TS: Fred Astaire vs. Gene Kelly

also, i haven't seen all that many fred astaire films (except for that rankin-bass xmas thing he did voice-over for).

All of my favorite musicals are in color. Singing in the Rain, of course, and Guys and Dolls, and Oklahoma! (the "Poor Jud Is Dead" number is high comedy), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (in which the plot is high ironic comedy, nowadays at least, and the numbers are amazing), and... really, if you don't count the Marx Brothers musical numbers, I can't think of anything in black and white that really does it for me, save Fred and Ginger.

But then there's The Band Wagon--truly glorious, and again, Astaire in color.

TS: Cyd Charisse vs. Leslie Caron

Astaire danced on the ceiling.

yeah, like really well-developed and sh*t

Counterargument is Xanadu, I should note. ;-)

Speaking of Leslie Caron, did anyone see the Astaire flick "Daddy Long Legs?" Was anyone else grossed out that Fred was her love interest considering she thought of him as her Sugar "Daddy"/father figure, and she was in her early 20s while Fred was almost 60? Gross!!

Gene Kelly, on the other hand, is fucking hot, and well worth getting excited about.

Cyd Charisse is the hottest chick eva.

Cyd Charisse however reigns supreme (and much as I love Leslie Caron I always wish Cyd had been able to take the part in American in Paris as originally planned)

What do we think of Debbie Reynolds?

I totally agree. I've seen a clip of this in "That's Entertainment". I remember at some point he's running up a plank that's supposed to be the roof of the house.

Luckiest woman alive, and she got to snag Eddie Fisher, too....for five seconds.

After much thought I'm going to say...Fred. Kelly is a little too boisterous for me, and besides, Fred sings "The Way You Look Tonight" in Swing Time--that "Oh, but you're lovely!" part is the greatest thing ever.

No kidding. I really do.

Granted, it's a street named after Danny Kaye, but still, I can truthfully claim to live near Danny Kaye.

*ahem* But anyway, the original question (Fred Astaire vs. Gene Kelly) is too hard to figure out, so I refuse to answer. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmWljCI_4Ok

this is actually totally gorgeous if you watch it full screen.

Kelly is King! In Kelly’s solos, every movement flows with grace and power; it is wondrous to watch.

i have some trouble with gene kelly's plastered-on smile. sometimes he does really funny things with it (as in singin in the rain), other times it veers toward ann miller territory.

As a man I needn't concern myself with Gene and Fred's comparative hotness.

Astaire had insouciance to burn; he could make stale dialogue seem arch and witty; he could deliver a song with deceptive aplomb. Kelly always relied on a full frontal assault. Besides, Fred had Edward Everett Horton as his secret weapon!

Judging by my movie watching behavior I always seem to prefer Fred's lighter approach. I've rewatched Astaire's 1930s RKO movies far more often than anything Kelly did, with the possible exception of Singing in the Rain.

brazen heteronormativity!

between kelly/astaire, kelly all day for me, but charisse oh boy charisse

As I said, for me there is no contest between Astaire and Kelly. Kelly all the way. Kelly is more graceful and more exciting as a dancer. And Kelly's smile! In his screen debut Pauline Kael said that, "He has a smile that could melt a stone." Always, a great smile!

amateur!st, have you seen For Me & My Gal? Gene Kelly plays a real heel throughout most of it, making great use of that smile. He's "enlightened" by the end of it, but there's a lot of quality time with Kelly being just plain sleazy.

yes i have. i like it; maybe a little overlong? but i like the musical numbers, and it's the fact that there are so many that make it too long.

Astaire by quite a bit.

Gene Kelley was my first crush before i even knew what it was to have a crush. i just knew that i was somehow very interested in looking at him! i wasn't even confused by it at that time. the confusion came much, much later.

Kelly centennial retro at Lincoln Center:

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/invitation-to-dance-gene-kelly-at-100

Spot the film with a title song by the Turtles.

http://genekellysbutt.tumblr.com/

That's the thing about Kelly, he's always wagging his ass in your face.

I much prefer Astaire as far as dancing, singing, acting and persona. I think they are very different with different styles and there's no need to choose, I just happen to much prefer Astaire.

I saw Singin In the Rain last night in a theater with someone who had never seen it before. She didn't say bad things about Gene Kelly, because there's very little bad to say. But she absolutely raved about Donald O'Connor. "Make 'Em Laugh" had her laughing until she had tears streaming down her face.

Kelly is damn good, but one of the best things about Singin In the Rain is that his character is a complete arrogant showboat, and so is he.

I will not, however, tolerate further aspersions cast against his ass or his use of it. It's one of the finest asses that has ever existed.

btw the answer to my Turtles question is A Guide for the Married Man, a Walter Matthau-Robert Morse adultery comedy (dir Kelly) I saw on TV about 30 years ago.

can i just

http://www.operagloves.com/Classicstars/CydCharisse/scanimage063b.jpg

It's not, Kenan, that he hasn't a fine ass. It's that he relies to much on its allure. Astaire is an incomparably more elegant dancer.

i don't necessarily think "elegance" (whatever that means to you) is the only or even the best standard by which to judge gene kelly.

^ this.

Gene Kelly is an athlete when he dances. He may not be as debonaire as Astaire, but he's tears up the hardwood in every number, and exudes such joy and exuberance. I can't think of a Gene Kelly dance number that he doesn't throw himself over the cliff into, body and soul.

You's right, though. It's not about his ass. His ass is but one small piece of what's great about him. He's such an intensely PHYSICAL dancer. It it were a performance of Hamlet, Astaire would be Olivier, and Kelly would be Mel Gibson. They're both great. Bot one whispers, and the other roars.

not sure that's a complimentary parallel?

I love Mel Gibson's Hamlet, and won't apologize for it.

Fred Astaire is pre-war and Gene Kelly is post-war

Elaborate.

I guess we didn't acknowledge that Thursday was GK's centennial.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/08/born-100-years-ago-today-mr-gene-kelly.html

I have always been way more into Kelly but I watched Easter Parade for the first time last night, and was pretty blown away. That performance of Steppin' Out With My Baby was next-level beautiful. Hard to believe he was almost 50 at the time, jeez.

I think maybe I've changed my mind, Astaire now.

Can anyone confirm if Ghost Story is interesting-bad, and thus possibly worth a look, or just bad-bad?

never saw it but i don't see many attempts at rehabbing it.

otoh i am about to do a 2nd viewing of The Towering Inferno 40 oyears after my first.

I took a screenwriting course years ago, and one of the other students elected to make his final project (which, aside from a midterm exam and weekly quizzes, was the only assignment in the class) a new adaptation of Ghost Story.

He didn't finish.

And that's my Ghost Story story.

Related: I rescreened The Bandwagon last week. Better than "still great".

I never thought I'd see full frontal male nudity and Fred Astaire in the same movie but then I saw Ghost Story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_f16t1JGHo

I, for one, enjoyed Ghost Story when it first came out, but that is probably because I read absolutely nothing about it in advance, so didn't have to wait through 1/3 of the movie to get past the spoilers like I did with, say, Kramer vs. Kramer. But never saw it again, so who knows.

re-seeing It’s Always Fair Weather last week, i can't say it's not the best of the Kelly-Donen films. get on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgAmXb5UZlY

it's mostly a downbeat film, sort of The Best Years of Our Lives as a musical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sv1TfwVJYo

will get on it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnrbdNjf-aw
Some funky music starts around 3:30 and Fred is compelled to dance.

Damn! At that age!

More than a few JB-type moves in there.

Heard on a podcast somewhere that him and Michael Jackson would do Soul Train dances together for fun.

Complete turnaround on this- now I think Astaire far superior

Always worth discussion tho

Welcome to the club, deems. Our Fred has deceptively winning ways, by which he slowly burrows his way into your affections. As I noted earlier, he also has the great Edward Everett Horton to play against in his RKO classics, and Ginger Rogers was no slouch, either.

FRED AND GINGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my first favorite movies. incidentally i just saw Ginger in STAGE DOOR which was amazing (+Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller).

Yeah prompted by shall we dance yesterday

omg so good

Astaire-Rogers retro this weekend in NYC

Robin Wood, 1979:

Hermes Pan is (apart from the two stars) the most consistent figure through the series, usually with some such credit as “Ensembles staged by….” He and Astaire collaborated on the solos and duets, Astaire being largely his own choreographer; according to (Arlene) Croce, the crucial aesthetic decision to shoot each Astaire-Rogers number whenever possible in a single unbroken take was Astaire’s....

I want now to consider a single number from Swing Time (and that not even a dance number): “The Way You Look Tonight.” The whole mythic complex that Astaire and Rogers embody is adequately represented by that scene—always provided one doesn’t lose sight of the extension given to that complex by dance.

First, we must note in passing—though this is secondary and almost incidental—that we have here a cinema shot through with racism and sexism.

Racism: The end of the number leads straight into an alternative public rendering of the song by Ricardo, the bandleader who is also in love with Rogers. The false, phony, smarmy, publicly displayed romanticism of Ricardo is contrasted with the “genuine” romanticism of Astaire—the latter carrying multiple connotations of casualness, everydayness, lack of affectation, the ordinary guy in love with the ordinary gal. In other words, the signifiers of democratic Americanness are set against the signifiers of an oily, insincere, and vaguely effeminate foreignness. In several of the films (Top Hat is the extreme case), Astaire’s genuinely feminine qualities (grace, delicacy, slender physique) are offset by a heavily emphasized effeminacy (campy mannerisms) in his rival. (I use the word “feminine” here to signify those qualities which our culture misguidedly regards as more appropriate to women than to men, and “effeminacy” to signify the *affectation* of such qualities).

Sexism: Beyond almost any other Hollywood team, Astaire and Rogers appear to express male-female equality, a balanced interdependence. But even here the equality is more apparent than real: one habitually speaks of Rogers as Astaire’s partner, rather than the other way round, which neatly sums up the ambiguity of the term “partnership” here. The plot of Swing Time has Rogers perpetually at the mercy of the dominant male: the policeman, her boss at the dancing academy, Ricardo. At the denouement she is helpless to bring about the right, preordained ending: it is Astaire who prevents her from marrying Ricardo. “The Way You Look Tonight” could only be sung by a man (unless by that supreme cultural transgressor, Billie Holiday). “Look” is the passive verb (= appear); the active “look” is the prerogative of the male, objectifying women (even if, as here, only in imagination—Astaire’s fantasy image of Rogers is humorously contrasted with her actual appearance at that moment).

In theory, American democracy means equality for all; on the level of ideology, this translates into “equality for all white American heterosexual males.” To raise these issues, it is only fair to add, is scarcely to make a specific criticism of Swing Time, which simply partakes unreflectingly of general characteristics of its culture. Nonetheless, these characteristics are clearly an aspect of the film’s functioning, hence demand notice. ...

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/always-gonna-dance/

Finding racism and sexism in Old Hollywood movies is depressingly easy. It shows up universally, in every genre: A movies, B movies, cartoons, even newsreels. Finding it in Astaire/Rogers (names given alphabetically) movies is like saying they the actors had lines and costumes.

well if you read the whole Wood piece, he's dissecting the nature of romance in their films. It's not being done for fashionable finger-wagging (esp since it was written almost 40 years ago).

Michael Sragow:

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/deep-focus-fred-astaire-ginger-rogers/

misread thread as Fred Armisen vs. Gene Kelly

Fred Talbot vs. Gene Brabender would be a good thread.

Apropos of nothing I'd like to say that having seen Top Hat and Swing Time back-to-back, Top Hat is so much better, it's not even close. At least between the musical numbers, Top Hat is full of wit whereas Swing Time constantly strains to be funny and isn't.

well ST is the only one by an auteur (George Stevens)

Ginger Rogers apparently preferred it for that reason (the Stevens touch). I think it needs Edward Everett Horton. Btw Happy Birthday to Ginger, who would have been 97.

I think you mean 107, bcz she was not 12 in Flying Down to Rio. :)

Listened to a podcast recently where it was suggested that Swing Time has an inflated rep because of the Oscar and, much later, being chosen by the film registry. Haven't seen it, but can confirm Top Hat is a total delight.

xp Yep. I get my centuries mixed up sometimes.

Some people find the Horton et al comedy dopey; it's not exactly Lubitsch. I saw Top Hat and Swing Time a lot on TV as a kid, not lately though.

I saw The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle this weekend, ie the only one where [redacted] DIES! There are a couple of real nice dances plus Edna May Oliver as their agent (!), but only one non-diegetic song I can recall, and it's much more like a Regular Movie than the prime stuff.

Carefree is perverse! F&G have maybe 3 dances? And he's a shrink who hypnotizes her into loving or hating him, depending on which act it is.

btw Swing Time is out on Criterion

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6424-swing-time-heaven-can-t-wait

The songs in Swing Time are p great, mostly, by Kern and Fields. Some of the comedy is strained, but I generally find Victor Moore and Helen Broderick amusing.

Much as I love his skills and his movies, there's no way this permanently-80-year-old-Don-Knotts looking motherfucker is ever a credible romantic lead

OK I'm watching Daddy Long Legs

love is not just for gorgeous people

On the whole I agree but Fred has this whole creepy dad vibe

This whole ballet scene is gorgeous tho

God its like watching Leslie Caron get pawed by a corpse

man, u r brutal

i guess stay away from The Towering Inferno

i have the same reaction to Silk Stockings tbf

Until last night if you had asked me if I had seen It's Always Fair Weather I would have said "sure" and rattled off a plot about three GI's. Except I was thinking of On The Town. IAFW has now gone to my favorite musicals of all time list.

I watched one of each last night before the films in question went off of TCM. At different points in their careers so might not be fair to compare.

TS Cover Girl vs. Silk Stockings.

Now pivoted to watching slocki favorite You Were Never Lovelier.

So much better than Silk Stockings.

One bright light in Silk Stockings is Barrie Chase, who basically steals the show during her bit in the ensemble number "Too Bad."

Fred handpicked her for that part and she later became his last dancer parter, on television, starting in the late fifties and through the sixties.
Gene on the other hand was part of the problem of why she didn't have more of a film career.

I wonder if Barrie Chase and Gene Shacove used to double date with Jay Sebring and Barbara Luna.#onethread

Apparently Robert Towne based Shampoo on Gene Shacove whom he would observe when hanging out with Barrie.

Guess I need to read that recent book about Chinatown.

One bright light in Silk Stockings is Barrie Chase, who basically steals the show during her bit in the ensemble number "Too Bad."

the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

There's already this Post by Josefa: the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

She's also apparently the last surviving cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

So at one point Barrie was dating Stanley Kubrick who introduced her to an acting teacher named Jeff Corey which led to her meeting Robert Towne, who dated her and wanted to marry her except that she went to Sweden and ended up marrying Swedish actor Jan Mälmsjo. Apparently a certain family scandal she related to Towne and his right hand man Edward Taylor ultimately led to a certain famous piece of dialogue in Chinatown.

the last Swedish person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

Heh. I messed up the umlaut. It's Jan Malmsjö.

Good piece on Garland, featuring Astaire and Kelly.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n23/bee-wilson/two-pins-and-a-lollipop

Good stuff, thanks

Now I wanna read that book about her by Lucien Freud's daughter.

So far I have only read other books in which she shows up, such as Johnny Mercer bios.

#Onethread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzKELVv3XPg