I adore Fred Astaire, so I'm a bit embarrassed to report that I saw "Royal Wedding" today for the first time. While watching, I remembered that I had an idea a while ago to compare Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. The same year "Royal Wedding" came out, Gene Kelly presented "An American in Paris", which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year, and is one of my least favorite best picture winners. There's just something about Gene Kelly that I don't like. He seems arrogant and a know-it-all, perhaps a bit narcissistic. In an interview with TCM's Robert Osborne, Liza Minnelli was asked to compare the two dancers, since she grew up on the MGM lot. I love her description. She stated that, when you watch Gene Kelly dance, you come away with the feeling that it was a wonderful dance number, impeccably produced; when you watch Fred Astaire, you feel like he is making it up as he goes along. What a great way to describe Fred. That is exactly how I feel about every dance number I've seen him perform. He can also play a cad, a totally unlikable character, and still have you smiling with his dance numbers. I'm thinking of "Holiday Inn", where his character treats Bing Crosby's character horribly, stealing every woman Bing cares about, but then does a 4th of July tap dance with firecrackers that just blows everyone away!
In "Royal Wedding", Fred dances with a coat rack and defies gravity by dancing around his hotel room vertically. In "An American in Paris", Gene performs a 20-minute ballet at the end of the movie that's one of the most boring things I have ever seen. It doesn't really have anything to do with the story line ... he wanted to do the ballet, so he had to come up with a story that would draw the audience in to see the ballet. I don't believe the story is Oscar worthy.
Another great movie featuring Fred Astaire, when he was feeling washed up as a performer, is "The Band Wagon". In this film, Fred starts off with a great tap number and has a beautiful dance with Cyd Charisse, to "Dancing in the Dark".If you even remotely like musicals, you must check out a few Fred Astaire movies. Be sure to include a couple of films he did with Ginger Rogers ... I'll talk about her some other time.
