Swing Your Lady (1938)

Penny Singleton and Humphrey Bogart.

Oh my, oh my. I knew I would like this one from the first painful twang of the opening credits, which in addition to Bogie include such luminaries as "The Weaver Brothers and Elviry," all displayed against a background of crude line drawings of hillbillies. If this doesn't promise to deliver a ho-down and somebody named Pappy, I thought to myself, then my name's Mud.

Second Chorus (1940)

Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard, and Burgess Meredith.

The world of classic cinema is full of buried treasure. How many times have I watched a film only to wonder how it could have slipped under my radar for so many years? Suddenly this little movie I'd never heard of a week earlier I now can't imagine living without. That's the dream of course, and we do find them every now and then, but in spite of these rare fantastic discoveries, we don't really go scuba diving looking for sunken ships. We go diving to see the fish, or the way the sunlight dapples the water, or the coral formations. We go diving to see what we can see. We marvel over what our favorite performers did before or after they found or lost their stride, silent actors in talkies, strange experiments that didn't work.


Second Chorus is no life changing discovery, but while it belies the substantial talent of its principals, there's definitely enough punch left in the performances to make it an entertaining hour and a half. The script is far too weak to support the weight of its cast. There's not much of a plot, far too little music and almost no dancing,  and hardly any acting required from anyone involved. This may actually be something of an advantage for Fred Astaire and Artie Shaw, but the lovely Paulette Goddard and a shockingly young Burgess Meredith could have easily filled out more substantial roles, and character actor Charles Butterworth could, I am convinced, play anything you put in front of him.

Big Band films proliferated in the early 40's, and Artie Shaw was well set up to have a starring vehicle after his spectacular successes of the late 30's. This is not that film. Artie Shaw and his orchestra function in Second Chorus much like Baby the Leopard in Bringing Up Baby. The plot revolves around him, but you could also tweak the script a little so he never had to appear on camera and it wouldn't really change it much. The music sequences, such as they are, are neither well-filmed nor well-integrated, so they simultaneously do not seem to belong in the film and are not interesting enough in themselves to justify their inclusion on their own merits. The sounds Shaw milks out of a clarinet are stunning as usual, but need more visual punch in the stagings to hold them up on screen, and in this case it just isn't there.

Astaire himself cited Second Chorus  as his personal least favorite of his films, and while I haven't seen all of them yet, I imagine he wasn't far off. He plays a small-time college band leader, which sounds promising enough to start with. Personally I am really only prepared to accept Astaire in about four different types of roles: dancer, band leader, producer/promoter, or millionaire playboy. Anything too far beyond this falls a bit flat, like his abysmally unprofessional psychiatrist in Carefree. Of course, no one watches Fred Astaire to see him act, but unfortunately that's about all he does in Second Chorus. He has a paltry two dance numbers, in one of which we are expected to believe that he is simultaneously tap dancing, conducting an orchestra, and playing the trumpet, but even setting aside the plot holes it's a weak performance compared to almost any Astaire solo dance. "I've Got My Eye on You" from Broadway Melody of 1940, which was made the same year, shames this number to hell in a hand basket.

Fred and Paulette, having fun.

The other dance number in Second Chorus, however, is something rather special. It's a spontaneous little swing number with Paulette, who looks adorably leggy in a short flippy skirt. Certainly the technical difficulty is nothing much. Paulette is a charming actress and a very capable dancer, but set against Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse or even Judy Garland, her steps just don't stack up. But there's more going on here than just the steps. The pair twirl and tap around the set with an ease and fluency that make it a delight to watch. On top of this, the routine has a wry comic note to it, without being outright funny, that I have never seen Astaire quite hit with any of his partners after Ginger, but it was a big part of what made that pairing the stuff of legend. It sort of makes you think of all the films that could have been if anyone had had the foresight to see what seems so obvious to me now.

The absolutely delightful Charles Butterworth.

While I'm here, a nod of deepest respect is due to Charles Butterworth, for his performance as the music-loving, (talentless) mandolin-playing bottle cap magnate. His character is of course ridiculous, but Butterworth carries the role with dignity and somehow keeps him from being pathetic, reminding me somewhat of an aging Buster Keaton. There's nothing special or interesting about the part, but the performance is spectacular, and he all but steals the show.

Sometimes you really do find buried gold, but more often what you see is just a flicker of light and shadow, beautiful for a moment, but insubstantial. Second Chorus is by any objective criteria a terrible film, but that doesn't mean it's not worth watching.

Silk Stockings (1957)

As a follow up to the pairing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in The Bandwagon (1953), Silk Stockings is a monumental disappointment. The musicals of the early 50's had reached a pinnacle of innovation and slick professionalism that was never to be seen again. What followed was not so much a decline as a wall forever imprisoning the magical world of fantasy and dance in the past, in a time where television had not yet bled the cinema of much of its mystique. True, there were moments of greatness to follow--Gigi (1958), Oklahoma! (1955), and The Sound of Music (1965)--but there was also the tragically flawed Brigadoon (1954), which even the exquisite ballet of Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse can't save from its own mediocrity. Like Brigadoon, Silk Stockings promises its audience an escape from the humdrum into a world of exotic romance, and utterly fails to deliver the goods.

Call Me Madam (1953)

Ethel Merman and Donald O'Connor

When 20th Century Fox lost the music rights for Irving Berlin's score to Call Me Madam, the film was withdrawn from public exhibition for twenty years. Consequently, it is not as well known as other big production musicals of the day, such as The Band Wagon, Kiss Me, Kate and Brigadoon, though it can comfortably stand alongside these better-remembered films. Thankfully, it resurfaced on DVD in 2004, and can now reclaim its place among the finest musicals of the 1950's.

The Rabbit of Seville (1950)

Bugs Bunny as The Rabbit of Seville

When discussing the musicals of the 40's and 50's, it is easy to forget that over at Warner Brothers, a group of talent led by Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, Carl Stalling, and Mel Blanc, among others, was busy making some of the finest musical shorts of the day. The Rabbit of Seville is one of two Bugs Bunny shorts from the 1950's (along with 1957's What's Opera, Doc?) which combine animated slapstick comedy with traditional operatic forms and music in a way that both highlights their similarities, and minimizes their differences. It is not so much that opera has been made to look like a child's cartoon, rather than Jones and team are showing us how similar the two forms already were.

Thrill of a Romance (1945)

Esther Williams, "America's Mermaid"

It is a little known fact that between the years of 1942 and 1955, MGM employed a highly paid executive think tank, composed of all the relevant experts in the fields of music, psychology, women's fashion, and aquatics. Their sole task, to concoct interesting and original plots revolving around the eternal, unfailing premise of Esther Williams in a bathing suit. Boy, they had some doozies. While in her early films she generally played a woman who simply liked to swim, by the late 40's her roles got more and more elaborate, usually with Williams playing some form of underwater dancer at one of the many nightclubs with swimming pools that proliferated in the 40's. She was also cast in a biopic of famed swim star Annette Kellerman (perhaps best known for her introduction of the one-piece bathing suit to America); she played a sea goddess, crossed the English Channel with Tom and Jerry, and headed up an all-water ski Busby Berkeley chorus line.

Honolulu (1939)

Eleanor Powell and Robert Young

Believe me, the last thing I want to do is say a harsh word about any of the paltry handful of films left to us by the great Eleanor Powell. When she retired in her prime in 1944 to get married, a terrible blow was dealt to the world of movie musicals, and I'm not sure MGM ever really recovered (although signing Ann Miller in 1948 was a solid step in the right direction). She matched an endearing girl next door charm with just a touch of Hollywood glamor and the fastest damned footwork you've ever seen. She starred in only nine films, plus a couple of supporting roles, far too few for a woman of her tremendous talent. While several of these films, such as Born to Dance and all three Broadway Melody titles, rank among the finest musicals ever made, others just don't make the cut.

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)

Although Fred Astaire would never again reach the same level of charm and appeal with another partner as he did with Ginger Rogers in the 1930's, he certainly gave it a good run all the same. After moving from RKO to MGM in 1939, Astaire partnered with some of the finest dancers in the business, although after Ginger he never worked with the same girl for more than two films. Astaire's list of leading ladies in the 40's and 50's reads like a role call of the most talented and glamorous actresses in Hollywood, and, naturally, the best dancers: Judy Garland, Ann Miller, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Jane Powell, Vera-Ellen, Leslie Caron, Audrey Hepburn, Paulette Goddard, and my personal favorite: Eleanor Powell, in Broadway Melody of 1940.

For Me and My Gal (1942)

Judy Garland as Jo Hayden

Magic. It doesn’t matter how many times I watch For Me and My Gal; from the first chord of the title song I’m hooked. Gene Kelly is a two-bit comic vaudeville dancer, who has decided that a double act with Judy Garland is his ticket to fame and fortune. The fact that she is already part of a team doesn’t bother him much. “You had me pegged,” he tells her, “I’m never gonna win any blue ribbons for being a nice guy.” He’s right, too. Kelly’s character proves time and again in this film that he is pretty much a worthless cad. Fortunately, Kelly himself is likable enough to pull it off, so we root for him anyway.