Jeanine Basinger - The Movie Musical!

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

I WAS RAISED ON MUSICALS, and I love them. I feel as if the day I first opened my eyes I was looking at the hot pop of 1940s Technicolor, and Betty Grable was singing and dancing to Run Little Raindrop Run. Rita Hayworth was rushing down a long stairway from somewhere in heaven, her golden gown billowing out behind her. Fred Astaire was singing My Shining Hour to Joan Leslie, while Judy Garland and Gene Kelly stepped around lightly, Ballin the Jack, etc., etc., etc. Millions of people my age have the same memories, the same cultural touchstones, and they were musical, magical, and memorablebut musical is the key element. I was drawn to the adult emotions implied in the songs and dances, to which, because they were only songs and dances, a child was allowed access. In the midwestern world I grew up in during World War II, it was considered not only bad manners but downright unpatriotic to shout and scream and shove your emotions down someone elses throat. Everybody was sharing in the shortages, the sadnesses, the losses, and the suffering, so just keep it quiet, please. Go to a musical and let yourself feel it through song and dance. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.

My oldest sister took me to a revival of a movie made the year I was born, Swing Time, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I already knew I liked old moviesthis wasnt my first one. I had been introduced to Keaton and Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Gloria Swanson, the Marx Brothers, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow and plenty more. I knew Astaire from Holiday Inn and Ginger Rogers as Kitty Foyle, but Swing Time was my first Fred-and-Ginger-together as singers/dancers, and it had everything: comedy, music, glamorous clothes, ritzy nightclubs, fur coats, and even fake snowflakes that were pretty and fluffy (as opposed to the ones I was experiencing on a daily basis, which were cold, ugly, and blowing in my face at about forty miles an hour).

I liked all the musical numbers of Swing Time, but there was one that allowed me to feel what it must be like to be a grown-up. It took place in a sparkly nightclub that had apparently been built on the side of a hill, because it had a steep incline. You entered at the top, walked down some stairs, and if you wanted to dance, you had to go all the way down to the bottom and find the shiny black floor. All I could think about was that I wouldnt want to have to wait tables in that place. (Children are always practical.) The nightclub had cellophane tablecloths and globular table lamps and orchids and all kinds of amazing things that I wanted to have for my own. There was a big crowd of people who seemed to be having so much fun, and they had hairdos and jewelry and tuxedos and boutonnieres, and I liked all that stuff, but what I liked best was when all of them had gone home and the nightclub was left emptyall except for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. A lot of plot had gone down, and I knew that, as always happened in movies before it got sorted out, a real problem had come up and it meant that Fred and Ginger were never going to be together. I knew that movie moment, and it always arrived. I hated its disappointment and misunderstanding and its stopping of the film while I waited for it to get resolved and go away.

Ah, but Swing Time gave me that moment in musical terms. Faced with separation, Fred and Ginger did not weep, did not beat their breasts, did not slap one another, did not exchange desperate words, did not stop the forward motion of my viewing world. None of that. Instead, they took to the dance floor and performed a hauntingly beautiful, palpably heartbroken (yet still exhilarating) song and dance while the Silver Sandal nightclub glittered and winked behind them.

I never forget what happens. At first, Ginger tries to walk away. She and Fred have had a clumsy conversation in their attempt to say goodbye, and hes pledged that after hes danced with her, hes never gonna dance again. She leaves him, turning and beginning to climb the inexplicably jagged black stairs. Reluctant to let her go, Astaire follows and in medium close-up begins to sing strange lyrics about never gonna dance, and la belle, la perfectly swell romance and though Im left without a penny, the wolf was discreet and weird tattoos of the St. Louis Blues, none of which meant anything to me at the time. While he sings, the movie cuts to Rogers, standing against the background of the glittering nightclub, sparkling in her white dress, already set apart from him in a separate world of unattainable dreams. She sighs deeply, turns, and continues to climb, but he presses on. All I really want is you, he sings. He vows his love, his face a triangular pucker of pain and misery. Resigned, she turns and walks past him, descending to the floor as the music changes to The Way You Look Tonight. She takes the floor, and they walk, holding hands, not looking at each other, and then they flow forward into dancing. They weave and sway. They bend and turn, with Rogerss serpentine back undulating. When the music returns to Never Gonna Dance, she tries again to walk away, but he grabs her, almost roughly, and spins her toward him. Then they take off. Its goodbye sex of the purest form, as the music gives us their past relationship by repeating the music theyve shared while falling in love. Waltz in Swing Time rockets out, and they whirl and twirl, with each finally leaving the other to ascend opposite staircases, dancing upward. At the top of the stairs, the only cut after the dance begins takes place, reflecting the practiced separation theyve endured to get up there and the one that will follow. After a final crescendo of rising passion and a frenzy of spins, Rogers flies out the door on her tiny slippered feet. Shes gone, just gone. Astaire is left alone, his arms stretched out to her.