Two of the greatest exponents  of the famed Hollywood musical, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, separated by the duration of a generation, joined by the force of a common passion. Marilyn Ferdinand explores.

Among devotees of the Hollywood musical, the question often arises: “Who do you like better—Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly?” As foremost among the triple-threat stars of classic Hollywood (acting/singing/dancing), Astaire and Kelly present two decidedly different styles of dance, the talent with which both are most closely associated. Astaire’s was a lighter-than-air, elongated form gliding across the floor with a girl in his arms or tap dancing with a wide assortment of props. Kelly’s contrasting balletic and athletic styles made him a muscular presence whether dancing alone, with a partner, or with an entire ensemble.

The differences between these two performers, however, come down to more than a matter of style. Astaire, born in 1899, first started plying his trade on the stage, primarily in vaudeville and musical revues, when he was a child. Kelly, born in 1912, was in his 20s before he committed to the entertainment industry—first as a dance teacher in his own studio and then as a stage and nightclub performer. Kelly’s first film, a starring role, was in For Me and My Gal (1942) opposite Judy Garland. Astaire’s first film, in a supporting role, was in 1933’s  Flying Down to Rio, which also marked his first teaming with Ginger Rogers, with whom he would dance in 10 pictures. The difference in professional background, but more importantly, the generational difference between these two masters—both well-known perfectionists with major input into their mature films—shows up in their film craftsmanship and their response to changes in the musical form itself.

Theatrical roots of movie musicals

In the 19th century, before the advent of motion pictures, audiences consumed stage entertainment. Theatrical productions normally consisted of high-minded melodramas or raucous burlesques, as well as the classics. The dance hall was the venue for popular music, as was vaudeville, a form of variety show that pitched dozens of acts with discrete specialties onto a single playbill. This hodgepodge of popular entertainment informed the early filmmakers who created the first musical movies. Marrying a story to a song-and-dance routine did not come as naturally as it might seem, and given the ridicule musicals receive even today for unrealistically having characters break into song seemingly at the drop of a hat, perhaps it was a wise instinct for early movie makers to center many musicals in stories about show business.

The earliest movie musicals are almost unwatchable today because they are little more than stage revues filmed by a mainly static camera. As the movie musical began to develop, stories and production numbers were placed side by side with very little integration. In the transitional musicals created in part by dance director Busby Berkeley, a melodrama would comprise the middle of the film, with bookended dance fantasies that used the vastness of the sound stage and crane shots to create kaleidoscopic musical numbers that were always eye-poppingly entertaining and that created self-contained narratives. For example, “Remember My Forgotten Man” in Gold Diggers of 1933 fits the Depression-era theme of the Broadway show around which the fortunes of the film’s characters revolve; these lavish confections comprise standalone short films, much like a vaudeville act.

Fred Astaire became a star in the 1930s. Of the 11 films he made during the 30s, eight of them have him fully or tangentially involved in show business. He insisted that his whole body be photographed in his dance routines, an innovation for a movie industry that was still figuring out how to film the fluid dynamics of dance, but also an insistence on getting what he used to get on stage—the unobstructed, untruncated attention of the audience. He also availed himself of the benefits of trick photography, using it to shadow-dance with himself in the “Bojangles of Harlem” number in Swing Time (1936). Astaire was attracted to choreography that would show off his ingenuity, and he frequently used props, like carnival games and coat racks, to put that vaudevillian “wow” factor into his dance routines. Significantly, Astaire would turn to gimmickry throughout his film career, for example, in his dancing-on-the-ceiling number “You’re Everything to Me” in 1951’s Royal Wedding. He also would continue to appear in a great many show-biz stories.

Gene Kelly’s film debut came one year before the earth quaked in musical theatre. Oklahoma, which opened on Broadway March 31, 1943, was the first musical to fully integrate its libretto with its script. Songs and dance numbers did not put the brakes on the story or relate to a theatrical show that gave the film an excuse for breaking into song and dance, but rather, seamlessly forwarded the action, provided foreshadowing, suggested states of mind, and resolved plot points. Motion pictures did not react immediately to this sea change in the narrative possibilities of music and dance, and Kelly’s first few musical films adhered to the show-business plots that were de rigueur</ during the 1930s. But in 1945, Kelly costarred in Anchors Aweigh, the first musical in which his character, a sailor on leave in Los Angeles, was not in show business. This film was a solidly integrated book-and-music musical, perhaps too solidly so, as its excessive length and somewhat cumbersome execution showed Hollywood’s inexperience with this new form.

In a cursory overview of the films Kelly and Astaire appeared in from 1942, the year before Oklahoma!, to Kelly’s defining film and the apex of movie musicals, <i>Singin’ in the Rain (1952), both stars played the following roles:

Astaire

You Were Never Lovelier – Dancer

Holiday Inn – Dancer

The Sky’s the Limit – WWII pilot

Ziegfeld Follies – Himself in a musical revue

Yolanda and the Thief – Con man

Blue Skies – Dancer and radio host

Easter Parade – Dancer

The Barkleys of Broadway – Dancer

Three Little Words – Songwriter

Let’s Dance – Dancer

Royal Wedding – Dancer

The Belle of New York – Playboy

Kelly

Du Barry Was a Lady- dual role of dancer and, in a dream sequence, freedom fighter in the time of Louis XV of France

Pilot #5 (nonmusical) – WWII fighter pilot

Thousands Cheer (nonmusical) – Army private

The Cross of Lorraine (nonmusical) – Soldier

Cover Girl – Dancer

Christmas Holiday (nonmusical) – Millionaire

Anchors Aweigh -Sailor

Ziegfeld Follies – A gentleman in a musical revue

Living in a Big Way – Ex-GIThe Pirate – Pirate

The Three Musketeers – Elite swordsman

Take Me Out to the Ballgame – Baseball player

On the Town- Sailor

Black Hand (nonmusical) – Italian immigrant

Summer Stock – Broadway producer

An American in Paris – Painter

It’s a Big Country – Greek American

Singin’ in the Rain – Actor

Astaire, aged out of the more vigorous roles Kelly, as a real GI, could play, but also defined by an earlier era, continued in musicals with show-business themes. Kelly, a modern performer not bound by the specialty-act mentality that ruled vaudeville, expanded his repertoire not only within the types of characters he played, but also by appearing in nonmusical films. Kelly was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the change ushered in by Oklahoma!; with Singin’ in the Rain, he turned the show-business movie musical on its head, incorporating songs that were not expressly written for the film—a common practice for years—in a way that would create psychological depth and plot development. The title song is the epitome of this shift, as Kelly takes a tune written in the late 1920s and uses it to create an unforgettable vision of a man who has just fallen in love:

By the time Singin’ in the Rain hit screens, film audiences were primed for more realistic musicals. Fred Astaire eulogized the song-and-dance man in his own masterpiece of the 1950s, the show-biz musical  The Band Wagon (1953), with this line of dialogue, “Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen, Egyptian mummies, extinct reptiles, and Tony Hunter, the grand old man of the dance!”

Conclusion

The question of whether one prefers Astaire or Kelly is much more involved than a matter of style. Audiences moving toward psychological truth wanted and demanded musicals that did more than entertain. As intense realism infused American motion pictures from the 1950s onward, even psychologically integrated songs and dances were no longer acceptable, and the movie musical went into eclipse. One notable exception is the Oscar-winning picture for 2002,  Chicago, a parody of show-business musicals that revels in the unreality of its musical numbers by turning them into psychological portraits. With this highly expressionistic musical capturing the imagination of the movie-going public, the reasons for the death of the type of movie musical in which Astaire and Kelly were kings is more than clear.

Marilyn Ferdinand is the proprietor of Ferdy on Films, etc. (www.ferdyonfilms.com), a film review and commentary blog since December 2005.

Tags: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Hollywood musicals

Posted By Marilyn Ferdinand | Sunday, October 11th, 2009 | Filed under Cover Story