 177. Back down to 35.6%
THE PLOT: A nightclub performer hires a naive chorus girl to become his new dance partner, to make his former partner jealous and to prove he can make any partner a star.
AFTER: I think I made the right call, this film is not as Easter-based as I thought it might be. There are two Easters seen in the film, and two Easter Parades, but they book-end the film and the main story is really about the time BETWEEN the two Easters, as hoofer Don Hewes (Astaire) trains a new dance partner (Garland). Whew, what a relief - I thought if this whole film was about Easter then I was really screwing myself by watching it here. But it's about getting READY for Easter, the two leads have a standing date for the Easter Parade, about two people coming together and learning to work together (and become a couple!) in time for their Easter date. So, the film does belong in February after all.
There was still a 23-year age difference between Astaire and Garland, presumably between their characters as well, therefore - but for the whole film, he's the senior member of the dance team, the 49-year old professional training the 26-year old newcomer. Who's to say love can't blossom under those circumstances? Right now the Winter Olympics are going on, my wife's watching a lot of figure skating, and with all those skating teams, you kind of can't help but wonder - are the teams only partners on the ice, or are they romantic partners in real life as well? I guess some are and some aren't, and the same goes for dance partners. Any two people who spend so much time together, engaging in a physical activity where they have to touch each other a lot, certain things are likely to happen, assuming they're both straight.
But that means that dancing is a metaphor for sex, right? I think I came to the same conclusion last year after my 10th or 12th Fred Astaire film in a row. When two people are dancing on-screen, and we're admiring their dance moves or appreciating how well they move together, in the back of our minds, they're doing a different kind of dance, the horizontal mambo. But I don't want to make this tawdry, to some people dancing is just dancing. And we're back in 1948 tonight, which in many ways was a more conservative time - not like "Flying Down to Rio" back in 1933, those people were out of control! (Actually, "Easter Parade" was released in 1948, but takes place in 1912 for some reason. I guess back then you could write a sonnet about a bonnet and not seem out of place.)
The opening number has Fred Astaire trying to buy a stuffed bunny in a toy store, but first he has to get it away from a kid who grabbed it, so he does a number with a drum set that's really great, and now I see tap-dancing in a whole new light. By playing drums with sticks, his feet, his head WHILE tap-dancing, I realize that tap-dancing is another form of percussion - so mixing it with drums somehow makes complete sense! And then more complicated rhythms are possible when he starts to mix the drumbeats and the tap beats.
Then Nadine, Don's dance partner, breaks up with him - and this seems like it was a purely professional dance-based relationship, with no hanky-panky, because it seems like she's dating his best friend, Jonathan (but we never really know for sure, do we?) - Don takes on a new dance partner, plucking her out of the chorus girl line-up at a bar, no less. He does this JUST to prove that he could make a great dance partner out of anyone. Gee, it sure seems like this is a rebound relationship of sorts - so maybe there was some attraction between Don and Nadine after all. After you break up with someone, isn't the temptation there to go out and date someone right away, just to prove you can?
This sets up two love triangles of sorts, the Don-Nadine-Jonathan one, and then later Jonathan's attached to Hannah, but Hannah only has eyes for Don. So the second triangle is Jonathan-Hannan-Don, but it only works if each person is after someone who's after someone else. Aw heck, let's just call it a love quadrangle and be done with it. This way each person has a back-up partner in case things don't work out with the partner they're pursuing.
Nadine moves on to the Ziegfeld Follies, while Don trains Hannah. And this means Garland and Astaire have to do something very difficult, which is to dance poorly while rehearsing. (Again, I know nearly nothing about dancing, but I'm going to assume it was hard for Astaire to work what looked like dancing mistakes into his routines.) The goal is to put a show together with the rather arbitrary deadline of the following Easter. And Astaire's character acts professionally, doesn't put any moves on the younger Hannah - which, of course, ends up making him the irresistible father figure to her, something we also saw in "Daddy Long Legs".
It turns out the easiest and best thing to do with Fred Astaire was to make his character a dancer putting a show together, this was done time and time again, like in "The Band Wagon" and "Second Chorus", etc. When his character had another profession, like business millionaire or film producer, it just wasn't as believable, and it was harder to justify the inclusion of so many dance sequences.
And we've got music from Irving Berlin tonight, not Cole Porter like last night, and I think this is a step up. "Easter Parade" is obviously the headliner tune, but "A Fella With an Umbrella" isn't bad, and neither is "It Only Happens When I Dance With You", if you can avoid adding extra innuendo to that title. Heck, "I Want to Go Back to Michigan" is also a clever tune, and then near the end, we get "Steppin' Out With My Baby", which of course was another big hit for Berlin.
There's one point during the "Steppin' Out" number that's very memorable - Astaire's dancing in the foreground and he starts moving in slow-motion, but the chorus in the background keeps moving at regular speed. God, I'd love to know how they did this with 1948 technology, it couldn't have been green-screened, was it rear-projection? Was the camera sped up to film Astaire, or slowed down to film the background performers? Was this filmed as one shot, or as some kind of combination? Must research this...
There's a great deal of behind-the-scenes injury and drama associated with this film. First off, it was originally going to star Gene Kelly, but he broke his ankle after a volleyball game. And Cyd Charisse was going to play the role of Nadine, then dropped out due to a torn knee ligament. Her role went to Ann Miller, who had to perform her numbers in a back brace, since her husband Reese Milner had (allegedly) thrown her down the stairs. And finally the film was originally going to be directed by Vincente Minnelli, Judy Garland's husband, only they were fighting too, and her psychiatrist strongly recommended that they not work together any more, and then they divorced three years later.
Also starring Judy Garland (last heard in "Gay Purr-ee"), Peter Lawford (last seen in "Mrs. Miniver"), Ann Miller (last seen in "You Can't Take It With You"), Jules Munshin (also carrying over from "Silk Stockings"), Clinton Sundberg (last seen in "The Barkleys of Broadway"), Richard Beavers, Jeni Le Gon.
RATING: 6 out of 10 talkative waiters
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