November 22 movie: The Band Wagon. This is a great backstage movie, about making a Broadway musical. The basic plot is that Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse are set to star in a comic musical, and an artsy director is brought in who transforms the play into a pretentious flop. It's up to our heroes to save the show!
The movie seems to have a lot of autobiography in it: for instance, the writers of the play-within-the-movie (Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant) are clearly based on Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the writers of The Band Wagon (and coincidentally, also the writers of Singin' in the Rain). George read that Comden and Green made their characters married because they didn't think audiences would buy an male-female writing team who weren't married. Even though that was what Comden and Green actually were.
There are several terrific dance numbers -- "Dancing in the Dark" and the one in the beginning about shining shoes are the best I think. There's also one really freaky dance number where Astaire, Fabray and the pretentious director dress up like babies, sit in high chairs, then dance on fake feet attached to their knees, and sing about how much they hate each other. "How I wish I had a gun, a widdle gun, it would be fun to shoot the other two, and be the only one!" I must say, Fred Astaire in his fifties, wearing a baby bonnet, white baby gown and pink makeup on his cheeks, singing about having a "widdle gun," it doesn't get much weirder than that.
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