THE CHEYENNE SOCIAL CLUB isn’t a great movie, but it’s not a bad one, either. It couldn’t be; not with all that talent in front of and behind the cameras. You’ve got two legendary leads, James Stewart and Henry Fonda , Oscar winner Shirley Jones, Gene Kelly in the director’s chair, and John Wayne’s favorite cinematographer William Clothier . Still, the film, while amusing, should’ve been so much better.
The story’s fairy simple: two old Texas cowhands, John O’Hanlon (Stewart) and Harley Sullivan (Fonda) are plying their trade when John receives a letter. Seems John’s brother has died and left him an inheritance – The Cheyenne Social Club in Cheyenne, Wyoming. John and his old pal head north, and it turns out The Cheyenne Social Club is a cathouse, run by Madame Jenny (Jones), and she and the girls warmly greet the perplexed duo. Uptight John, who’s always wanted to…
Bright, bold, and bouncy, COVER GIRL was a breakthrough film for both Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. Sultry, redheaded Rita had been kicking around Hollywood for ten years before Columbia Pictures gave her this star-making vehicle, while Kelly, on loan from MGM, was given free rein to create the memorable dance sequences. Throw in the comedic talents of Phil Silvers and Eve Arden , plus a bevy of beauties and songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, and you have what very well may be the quintessential 40’s musical.
Rusty Parker (Rita) is a hoofer at Danny McGuire’s (Kelly) joint in Brooklyn (where else?). She enters a contest sponsored by Vanity Magazine to find a new cover girl for their 50th anniversary issue. Editor John Coudair ( Otto Kruger ) spots her and is reminded of the girl he once loved and lost (who turns out to have been…
Continuing today’s salute to St. Patrick and all things Irish, how about Mrs. Kelly’s baby boy Gene dancing up a storm to “The Hat Me Dear Old Father Wore” from the 1949 musical TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME (which you can read about here). Does it get anymore Irish than this?
(Post-election blues got you depressed? Cheer up, buttercup, here’s a movie musical guaranteed to lift your sagging spirits!)
Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra’s first screen pairing was ANCHORS AWEIGH, a fun-filled musical with a Hollywood backdrop that’s important in film history for a number of reasons: it gave Kelly his first chance to create his own dance routines for an entire film, it’s Sinatra’s first top-billed role (he was red-hot at the time), it gives viewers a glimpse of the MGM backlot in the Fabulous 40’s, and it features the iconic live action/animation dance between Kelly and Jerry the Mouse (of TOM & JERRY fame). It’s a showcase of Hollywood movie magic, and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Actor (Kelly), Color Cinematography (Charles P. Boyle), and Song (Jule Styne & Sammy Cahn’s ” I Fall in Love Too Easily”), winning for George Stoll’s Best Original…
The National Pastime is just a frame for TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME to hang its picture in. That’s okay though, because producer Arthur Freed and the MGM Musical Dream Factory put together a rollicking, colorful romp with turn of the (20th) century baseball as an excuse to let Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra , Esther Williams, Betty Garrett, and company razzle-dazzle us with plenty of songs, dancing, romancing, and comedy.
There’s not much of a plot in this outing. The World Champion Wolves are at spring training, awaiting the arrival of star diamond duo Eddie O’Brien and Denny Ryan, who’re off on a vaudeville tour. Eddie (Kelly) is a skirt chaser with Broadway dreams, while Denny’s (Sinatra) a shy, geeky guy who lives and breathes baseball. They get to camp just in time to hear the Wolves’ owner has died and left the club to his only relative, K.C. Higgins (Williams), who…
(For those following at home, Lisa is attempting to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing 38 films by this Friday. Will she make it? Keep following the site to find out!)
I can’t believe it took me this long to see the Oscar-winning 1951 film, An American In Paris. Seriously, I love dancing. I love Paris. I love Gene Kelly. Though this film was made decades before I was born, it still feels like it was literally made for me. And yet, until last night, I had never seen it. Thank God for TCM (and thank God for the DVR that I used to record the movie when it aired on TCM).
Gene Kelly plays Jerry Mulligan, an American veteran of World War II who, now that he is out of the army, is making his living as a painter and living in Paris. (The real Paris is only seen in a few establishing shots. Most of the film takes place on sets that were clearly designed to look more theatrical than realistic. This is the Paris of our most romantic fantasies.) Jerry’s roommate is Adam (Oscar Levant), a pianist who fantasizes about playing before a huge audience.
When the movie begins, Jerry gets his first patron, the wealthy and lonely Milo Roberts (Nina Foch). Though Milo is in love with Jerry, Jerry falls in love with an innocent French girl, Lise Bouvier (Leslie Caron). Although Lise falls in love with Jerry, she feels obligated to marry French singer Henri (Georges Guetary) because Henri helped to keep her safe during the Nazi occupation. And, of course, Henri is friends with Adam who is the roommate of Jerry who is in love with Lise who is engaged…
It sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is. If anything the plot of An American In Paris is too simple. (Just compare An American In Paris to Singin’ In The Rain.) But ultimately, An American In Paris is not about the story. It’s about George Gershwin’s music and Gene Kelly’s dancing. It’s a triumph of pure style. It was said that Fred Astaire made love through dancing and that’s even more true of Gene Kelly, who is literally a force of masculine nature in this film. So impressive was his choreography that it received a special, noncompetitive Oscar.
Check some of this out:
It all eventually ends with the incredible 17-minute The American In Paris Ballet, which sees Gene Kelly and Leslie Carson dancing through a series of sets that were modeled on Impressionist paintings. It’s one of those great movie moments that simply has to be seen.
How impressed were the members of the Academy with An American In Paris? They were impressed enough to name it the best film of 1951. I don’t know if I would go that far because I’ve seen both A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place In The Sun. (And An American In Paris‘s victory is considered to be one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history.) But, with all that said, An American In Paris is still an incredibly enjoyable film to watch.
Hi, everyone! Well, as you read this, I am currently on vacation! That’s right — I put off my vacation for the entire summer because I had a job writing about Big Brother for the Big Brother Blog. Now that the show is over, I am officially on vacation for the next two weeks!
But don’t worry! Just because I’m going to be busy exploring this wonderful world of ours for the next two weeks, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t already written and scheduled several posts to keep everyone amused over the next couple of days!
Starting on October 1st, it’ll be our annual horror month here on the Shattered Lens. But, until that day, allow me to share a few dance scenes that I love and I hope that you’ll love them too!
Let’s get things started with one of my all-time favorites, Gene Kelly ad Cyd Charisse dancing in the Broadway Melody scene from 1952’s Singing in the Rain!
Lisa Marie were talking tonight and the conversation went from her hurting herself dancing to our love of musical films. Yeah, our minds tend to go off on such predictable tangents. Well, for us at least it makes sense I don’t know about the rest of you people.
One such musical that we both seem to agree on was our love for the Gene Kelly-directed and starred musical film classic, Singin’ In The Rain. It’s from this musical that the latest “Scenes I Love” comes from. It’s a sequence that’s become an icon of a bygone era of Hollywood. Sure, there’s been musical films even up to the last year or so, but never in the same style, extravagance and joy shown in the musical films of the Freed-era of the 50’s and the following Golden Age of the 60’s.
It’s Gene Kelly singing the signature title song while dancing in the rain. There’s not much else to say other than it’s a scene that even the most cynical and elitist film snob can’t deny for it’s utter joy.
Through the Shattered Lens 