Ô toi ma charmante

It would have been nice had this not been World War II and we could actually have done this film in Buenos Aires. As it is, except for a few newsreel shots at the beginning of the film, this might as well have taken place in San Diego.

Having said that this tinsel of a story is put over by the charm and beauty of its two leads, Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth. Not to mention a good supporting cast led by Adolphe Menjou who is busy poaching on the preserve of Hollywood cranky fathers usually inhabited by folks like Eugene Palette and George Barbier.

Menjou's got some strange ideas. He wants to see his daughters get married, but in descending order. Rita is number two daughter and she's holding things up for three and four. Of course numbers three and four have fiancés panting at the bit.

Through the usual comedy of errors that are prevalent in Fred Astaire movies, Menjou's conceived a dislike for Fred and Rita's seeing something in him. How will it all work out?

Astaire movies always have flimsy or silly plot lines, but they have him and an attractive female partner dancing to some of the best music ever written for the screen. And when it's Jerome Kern's music, it don't get much better than that.

And the dancing partners don't get more talented than Rita Hayworth. She is positively radiant in this film. And she and Fred dance divinely to one of my favorite Jerome Kern ballads, I'm Old Fashioned.

Reason enough to see this film.

Rita Hayworth is supposed to have said that "men went to bed with Gilda and woke up next to me," and that was her problem with men. Never having had the opportunity to go to bed with Rita Hayworth, I can't say what would have happened to me, but I can tell you that Maria Acuña would have been more on my mind than Gilda. She and Fred virtually float whenever they dance together, and I think it takes nothing away from Ginger Rogers to say that. It wasn't until I saw this film that I realized what the big deal about Rita Hayworth was all about. Her character in this film, and the character's dancing, is not only gorgeous, but has an insouciance that no other partner of Fred's possessed. Just watching the "I'm Old Fashioned" dance routine, which has hardly any edits in it, and watching Rita and Fred kick the French doors shut is worth the price of admission.

Others have commented about the plot of this film--I don't think we need to go into it here other than to say it's a pretty typical boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy jumps through hoops, boy gets girl back plot. Only three members of the supporting cast really have much to do: Adolphe Menjou as the Maria's curmudgeon father moves the plot along and demonstrates why he was known as "the best-dressed man in Hollywood," even in a kilt, Xavier Cugat and His Orchestra provide a Latin beat, and Cugie gets to demonstrate his skill as a caricaturist. Gus Schilling, as Menjou's rather fey secretary, has to perform a number of tasks that were filled by as many as four actors in the Fred and Ginger films: the "Helen Broderick" comedienne role, the "Victor Moore" sidekick role, and whatever roles were assigned to Eric Blore and Eric Rhodes. I suppose when Schilling was cast Eric Blore was somewhere in the back of someone's mind at Columbia (although Franklin Pangborn also comes to mind). Schilling does a commendable job. The rest of the cast is competent but really doesn't do much to move the plot along. But this is a musical, and the job of all the characters who don't sing and dance, and even some who do, are there simply to move the plot along. The folks lining up at the box office were there to see Fred and Rita dance and to hear Fred and Nan Wynn (I wonder what Rita's singing sounded like) sing.

I just watched the recent DVD of this film, and it's a technical knockout. The print looks like it just came off the truck from Columbia for a first run, and the soundtrack is sharp. It also reveals that Rita Hayworth did NOT have great-looking legs like, say Marlene Dietrich or Lucille Ball. One thing that I did realize, though, is that this, like my favorite Fred-and-Ginger, "Swing Time," features songs by Jerome Kern--here with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, in "Swing Time" with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and that in both films Fred plays a guy who doesn't really LIKE to dance: he sees his vocation as gambling, and only resorts to dancing to pay the bills when he's down on his luck.

This musical makes my "top ten" list of Hollywood musicals, which includes, by the way, any musicals made through 2006. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. "Swing Time" 2. "Show Boat" (with Allan Jones , Charles Winninger, and Irene Dunne, directed by James Whale: emphatically NOT the MGM bomb!) The title sequence to this film is one of the most original of all time. 3. "You Were Never Lovelier" 4. "Shall We Dance" (Fred & Ginger, not the delightful Japanese film) 5. "Oklahoma!" 6. "Top Hat" 7. "The Gay Divorcée" 8. "The Wizard of Oz" 9. "Guys and Dolls" 10. "The Gang's All Here" (Busby Berkeley's biggest production, featuring "The Lady in the tutti- Fruitti Hat") 11. "State Fair," the original "Iowa"version, please 12. "Love Me Tonight" (OK, so there are 12 in the top ten, but 11 is the only film that Rodgers and Hammerstein put together, and it has great songs. as well as Charles Winninger, and 12 has an interesting presentation from Rouben Mamoulian and a great score from Rodgers and Hart.)

Once again, these are listed in no particular order. It should be noted that only "The Wizard of Oz" comes from "the legendary Freed unit" at MGM. Perhaps someday IMDb will publish my yet-to-be-written "why MGM Musicals Suck" essay, but here's one point: All of the films listed above either were written AS movie musicals, or took a Broadway hit and used the power of film to render the book and songs more vividly. "Oklahoma!" is perhaps the best example of that, as opposed to the dismal MGM adaptation of Leonard Bernstein's wonderful "On The Town," which only proves, as do so many other MGM musicals, that Roger Edens may have been a good arranger but as a songwriter he left a lot to be desired--which didn't stop MGM from hacking almost all of the Bernstein-Comden-Green songs out of the movie. It doesn't explain why none of Busby Berkeley's best work came from MGM, but that's a story for another day.

Back to "You Were Never Lovelier:" Irving Berlin said that when he wrote songs he heard Fred Astaire singing them, which is something we should remember: Astaire was not only a great dancer, but a great song stylist who introduced a big chunk of the Great American Song Book. This is a wonderful film that does exactly what it's supposed to do: delight us and lift our spirits.

Okay, it's not Tosca. But holy smoke, what an efflorescence of talented song writers and lyricists the American stage produced in the thirty years between 1925 and 1955! Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the list goes on. And the songs! From Astaire's films alone, we have Orchids in the Moonlight, The Carioca, Let's Face the Music and Dance, Yesterdays, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Cheek to Cheek, The Way You Look Tonight, A Fine Romance, They All Laughed, Let's Call the Whole Thing off ("You say tomato, I say tomahto..."), They Can't Take That Away From Me. That's a handful of the more familiar numbers from the first films Astaire made with Ginger Rogers.

"You Were Never Lovelier" has melodies by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Ginger isn't here, but Rita Hayworth is. Her beauty is undeniable. She'd undergone hair removal and Hollywood glamorization by this time and in a few years a pin-up pic of her was to be pasted onto a famous bomb. I missed Astaire's earlier movies. By the time I was old enough, Gene Kelly dominated the screen. I saw Astaire in his later films and didn't like him nearly as much as Kelly. Kelly's background was in athletics. He was masculine and muscular and working class. Astaire's background was in ballroom dancing. How can an adolescent identify with a skinny balding narrow-shouldered dancer in a tuxedo who doesn't swing from ropes? But there's no longer much doubt in most peoples' minds, including mine, that Astaire was by far the better dancer, Kelly's charm notwithstanding. Astaire was elegant and precise and his dance steps were varied; Kelly seemed to repeat his leg-over-leg jumps over and over in each number.

At any rate, the plot of "You Were Never Lovelier" is rather original for an Astaire musical. I don't think it goes farther back in history than Aristophanes. It's a complicated business involving mistaken identities, an interfering father, and whatnot. But it doesn't matter, because the numbers are what counts. Kern and Mercer provide two songs that have become standards: "Dearly Beloved" and "I'm Old Fashioned." Anyone who wants to see the Hollywood musical at its best would be advised to listen to either song and to watch the dancing during "I'm Old Fashioned." "Dearly Beloved" occurs throughout the film as a kind of theme, and is sung once by Astaire and once by Hayworth, but is never accompanied by a dance. There are other songs too, of course, although none enchants the way these two ballads do. One of the numbers is "The Shorty George." Astaire's movies often had references to a new popular dance craze -- The Carioca, The Yam, the Sluefoot -- and this is an instance of that tendency. It was named after a real dancer, George Snowden, a dancer at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, known as "Shorty." If "I'm Old Fashioned" has a swooping grace, "The Shorty George" includes sections set at a blistering tempo and demonstrates Rita Hayworth's energy and range as a dancer.

Speaking of energy, how do they do it? "I'm Old Fashioned", like most of Astaire's numbers, consists of very long takes in medium distance that depend on both precision and physical stamina. (If you want to see an example of the opposite, watch Travolta do his final number in "Staying Alive.") I counted three cuts during the entire dance, which lasts four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. I'd have a heart attack after the first thirty-seven seconds.

Well, okay. It's not Fred and Ginger. It's not even Tosca. But if you want to watch two people engaged in the unpretentious exercise of a physical skill acquired only with the utmost difficulty, this one shouldn't be missed.

she is - this time in "You Were Never Lovelier," a 1942 film starring Fred Astaire, Adolphe Menjou, and Xavier Cugat along with Hayworth. Menjou plays Eduardo Acuna, the father of four daughters in Argentina, and according to tradition, the girls must marry in order. Second to be married is Maria (Hayworth). Unfortunately, in this case, the two younger daughters have suitors and Maria has no interest in marriage or in any of the dozens of men who have tried to win her heart. Her father hatches a plan to send her orchids and letters from a secret admirer. Then he plans for the secret admirer to disappear, hoping that she'll then turn to an ordinary man. When he has a dancer, Bob Davis (Astaire) who is trying to get a job in the club deliver the orchids, Maria thinks that Davis is her secret admirer. The two wind up falling in love, which doesn't fit in with Dad's plans.

Hayworth's first entrance in this is as she gives her sister something for her wedding. She's so gorgeous it's ridiculous. It's said that during the making of Blood & Sand, Tyrone Power was so enamored of Hayworth that he couldn't stop staring at her (and in fact, she's one of the few women who could match him looks-wise). Not surprising. What's wonderful about this film is that Hayworth wears fabulous gowns and dances with Fred Astaire. They make a terrific pair, and Astaire loved working with her. When they dance to "I'm Old Fashioned," it's as if they're floating on a cloud. She seems to bring out a sweet side to Astaire's acting, and the character he plays is less sure of himself than the Astaire roles usually are. And of course, he dances like a dream, with a wonderful audition solo for Menjou.

For this writer, there were many beautiful women in Hollywood. But two were the complete movie star package with superior beauty, personality, and raw sex appeal - Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner. Rita, with her wonderful dance talent, probably has a slight edge. It's tragic that her personal life was so sad and that she herself was such a troubled woman. It just doesn't seem fair to be that sensational and that miserable at the same time.

This is a lovely, romantic film produced specifically for the World War II audience - while we're not going through World War II today, most of us are depressed enough that we could be, so it's still a great watch.

Fred Astaire's films are all pretty much the same: quaint romantic hijinks driving a ridiculous but entertaining screwball plot. By the 1940s, he and Ginger Rogers had parted ways (at least until 'The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)'), and the studios were left to find him a suitable new partner. RKO's first experiment, opposite Joan Fontaine in 'A Damsel in Distress (1937),' had been far less than successful, as much as I love Joan Fontaine. Astaire's best prospects came from a lovely young lady named Rita Hayworth, with whom he starred in 'You'll Never Get Rich (1941)' and 'You Were Never Lovelier (1942).' Ah, Rita Hayworth! (Forgive me while I regain my train of thought). This comedy musical, directed by William A. Seiter, features the same unlikely romantic mix-ups you'd expect to find in a Fred and Ginger movie of the 1930s. In fact, the director had previously made 'Roberta (1935),' and he improves upon that film.

Eduardo Acuña (Adolphe Menjou) is a man very much used to getting his own way. Determined that his second daughter Maria (Hayworth) should fall in love, he begins writing her anonymous love letters, only for her to mistake American dancer Bob Davis (Astaire) for her nameless romantic suitor. Bob reluctantly agrees to carry on the deception, but soon falls for Maria himself. It doesn't take a genius to guess where this is going, but, like Astaire's previous films, it is well worth watching for the marvellous chemistry of the two leads. Put simply, Hayworth is endlessly, stunningly, ravishingly gorgeous. Though Ginger Rogers' exquisite comedic timing is noticeably absent (leaving Fred to take up the comedic slack), every scene with Hayworth is spent in breathtaking company. And she's not just a pretty face: the young actress is a very talented dancer, keeping up with Astaire step-for-step.