|
OUT OF LEFT FIELD |
 |
 Astaire, left, and Kelly in Heaven in their only formal dance number together, "The Babbit and the Bromide," from MGM's 1946 "Ziegfeld Follies." Ironically, Astaire had danced the number on the stage with his sister Adele before he ever made a movie. |
A Night of Great Dancing
With Astaire and Kelly
of TheColumnists.com
At first I was surprised to read in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the title of an upcoming debate recently at the University of Pennsylvania: “Fred Astaire vs. Gene Kelly.” My first thought was that Astaire was in a class by himself and that not even Kelly rated a place alongside him in the pantheon of dancers.
So, I was particularly interested in what the Kelly advocate would say. He was Andrew Douglas, the education director at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute just outside of Philadelphia. Speaking for Astaire was Paula Cohen, a Drexel U. professor of literature who has written some delightful novels taking off on Jane Austen. (Full disclosure; Cohen is my second cousin).
The event sponsored by the Institute of Contemporary Art at International House was not an actual debate. Douglas-Kelly spoke first, then Cohen-Astaire, after which the audience watched their movies, Astaire’s “Top Hat” followed by Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain.”
Douglas-Kelly mentioned that Kelly is best known for a series of Technicolor musicals he made with producer Arthur Freed’s unit at MGM in the late 1940s and ‘50s. Among these were:
.
“The Pirate” (1948) based on the music of Cole Porter.
. “On
the Town “(1949), based on the music of Leonard Bernstein.
. “An
American in Paris” (1951), based on the music of George
and Ira Gershwin.
. “Brigadoon”
(1954), based on the Lerner and Lowe Broadway musical.
(Among the more than 40 movies Astaire made were “The Gay Divorcee,” “Swing Time,” “Blue Skies” and “The Bandwagon.” Astaire and Kelly danced together in only one movie, “The Ziegfeld Follies,” unless you want to count "That's Entertainment, Part Two," in which they managed a few steps together.)
Douglas said, “More than any individual Kelly made modern dance-infused ballet palatable to mainstream audiences.…in blurring the lines between art and sport, dance skill and athletic prowess, he was broadening the appeal of both pastimes.”
He said that by “removing the barriers of identity and class Kelly democratized the form. He did so quite clearly in “The Pirate” by insisting that the [black] Nicholas Brothers partner with him for a prominent number despite warnings it would cost the film money in some parts of the South.”
Cohen-Astaire said, “I would argue for Fred Astaire’s superiority by claiming that he was not merely a dancer--or rather that his dance was part of a larger set of gifts encompassed by his talent as a musician…If you watch Astaire play, you see that the playing is so physical, so full of energetic zest, that it’s as though he is dancing on the keys--something that he in fact literally does in his 1950 film, “Let’s Dance.”
Astaire was born in 1899 and died in 1987. Kelly was born 13 years later and died in 1996. Kelly, to use a golf analogy, could go to school off Astaire. He chose to be a more physical dancer. Douglas quoted Kelly saying, “I didn’t want to move or act like a rich man. I wanted to dance in a pair of jeans. I wanted to dance like the man in the streets.” And there was John Updike’s line that Kelly is “white socks,” while Astaire is “white tie.”
 |
 |
At left, Fred Astaire with his most famous dance partner, Ginger Rogers; At right, Gene Kelly with Leslie Caron. Astaire danced with Caron in "Daddy Long Legs," but Kelly never danced on screen with Rogers. They shared other partners, though, including Cyd Charisse and Rita Hayworth.
Douglas said “Singin’ in the Rain” is “widely hailed as the greatest of all screen musicals.” Cohen said, “Astaire’s films manage to be more deeply romantic, more about a man and a woman connecting in a profound and thrilling way….’Top Hat’ is among the greatest examples of his partnership with Ginger Rogers [his greatest partner]. You see the tenderness he is capable of expressing in relationships in the early ‘No Strings’ number in the film, where, after first angering Rogers with his exuberant dancing, he makes amends by dancing her to sleep on a sandy floor.”
Douglas extolled Kelly’s 17-minute dance sequence in “An American in Paris” …the choreography of Kelly and Donald O’Connor in “Singin’ in the Rain.” He said, “You can almost picture Kelly and O’Connor on skates, making their way down the ice.”
Cohen talked of “Astaire’s charm-the ineffable aspect of his superiority, and the final residue of his musicality. David Selznick famously wrote after watching Astaire’s screen test for RKO, ‘I feel in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test.’
“Charm,” Cohen said, “is a kind of existential perfect pitch. It makes being in the world seem a happy accident. Charm is the music of the soul. Astaire had it.”
Cohen provided one analogy that bothered me. She said, “There’s the Willie Mays/Joe DiMaggio comparison: Kelly made the hard ones look hard; Astaire made the hard ones look easy.”
She has a point, I suppose, but as an old New York Giants fan, I don’t see it quite that way. DiMaggio made it look easy, yes, but Mays made it look like fun. I would go for another analogy: the grace and ease of Sugar Ray Robinson as opposed to the physicality of Jake LaMotta.
I thought both speakers made good academic-tinged arguments. In my own case it comes down to this: if I am surfing late-night TV on Turner Classic Movies and I come across an Astaire film, I will invariably stay with the film until I have watched one of the dance numbers. If Kelly comes up, I will not pause to watch, not even the dancing-in-the-rain scene in “Singin’ in the Rain”-- which is probably the most shown of all movie dance sequences.
I believe Cohen won the evening with this anecdote:
Astaire, Kelly and Gower Champion, another outstanding dancer, though not of the Astaire-Kelly caliber, were sharing a limousine to a studio. On the way a bridge collapsed, barring their way.
Astaire said, “We’re dancers. We’ll dance across.” He then nimbly danced across the surface of the water. Kelly said, “I can do that” and also skimmed across the surface of the water.
Champion tried to do the same. But he fell into the water. He tried it again and again and again. Each time he fell into the water.
Finally, Kelly turned to Astaire and said, “Do you think we should tell him where the stones are?”
Astaire replied, “What stones?”
©2009 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Nov. 30, 2009.
TO ACCESS STAN ISAACS' ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: ISAACS ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Stan Isaacs. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Stan's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|