Top 10: Fred Astaire dances

I'm not going to be obvious and make everything on this list, an Astaire-Rogers top 10 list as many people would do when they think Fred Astaire. To me, Fred Astaire's dances are one of a kind, whether or not, he is dancing with Ginger Rogers or someone like Debbie Reynolds in a non-musical film. Fred Astaire's talents in dance will always make anyone smile. No matter who you are and what you're in to.

Top 10 Fred Astaire Dances

#10 He Loves And She Loves with Audrey Hepburn from Funny Face. This dance is a very romantic one because the scene starts off with with Audrey's character confessing to Fred's character. She tells him that she doesn't want to leave Paris because she loves the place. She also tells him that she loves him. Fred responds to her confession by overcoming his fear and singing He Loves And She Loves to her. The pair then engages in a romantic dance duet as Fred realizes that he is starting to fall for Audrey's character. -Liana Sheridan

"And they love so won't you

love me as I love you?"

#9 The Shorty George with Rita Hayworth from You Were Never Lovelier. This dance is a fun and up beat, up tempoed that made me laugh. Both Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire doing a tap dance together, makes my day get brighter. I love these two together in their two films together. It also makes me wonder if they treat each other as siblings off-screen because of who Rita was to Fred, and they are also quite different in style. -Liana Sheridan

"A dance for a man

about so big."

#8 Baby Doll with Vera-Ellen from The Belle Of New York. This song is the essence of romance. I think that the song is one of the most romantic dances that Fred Astaire has ever done. Both Fred and Vera-Ellen looked like they were into each other during the dance. This dance is one of the reasons why I'm in love with Fred Astaire's talents. -Sophie Leigh

"You beautiful baby doll."

#7 This Heart Of Mine with Lucille Bremer from Ziegfeld Follies is Fred's most romantic dances that he has ever done. I believe that it was this particular dance that made me think that they have done it right and that they were carefree with love. The dance, itself, is romantic enough as a stand alone musical short; however, one chorus girl missed her queue but was quickly covered up by a stage hand, but that was only one mistake and it happened in the background. -Liana Sheridan

"This heart of mine

is gayly dancing now."

#6 The Babbitt And The Bromide with Gene Kelly from Ziegfeld Follies. The Babbitt And The Bromide is the next dance on our countdown. This dance begins with a humorous sketch between Fred and Gene calling each other "Rita Hayworth" and "Ginger Rogers" as well as Fred not being able to place Gene in any profession. A little fan fact about this dance: Fred Astaire did something quite similar with his sister, Adele Astaire in The Gershwin's Funny Face.  -Liana Sheridan

"Gotta fly."

#5 Sluefoot with Leslie Caron from Daddy Long Legs. The Sluefoot was one of those dances that always makes me smile. I love how much faith Fred Astaire had for the dance and how he wanted to make the dance succeed, though learning that his wife of twenty or so years passed during the filming of the film. If you look closely at his face, you might catch his eyes being swollen or red from crying over the lost of Phyllis Potter. -Sophie Leigh

Astaire with first wife, Phyllis Potter in front
of their Los Angeles home.

#4 When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves For Alabam with Judy Garland from Easter Parade. When I first saw this film, I loved every moment of it; however, the most memorable moment of the film that I enjoyed the most is this particular scene. Both Judy and Fred looked like they were having fun. Yet, I keep on calling Judy, Dorothy throughout the film, itself. -Sophie Leigh

Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

#3 The Jukebox Duet with Eleanor Powell from The Broadway Melody of 1940.  Eleanor Powell danced like a man is what Fred Astaire said about Eleanor. In 1981, Eleanor Powell would later say that they would rehearse over and over again, just to make every step perfect and well done. She also stated that she wanted to it one more time. Both Ellie and Freddie were Hollywood's biggest hoofing perfectionists. And perfect they were! -Liana Sheridan

Astaire with Eleanor Powell, 1940.

"I have tried it but I don't

quite get the same thing."

#2 Dancing In the Dark with Cyd Charisse from The Band Wagon. This number is one of those dances that Fred done or saw being done during his Broadway days with his sister, Adele in 1931. And both Liana and I agreed that this dance would have been different during the 1930s, or has been replicated if any documented footage of rehearsal had been leaked to the public. -Sophie Leigh

"Cyd Charisse is a terrific dancer, a wonderful partner,"

[Fred] Astaire would admit later. "She had precision

plus -- beautiful dynamite, I call it. When you

danced with her, you stayed danced with her."

#1 A Couple Of Song And Dance Men with Bing Crosby from Blue Skies and Together. This number is one of our favorites of Astaire's. It was this dance that I thought that Fred nailed it, and that he proved to everyone that he could dance and teach at the same time on-screen. -Sophie Leigh

"I couldn't even reach the steps he throws away."

~Adele Astaire

"Come on, Fred, I'm not your sister, you know."

~ Claire Luce

Four films that we'd pick as the TCM Guest Programmers

Swing Time (1933) - Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers.

I Love Melvin (1953) - Donald O'Connor,  Debbie Reynolds.

Holiday Inn (1942) - Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) - Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra.

The first film that we would pick is Swing Time. Swing Time is about a showman who finds himself romancing a dance instructor. The film has the most romantic  scoring by Jerome Kern, and we thought that it's one of Jerome's best work and beautifully sang by Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and the rest of the cast. The second film that we would go for is I Love Melvin because it's one of those films that everyone needs to watch. It's funny. It's romantic. It has singing and dancing. And importantly, it has Cosmo Brown and Kathy Selden (Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds) in love with each other. The next one on our list will be Holiday Inn starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. It is the second film of Fred's on our list and one of my favorite films to watch in the summertime. Though, both of us has seen the colorized version of the film since it has the best quality. We'd still appreciate seeing the black and white version. The last film that we would show is Take Me Out To The Ballgame starting Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and Esther Williams because of the running gag between Kelly and Williams, which is they courtship between the pair. Kelly is first introduced to her as a lady, but he called her a fathead then further into the story, he starts to call her, baby doll, which she repeats to him.

Photo of the Week

Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly's promotional shot for Singing In the Rain (1952)

Quote of the Week

"When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire,

it was the only time in the movies

when you looked at the man,

not the woman."

~Gene Kelly

Film Fridays: Singing In the Rain (1952)

The first time that I've seen this movie was during my Sophomore year of High School when I took a class called the History of the Motion Picture and this movie was the only musical that he shown to the class; I enjoyed watching it the movie then and now but I have never looked into the movie as a historical textbook before, so without further ado, Singing In the Rain as a history textbook for Film Friday.

Kelly with a surprised looking
Reynolds asking her to drive him
towards a party.

Singing In the Rain is about a movie production company's aided and difficult task of transitioning a silent film into sound. The movie takes places in 1927 Hollywood when the Jazz Singer was released; however, a helpless fan favorite, Don Lockwood (Kelly) aids the help of anyone driving a car towards a party, which got him to meet a local chorus girl named Kathy Selden (Reynolds). After the party, Don searched everywhere for Kathy to make it up to her. He then finds her working as a chorus girl for a movie. Don makes it up and the pair began to fall in love.

Kathy Selden: "I was starstrucked!"

Hagen as a French duchess.

The movie depicts the struggles faced by production companies during late 1929 when they tried to use their actors' actual voices to make the difficult transition happen but the actors either had abnormal quirk to their voice, just like Lina Lamont. So they had to make the difficult decision of sending actors home, and replacing them with who can talk without an accent to their voice.

"Round tones," said a diction coach to Lina. "Round tones."

Kelly telling Hagen that his not
interested in them being a couple.

In the movie,  Monumental Pictures decides to send both Don and Lina to diction classes to improve their vocal abilities, which allows them to produce more rounder tones when sounding their consonants and vowels; however, they saw no improvement in Lina's voice so they had to close down production for The Dueling Cavalier, which left Don to pack his things and auction all of his stuff until his best friend, Cosmo Brown gave him the idea of using Kathy to dub Lina's voice.

Cosmo Brown: "She can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance. A triple threat."

Gene and Donald finds Debbie's
Kathy Selden working as a
Chorus girl for Monumental.

In reality,  the producers of the movie saw that Debbie's voice wasn't working for the scene so they went with Jean Hagen's acting voice and with Betty Noyes' singing voice to dub over Debbie's. That wasn't the only rough thing that Debbie Reynolds had to go through. She was insulted by Gene Kelly for not being able to dance well enough when for a fact, Gene wanted Debbie to play the part of Kathy Selden; unfortunately, for Gene, Fred Astaire found her crying underneath the piano and helped her with her dancing. Gene later said that Debbie was built like an ox.

Lina Lamont: "I can't make love to a bush!"

In the movie when Lina's microphone picked up her heartbeat; the same thing happened to Debbie when the producers of Singing In the Rain wanted to hear her lines more clearly. The microphone picked up her heartbeat during one of the dance numbers mirroring the incident with Lina Lamont.

I think that the transition from silent to talkies was a difficult thing to do because of the technology that they had back then. Till this day, I found it heard to believe that Debbie was dubbed by two different people because I was so sucked into the world of Singing In the Rain that it didn't really matter who actually did what to me. I also though that the movie itself is a history textbook for someone who barely knows how much it costed and the struggles that people went through to turn a silent film into a talkie. It was also a struggle to cut people who didn't have the right voice for a talkie.

Sources

1. http://www.filmsound.org/ulano/talkies4.htm
2. http://news.moviefone.com/2012/03/27/singin-in-the-rain-60th-anniversary/
3. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045152/trivia?ref_=ttcnn_ql_1
4. Donen, Stanley, dir. and Gene Kelly, dir. Singing In the Rain. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1952. Film.