THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY

Ginger Rogers, Oscar Levant, Fred Astaire

THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (1949). Director: Charles Walters.

Josh and Dinah Barkley (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) have been a top team on Broadway for several years, but all is not rosy in their lives backstage. Secretly Dinah is a bit tired of her husband's Svengali-like attitude and his criticisms, as well as the feeling he has that he "made" her. When a very handsome playwright named Jacques Barredout (Jacques Francois) insists that Dinah has great and untapped dramatic talent, she decides to try her hand at playing Sarah Bernhardt in his new play. Will she fall on her face, and how will Josh feel if she does? Barkleys presents Astaire and Rogers in absolute top form, and this is one of their most winning movies. As their friend and collaborator, Oscar Levant [The Cobweb] offers one of his better performances, although the device of pairing him off with one beautiful woman after another becomes tiresome. Levant was an oddity -- he couldn't sing or dance, and certainly wasn't good-looking -- but his sardonic delivery often works, and he is allowed to play the piano on excerpts from two pieces, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and Tchaikovsky's "Piano Concerto No. 1." If Barkleys falls down in one respect it's that the new songs by Harry Warren and Ira Gershwin aren't up to the standard set by Ira and George Gershwin -- the only melodic bright spot is Gershwin's old tune "They Can't Take That Away from Me." Astaire's smooth elegant dancing is much on display, especially in a number when he trips the light fantastic with dozens of pairs of animated dancing shoes. The supporting cast includes Billie Burke [Three Husbands], who is wasted as a talkative patroness of the arts; Hans Conreid [Juke Box Rhythm] as an avant garde artist who draws Dinah as if she were a pancake (!); and George Zucco, who appears on stage during the Sarah Bernhardt sequence. Clinton Sundberg and Gale Robbins also appear, with Robbins playing Dinah's excitable Southern understudy; she's swell. Jacques Francois is now little-known except for this picture, but he amassed 150 credits, mostly in French productions, and he makes a good impression in this.

I believe this was the last time Astaire and Rogers were teamed in a movie, There was actually a ten year gap between Barkleys and their previous film, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Lest one wonder if the real Rogers felt like Dinah does in this movie, we must remember that Rogers had already proven her dramatic acting chops in several previous films -- and she won the Best Actress Oscar for Kitty Foyle in 1941 -- so this was not a case of art imitating life.

Verdict: Delightful musical with the inimitable team of Rogers and Astaire. ***. 

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS

Gene Kelly and Nina Foch

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951). Director: Vincente Minnelli.

Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is a struggling American painter working in Paris. His friend, Adam (Oscar Levant) -- "the world's oldest child prodigy" -- is a struggling composer who dreams of conducting his own symphony. Adam is friends with musical star Henri (Georges Guetary), who is engaged to waif-like Lise (Leslie Caron, in her film debut). Lise was taken in and protected from the Nazis by Henri, and she feels that she owes him. The trouble is that Lise falls for Jerry when she meets him, and vice versa, even as his patroness, Milo (Nina Foch), is falling for him. This is all played out in Alan Jay Lerner's screenplay in gorgeous Technicolor, with lots of dancing and some vintage songs by the Gershwins. Highlights include Kelly, Guetary and Levant performing "By Strauss;" Kelly tap-dancing with a group of children to "I Got Rhythm;" Kelly and Caron dancing by the Seine (or what passes for same) to "Our Love is Here to Stay;" Kelly and Guetary singing "S'wonderful," both unaware that they're singing about the same woman; and the long, beautiful climactic ballet with Caron [Valentino] and Kelly as the principals. Guetary, born in Egypt but of Greek heritage, was a handsome and charming entertainer who mostly did films in Europe. His big number in this is "Stairway to Paradise," where he comes off like a French Desi Arnaz -- in other words, he can put over a song but he hasn't got much of a voice, which is much too high and even shrill at times. The role of Henri was supposed to be a much older man, and even putting some gray in Guetary's hair doesn't make him look older than Kelly, who was his senior by a couple of years. Kelly and Caron are excellent; Levant [The Cobweb] is good if typically (and tiresomely?) dsypepetic; Nina Foch [St. Benny the Dip] adds some substance to her thankless role of Milo; and there are brief appearances by Noel Neill and Madge Blake, the latter of whom appears to good advantage in a charming scene in a perfume shop. I don't think it's giving anything away to say that the two lovers get together at the end, but whether their union will actually work in the long run is highly questionable. Others have noted that the other people in love with Caron and Kelly are treated somewhat shabbily. If they withdraw their financial support, the two lovers may indeed find themselves starving on the streets of Paris!

Verdict: Very enjoyable musical with a lot of talent on display. ***.