Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers endure in the American imagination. The charm and grace of their dancing in the ten films they made together, including Top Hat and Swing Time, elicit nostalgia today. Most books about the Astaire-Rogers films focus exclusively on the music and dance scenes, but this book shows that the films are much more than the sum of those scenes, which after all only account for approximately one-third of their films' running times. Gallafent argues that, contrary to received opinion, the musical numbers are not discrete, generic moments dropped in to enliven the films. Instead, the music and dance routines advance the movies' themes.
Gallafent shows how dialogue, plotting, and the audience's perception of this striking professional couple affect the context, and thus meaning, for the song and dance routines. The book examines how the Astaire-Rogers musicals, which were produced and originally viewed as a series, relate to one another and to other musicals of their day. Gallafent also provides an illuminating account of the films Astaire and Rogers made separately during the 1940s before their final reunion in The Barkleys of Broadway. Astaire and Rogers concludes by tracing the development of their star personas both together and apart, and shows how the films were designed around those personas. (Verlagstext)
Contents:
Introduction: Astaire and Rogers, Fred ad Ginger
1. Coupled and Inaeprable: the first RKO Musicals
Flying Down to Rio, The Gay Divorcée, roberta, Top Hat, Follow the Fleet
2. The Argument of Time: the Later RKO Musicals
Swing Time, Shall We Dance, Carefree, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
3. a Self-Made Cinderella: Ginger Rogers from 1938 to 1943
Vivacious Melody, Bachelor Mother, fifth Avenue Girl, Primrose Path, Lucky Partners, Kitty Foyle, Tom, Dick and Harry, Roxie Hart, The Major and the Minor, Once Upon a Honeymoon, Tender Comrade
4. Changing the Steps: Fred Astaire from 1938 to 1943
Brodway Melody of 1940, Second Chorus, You´ll never Get Rich, holiday Inn, You Were Never Lovelier, The Sky´s the Limit
5. On with the Dance! The Later 1940s
ziegfeld Follies, Yolanda and the Thief, Blue Skies, Lady in the Dark, I´ll Be Seeing You, Weekend at the Waldorf, Magnificet Doll, Easter Parade, The Barkleys of Broadway
Bibliography
Filnography
Acknowledgements
Index
Verfasser*innenangabe:
Edward Gallafent ; edited by John Belton
Jahr:
2002
Verlag:
New York, Columbia University Press
Aufsätze:
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ISBN:
978-0-231-12627-4
2. ISBN:
0-231-12627-1
Beschreibung:
256 Seiten : Illustrationen
Beteiligte Personen:
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Belton, John
Sprache:
Englisch
Mediengruppe:
Buch