The Band Wagon

Perhaps the finest hour of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse together (although Silk Stockings comes a close second); the 'Dancing in the Dark' sequence says it all about both this film, and the two impeccably classy stars.

There are, of course, other highlights - Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray's acidic writers; Jack Buchanan's overblown producer; Fred's dance with the shoeshine boy, Le Roy Daniels; anything featuring Cyd Charisse - and those wonderful musical numbers, ranging from the anthem 'That's Entertainment' to the hilarious 'Triplets'.

'The Band Wagon' sends up the old film staple plot "putting on a show" and does it brilliantly, thanks to the crackling Comden/Green script. One of MGM's best musical efforts, hugely enjoyable.

The Bandwagon may yet prove to be the best of backstage musicals. It certainly is Fred Astaire at his best, probably his best film when he did not partner with Ginger Rogers.

Arthur Freed had great success with two previous song catalog musicals, An American In Paris with the music of George Gershwin and Singing in the Rain which utilized the songs that he wrote with Nacio Herb Brown. His source for this film were the songs of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz.

Dietz and Schwartz were an interesting pair of writers. Howard Dietz worked right at MGM in their publicity department. In fact it was Dietz who invented MGM's famous Leo the Lion. Song lyrics were in fact an avocation. Arthur Schwartz was a lawyer who just one day gave up the practice of law to devote himself to songwriting. They wrote some of the best music of the Thirties. After which Dietz devoted himself to publicizing MGM and Schwartz worked with other lyricists.

They wrote revues and this is where the source material for The Band Wagon comes from. In fact one of their revues was entitled The Band Wagon and starred none other than Fred and Adele Astaire. However the team got together again and wrote one new number for the film, the legendary That's Entertainment.

This The Band Wagon is not a revue. The plot concerns an aging musical film star Fred Astaire, talked into coming east by husband and wife writing team Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant. They want him to do a Broadway show to revive his career. They get Broadway wunderkind Jack Buchanan to direct it and later on classical ballet star Cyd Charisse to team with Astaire.

Buchanan is outrageously funny as he first tries to get them to do an avant garde musical about the Faust saga. When that flops, he's a good enough trooper to put ego aside and do some serious rewriting. And this man certainly has one Texas size ego. According to a book on the Arthur Freed musicals, Buchanan was in a lot of pain from arthritis and doing some of those numbers, especially Triplets was agony for him.

That was not the only problem on the set. It was a pretty grim place. Oscar Levant had suffered a heart attack before the production and he was ten times his normal hypochondriac self. And Fred Astaire's wife was terminally ill at home.

Cyd Charisse gauging the mood of her fellow cast members just kept to herself, but Nanette Fabray who is an exuberant personality did not go over well as Miss Perky. She recorded it was one of her worst film experiences.

Still this monumental triumph of a film got made. My favorite of all the numbers besides That's Entertainment is the soft shoe duet that Fred Astaire and Jack Buchanan partner in. It's all grace and elegance and so typically Fred Astaire. And it's probably what most people know of Jack Buchanan. Over in the United Kingdom he was a leading stage and screen performer. Until The Band Wagon was made he was probably best known to American audiences as Jeanette MacDonald's leading man in Monte Carlo.

Cyd Charisse dances divinely as she always does, never better than in the finale, The Girl Hunt Ballet with Astaire. I still wonder why she never starred at MGM with her husband Tony Martin.

When one is asked what the American musical film ideal is, one of the best answers you can give is The Band Wagon.

The Band Wagon is one of those films such as "The Maltese Falcon" and "Some Like It Hot", where just about everybody involved does the finest work of their career, both in front of and behind the camera. It is certainly the best collaboration between two legends of the musical genre, hoofer Fred Astaire and director Vincente Minnelli.

Astaire plays has-been Hollywood star Tony Hunter who hopes to revive his popularity by returning to Broadway in a new musical written by his friends Lester and Lily Marton (Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray in essence portraying the screenplay's authors, Adolph Green and Betty Comden).

The Martons have entrusted the staging of their show to wunderkind actor/director/producer Jeffrey Cordova (a combination caricature of Orson Welles and Jose Ferrer played by British song-and-dance man Jack Buchanan). Two of Cordova's inspirations include casting ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Charisse) as the female lead (good idea) and turning the show into a pretentious Faust allegory (really bad idea).

Tony and Gabrielle rub each other the wrong way - at first, and Cordova's joyless concoction lays an egg. But the cast vows to forge ahead and try again with another musical, this time with no mention of hell or the devil.

As clever as the script is, the main attractions are the exquisitely performed musical numbers (written by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz) including "That's Entertainment", "A Shine on Your Shoes","Dancing in the Dark" and the greatest grand finale in the history of movie musicals "The Girl Hunt Ballet", a parody of film noir with Astaire as private eye Rod Riley and Charisse in a dual role as good girl and femme fatale.

Director Vincente Minnelli is probably the most important star of the visually stunning film "The Bandwagon". Betty Comden and Adolph Green supplied the book and most of the songs, aided by Arthur Schwartz and Alan Jay Lerner. And the relationships, as anyone who has worked in theater can attest, are unusually understated and true. The primary story-line concerns Tony Hunter, a man who has had failures in film and has now returned to Broadway looking for a good project. His old friend portrayed by Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant have a project in mind. But they make the mistake of hiring an ambitious director who sees in their tale a vehicle for a Faustian allegory filled with deep meanings, fire, brimstone, explosions and necrophiliac lighting. Of course the musical they produce is a total failure; and Tony has been compelled to dance with a hired ballerina, with whom he finds himself falling hopelessly in love. In desperation, he suggests they go back to the original show and not disband. As a result they craft a success, Tony gets his girl and everything ends happily. This I find to be a first-rate MGM production, using its top personnel: cinematography by Henry Jackson, art direction by Preston Ames and Cedric Gibbons, sets by Edwin Willis and Keogh Gleason, Sydney Guilaroff's hairstyles and William Tuttle's makeup, and costumes by Mary Ann Nyberg. The stars of the film are all very professional and likable. Fred Astaire is Tony, Cyd Charisse the ballerina, Nanette Fabray andOscar Levant as ilmic Comden and Green stand-ins, Jack Gardner, James Mitchell, Robert Gist, and many others in small or uncredited roles including familiar faces such as Herb Vigran, Barbara Ruick, Julie Newmar, et al. Some have complained that the musical numbers here seemed a bit static or curiously cold; but this is a musical for once where the numbers look as if they could have been musical numbers onstage; and after chasing this film for decades, when I saw it I was delighted by its stunning visual qualities; and as a theatrical veteran I was also gratified that its human relationships seemed to work, as theatrical portraits by Comden and Green and in the personages who people this very enjoyable entertainment.

THE BAND WAGON tells the story of faded movie star Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) as he attempts to restart his stage career with the help of his two pals Lester (Oscar Levant) and Lily (Nanette Fabray) Marton. The Martons have written Tony a surefire hit... or so they think, until they fall under the charms of writer/director/producer/actor du jour, Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan) and their lighthearted musical comedy is turned into some kind of freaky Faustian opera. Jeffrey also ropes the famous French ballet-dancer Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse) and her choreographer boyfriend Paul Byrd (James Mitchell) into the production, but Tony and Gabrielle start off with each other on the wrong foot--almost literally so, since Tony is primarily a hoofer feeling his age, and Gabrielle a ballet star in her prime. They don't seem to match at all, from age to temperament, right down to dancing style. When Tony and Gabrielle finally come to an understanding, however, it's evident their musical is headed for a critical drubbing, and their hint of a romantic relationship thrown into doubt by Paul's annoyance that Gaby doesn't want to leave the show with him. The rest of the film works at resolving this double impasse.

It's probably hard to avoid comparing this film to SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, since they were made just a year apart and were both written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Moreover, the themes are even vaguely similar--THE BAND WAGON is a gentle, sharp satire on theatrical goings-on; SINGIN' IN THE RAIN a wicked parody of Hollywood and movie-making. Both films list Cyd Charisse as one of the characters; both films have a ballet section towards the end of the film. And of course, both films star (separately, unfortunately) the two greatest dancing talents of any and every Hollywood generation--Fred Astaire (TBW) and Gene Kelly (SITR). So certainly, comparisons are rife... the films seem to *beg* one to make them! Personally, the chips fall on the side of SITR for me: it's got a tighter story line, it's less talky, the chemistry between the leads is impeccable, and the songs and dances are simply wonderful.

That is, however, an entirely personal preference. There are people--there are in fact several other IMDB reviewers--who prefer THE BAND WAGON, and with good reason. Entirely on its own merits and not in comparison to SITR (as it should be judged), this film is exactly what it sets out to be: a cracking two hours worth of sheer entertainment. It's cleverly written, while the songs and dances are charming and some even mind-blowing. Vincente Minelli does an excellent job of directing; he is, after all, justly known as the master of musical films. Astaire couldn't be bad if he tried, and he's quite ably supported by his cast of Charisse, Levant, Fabray and Buchanan. The numbers range from the heartbreakingly romantic and simple (Charisse and Astaire falling in love to 'Dancing In The Dark'); through to the clever and amusing (most of the brief numbers attributed to 'The Band Wagon', the play within the movie, but most especially the 'Triplets' number with Astaire, Fabray and Buchanan); on to the rousing and hilarious (Astaire's German accent midway through 'I Love Louisa); and finally to those that are simply stunning in their sheer technical mastery (without a doubt the 'Girl Hunt' ballet). And of course, that's forgetting to mention the song that best sums up the entire spirit of THE BAND WAGON: 'That's Entertainment!'. Joyously performed by Astaire, Fabray, Buchanan and Levant (and in a finale reprisal also featuring Charisse), you really get the feeling that *this* is what Hollywood, and more specifically, the MGM musical, is about. And at the game of entertainment, THE BAND WAGON succeeds handsomely.

I think the only problem I have with THE BAND WAGON is that it just doesn't come together as perfectly and as seamlessly as I'd like. There are moments when my attention drifts, and the acting is frequently uneven. (An exception would be Fabray, who simply radiates exuberance with her big voice and great moves in relatively little screen time.) I've said that Astaire couldn't be bad if he tried. True, he *isn't* bad... just a little listless, it seems to me, particularly in the first half of the film. His dancing, however, is faultless as usual, just as you'd expect from Astaire. And he definitely seems to warm up considerably in the second half of the film. It's rather a shame that there's a spark missing from Charisse's performance as well--as a dancer she is visually *and* emotionally arresting, but she's quite frankly not as much an actress as she is a dancer. (She had the same problem in BRIGADOON, and she didn't have to act in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN except through her dancing.) Most of the time her performance is passable, reaching 'good' and occasionally 'great' at the most naturalistic parts--for example, when she's laughing or pretending to smoke with Tony. Astaire and Charisse are fantastic in their two main numbers together though--'Dancing In The Dark' is one of the best, simplest and most romantic film dances I've ever seen, and 'Girl Hunt' is so inventive and perfectly executed that you can't help thinking these two dancers really *do* match somehow.

Simply put, you just couldn't go wrong with THE BAND WAGON. You'll laugh, you'll marvel, you'll sing along... but most of all, you'll be well-entertained. And if *that's* the point the film is trying to make... point surely very well-taken! 8/10