Gene Kelly And Fred Astaire Go Mano a Mano, Part 2 - Astaire’s “Shall We Dance” (1937)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Senior Film Critic Sandy Salmon

Shall We Dance, starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rodgers, music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, 1937

Those of you who saw my recent review of song and dance man Gene Kelly’s performance in An American In Paris know that that review had come about after a dispute I had had with the general editor of this space, one Pete Markin, over who was the better popular music male dancer Kelly or Fred Astaire. (Neither party disputes the proposition that nobody today, maybe nobody since their respective times, is even close to this pair so don’t bother to bring up any other contenders if that is what you are thinking about). Markin, after years, decades of honorable service to the memory of Mister Astaire’s talents was swayed by Kelly’s performance in that above-mentioned and corralled me by the water cooler one office morning and laid that dead-ass bombshell on me. Naturally I had to upbraid him for his treason, there is no other way to put it even though I would be hard-pressed to have him prosecuted and tried on the charge since I lack a second witness to the travesty and whether it is wartime, declared by Congress wartime, currently is disputable, and error. Now I am reviewing Mister Astaire’s stellar efforts in a second string song and dance genre classic, Shall We Dance, (the seventh of ten in which he shared the dance floor with Ms. Rogers the earlier ones being usually better so here the dancing really shows his superiority) a vehicle like An American In Paris for the music and lyrics of super talented composer and lyrist George and Ira Gershwin.  

I mentioned in the lead-up to the Kelly review that someday I would give you the long suffering reader the complete story of how a film critic gets his or her assignments from “upstairs,” from the general editor, from a guy just like Markin (unless of course that person is hard road free-lancing and is just submitting pieces to publications “on spec”). I noted then that I should know the ropes of that slippery slope after some thirty plus years of doing this type of work recently here and for many years at the American Film Gazette (where I still do on-line reviews and where I started out as that free-lancer submitting pieces “on spec” when the publication was strictly hard copy before I was taken on as a staff member). A reader, a thoughtful reader I assumed, wrote in to ask for a specific example of such behavior, of an odd-ball experience in assignment world to give her an inside view of the madhouse. I immediately explained the genesis of this current review (and the Kelly review) as nothing but hubris from Markin. I explained that the only reason that I was on a “run” was I got this assignment to review first Gene Kelly’s An American In Paris and now this film because Markin had grabbed these two films via Amazon for one purpose and one purpose only-to see who was the better dancer back in the day -Kelly or Astaire.

Here is another one, another prime example of odd-ball assignments out of the blue. A few months ago Markin was all hopped up on some exhibition out at the de Young Museum in San Francisco that one of his growing up childhood friends had told him about after viewing what was called The Summer Of Love Experience (from 1967 so they were commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the events in style) he had me and my associate film critic Alden Riley working like seven whirling dervishes to write up a ton of stuff on the music (deemed “acid” rock for its connection with LSD), films and documentaries of the times. After I had reviewed a break-through documentary by D.A. Pennebaker chronicling the first Monterey International Pops Festival held that same 1967 year where Janis Joplin (and others like Otis Redding and Ravi Shankar) made her big splash in the rock icono-sphere I asked Alden, a much younger man than I, what he thought of Janis Joplin. He stated to me that he had never heard of her. Somehow Markin heard about that remark and being very much connected with that whole Summer of Love, 1967 scene (having actually gone out there from his growing up home in North Adamsville, Massachusetts hitchhiking out with a couple of friends) told Alden, by-passing me, that his next assignment would be a biopic about Janis Joplin titled Little Girl Blues. That will give you just a rather current example of the inside the pressure cooker atmosphere we work under.     

But back to the Astaire-Kelly controversy what I called a tempest in a teapot in that Kelly review. A remark that I now wish to publicly apologize to Mister Markin for making in the heat of a writing a review under deadline. Of course in a world going to hell in a handbasket with rightwing movements sprouting up all over the world, with bare-faced  nuclear war threats on the table, with climate change dramatic weather and natural disasters on the rise and  with the social fabric coming undone in this American society (what the political commentator Frank Jackman has rightly I think called the first stages of a “cold civil war” likely to get hot) there is no question that the presses (or cyberspace) should stop while we haggle over which of two long dead  popular culture dancers was the max daddy of the genre. But to the lists once again to right a minor wrong in this crooked little orb of a planet. 

I noted in that review of An American In Paris with its paper thin plotline that it might not be the best place to critique Mister Kelly’s dancing (or acting efforts which whatever faults I find in his dancing they do not compare to his wooden glad hand acting in that role) but I did not throw down the gauntlet this time. Frankly although Shall We Dance has a plotline a bit superior to the Kelly vehicle it would not be out of place to call that paper thin as well. Apparently in the song and dance genre all the dough goes for staging and about three dollars to screenwriters to come up with a plausible scenario to justify all the sprouting out to sing and dance at the drop of a hat.  

As with An American in Paris I do not utter that term “paper thin” lightly here. Here’s the play as my predecessor and friend in this department Sam Lowell always liked to say in his reviews. Astaire whose character is called Petrov is actually an American ballet dancer working in Paris whose most fervent desire is to blend that youthful ballet training with modern jazz that is running rampart in the land and hence the need for the services of the Gershwin brothers to do the music and lyrics in this film. But I am getting ahead of myself. Petrov spies this dishy tap-dancer, Linda, Ginger Roger’s role, and immediately makes a play for her for love (and maybe, just maybe as a dance partner who might have the moves to jazz dance). She of course gives him the cold shoulder-sees him as some Russian stupe. Naturally there has to be a nefarious plan hatched by others to get them together. Bingo a rumor is started that the “lovebirds” are married, which they are not at first, and to make this thing go away they do get married with Linda intending to get a divorce ASAP.      

Get this though. She starts falling for the big Russian turned American cuckoo until she finds that he is playing footsies with another dame. Then the big freeze is on. But you know the thaw is on the wings and they will be lovebird back together again before twelve more song and dances are completed. Like I said with the Kelly plotline watch the song and dance stuff and go numb in between.      

Of course this whole dispute, this tempest in a teapot, no I already said I apologized for my indiscretion on that score so forget I said that expression, brewed up by Mister Markin is not about the qualities of the storyline but about Kelly’s dancing superiority. I have already conceded that on the question of pure physical energy and verve Kelly is not bad reflecting I think the hopped up (maybe drugged up) post-World War II period when everybody who had slogged through the war was in a rush to get to wherever they thought they should be going. But Fred did the Gershwins proud in all the numbers that he performed with Rogers despite the silly plotline. Catch classic Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off and They Can’t Take That Away From Me and you will get my drift. He had his own sense of controlled athleticism and looking at any one number like his tap dance in the ship’s hull with a black ship’s crew for support shows his physical prowess. But where Astaire had it all over Kelly was his grace, his long reaches and close insteps. Notice in contrast that Kelly never did much pair dancing with Caron and Astaire waltzed and two-stepped Ginger right out of her shoes. Like I said in the Kelly review how the usually level-headed Markin could have turned traitor on a dime tells a lot. Tells me he, he Mister fancy general editor has maybe really has been at the hash pipe too long of late. Touché-again.