A Roda da Fortuna

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.

Stunning musical about fading star Fred Astaire making stage comeback with the help of friends Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabares. Jack Buchanon is fun as hammy stage actor who teams up with the group. Cyd joins in as haughty ballerina. The songs are first rate. Fred's solos and the girl hunt ballet are good but I prefer the romantic Dancing in the Dark number. The other highlight is Fred cheering up the cast after the first night flops.This was the film that introduced That's Entertainment. It is given a joyous presentation as Jack Buchanon explains what the job of show business is all about.The color is stunning,costumes great,set design good.Surprisingly Cyd's big solo "Two-faced Woman" was cut. It was shown on TCM.

Just saw this again, for the first time in 10 years. What a show! This is unquestionably the last of the great line of MGM – and, therefore, Hollywood – musicals . . . the last real flowering of Arthur Freed's genius at holding together a team of top production talents which had produced such a fine string of musicals. Not a dull spot in the entire movie and tremendous style in Minnelli's direction. Nice to see Jack Buchanan getting a last chance in the spotlight – his top hat routine with Astaire is one of the highlights of the movie. Astaire himself, playing the fading musical star which he was by 1953, has a magnificent opening with two contrasting numbers – the wistful By Myself and the exuberant Shine on your Shoes – tailored to set up his character perfectly. The Girl Hunt ballet is, of course, the dancing highlight of the movie and it is here that the utterly wonderful Cyd Charisse comes into her own. Apart from being arguably the best female dancer in Hollywood history, she was certainly the most beautiful: the scene in the ballet in which she appears on a bar stool and slips off her coat to reveal a dramatic red dress oozes with as much sex appeal as any movie moment I've ever seen.

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.

I love this movie. Fred and Cyd made such a team. Especially in Dancing in the Dark * have u seen the saturday night live spinoff* and girl hunt. I enjoyed the whole movie. Never a dull moment. The whole cast was excellent. It is one of my favorite MGM Musicals. I like Shine on My Shoes. You can tell that was directed by Minnelli. If you don't have anythin' to do some night, rent this!!!