The Band Wagon

The Band Wagon
August 7, 1953
MGM
Musical, Comedy, Romance
DVD
C-

This is the last of the movies on the four-pack I bought only for Singin' in the Rain.  (Hereafter, abbreviated as SitR.)  I found The Band Wagon alternately irritating and boring, if not so bad as Minelli's Meet Me in St. Louis.  Cyd and Fred have no chemistry, except maybe as friends.  (The 22-year age difference is alluded to in the movie, but it doesn't help that Fred always looks older than he is.  The 20-year age difference between Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in SitR is much less obvious.)  The supporting cast doesn't really contribute anything.  The play-within-the-movie (also called The Band Wagon, for unclear reasons in both cases) fails to be so-bad-it's-fun, in the way that The Dueling Cavalier is in SitR.  (Or much later, Elephant! in The Tall Guy.)  The revamped play isn't any better, although I sort of like the "Triplets" song, the only memorable tune besides "That's Entertainment."  (Not only is the latter a classic, but I thought it was noteworthy that Nanette Fabray could sing the word "sex.")  The romance aside, the plot makes no sense, including why they want the dramatic (in every sense) director to take charge of a musical.  The use of color is mostly good, even if one of the rooms is so red it would be a bit much in a brothel.  The eleven-minute "Girl Hunt Ballet" is much better than the "Broadway Melody Ballet" in SitR, but then there's no momentum for it to break up.

While this is far from the worst imaginable movie Astaire could've made, it is a letdown.  Luckily, his reputation doesn't rest on this (or Easter Parade).  Maybe in the '50s the Astairish character he's playing was a has-been and his movie costumes were being sold off for pennies, but time would be kind to Astaire's reputation.  He's certainly more of a legend than Ava Gardner, who has a cameo as herself.  (And by the '80s, movie props and costumes were doing much better at auctions.)

Helen McAllister also danced in Flying Down to Rio, twenty years earlier.  Judy Matson also sang in The Big Store.  Al Hill was in The Bank Dick.  Frank McClure was in His Girl Friday and Citizen Kane.  Jack Gargan and Harlan Hoagland were also in Citizen Kane.  Herschel Graham was in It's a Wonderful Life.  James Conaty was in All About Eve.  Fred Aldrich was in Sunset Blvd.  Manuel Paris was in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation.  Brick Sullivan was in a few of my earlier movies, most recently Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Donald Kerr also appeared in Go to Mars.

Dee Turnell was in Copacabana and SitR.  Bobby Watson was the diction coach in SitR (and often portrayed Hitler in movies).  Madge Blake played Dora Bailey (and is probably best known for her TV role as Aunt Harriet on Batman).  Jimmy Thompson was the singer of "Beautiful Girl" in SitR, while Fred Datig, Jr., played an usher, as he does here.  Lyle Clark, Marion Gray, Peggy Murray, Charles Regan, and Joette Robinson were also in SitR.  

Judy Landon and Shirley Lopez were in SitR and would be in Gentlemen Prefer.  Herman Boden, Joan Collenete, Jack Dodds, Colin Kenny, Matt Mattox, Frank Radcliffe, Jack Regas, Roberta Stevenson, and Marc Wilder would all be in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  Helen Dickson was in It's a Wonderful and would be in Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki.  Ann McCrea was in SitR and would be in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?  Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane and would go on to Mary Poppins.

Herb Vigran, one of the men Astaire eavesdrops on on the train, would go on to a bunch of TV guest shots, as well as the voice of Lurvy in Charlotte's Web (1973).  The other man is Emory Parnell, who's Billy Reed in many of the Ma and Pa movies.  Loulie Jean Norman would be part of the chorus for Heidi's Song.  Sue Casey would be in A Very Brady Sequel.  (She'd have a larger role in Catalina Caper, as Anne Duval, but I'm saving that movie for when I do MST3K on my eventual television blog.)

We swear, it's entertainment!