Can you imagine a film script that has Fred Astaire falling for the daughter of Sir Winston Churchill? Well took no further than this 1951 M-G-M musical -the background to which itself might be the script for a musical/Hollywood/comedy drama.
Set around the wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Philip Mountbatten in 1951, Fred Astaire and Jane Powell play a successful Broadway brother and sister dance act asked to play London.
Powell falls for a handsome English Lord (Peter Lawford) while Astaire falls for Sarah Churchill. With some minor variations that's the plot. But let's not worry too much about that at present.
Jane Powell's roll was originally played by June Allison and directed by Charles Walters. A few days into shooting Allison discovered she was pregnant. In the time taken to find a replacement (Judy Garland), Walters moved on to another project to eventually be replaced by Stanley Donen making his first solo directorial debut.
Unfortunately Judy Garland's behaviour (delaying and missing rehearsals and causing general disruptions) led her to be reluctantly sacked from the project to be replaced (by producer Arthur Freed) with Jane Powell - whew! Oh wait, that's not quite the complete story, Sarah Churchill's music hall dancer roll was originally offered to Moira "Red Shoes" Shearer who was unavailable!
Well forget the above and the straight actual plot - this is a musical, when did they, except on very rare occasions, have plots that stand scrutiny? As a musical it's fine. Not quite a top drawer event, but good nevertheless with plenty of good routines and music.
It produced at least one huge hit (for Jane Powell) with "Too Late Now". Other numbers include the fabulous *dance-on-ceiling extravaganza by Astaire (the basic mechanics of which were used again to great effect in "2001 - A Space Odyssey"), the celebrated "You're The Whole World To Me' (the melody of which I understand was first heard as "I Want To Be A Minstrel Man" in Gorshwyn's "Kid Millions in 1935), "Sunday Jumps" (in which Astaire does an imaginative dance with a hat stand), "How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You when You Know I've Been A Liar ALL My Life?", "Every Night At Seven", "Open Your Eyes", "The Happiest Day Of My Life", "I Left My Hat In Haiti" and "What A Lovely Day For A Wedding".
Royal Wedding (GB: "Wedding Bells") was also one of the top annual moneymaking films of the year, sharing this distinction with "Show Boat", "An American In Paris", "The Great Caruso", "At War With The Army", "Here Come The Groom" and "On Moonlight Bay".
The print, as with "Anchors Aweigh" is from the Ken Films era and the quality is comparable to "Anchors". The print is sharp with quite good colour and sound.
This reasonably entertaining film has, in addition to the main cast, Keenan Wynn in the duet role as two brothers, one who has the most English of English accents and James Finlayson and Mae Clark - just four more reasons for popping it in your collection. Limited availability.
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Distributed by: Derann
Films. |
The above review was printed in Super Eight Film Review |
* The sequence Dancing On The Ceiling was also released as an extract by Derann Films.
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002