Broadway Melody of 1940 was the only film in which Astaire danced with Eleanor Powell; it may also have been the only film in which he played opposite George Murphy. (I need to check this out.) It was the third in the Broadway Melody reprise series, each of which starred Eleanor Powell. Murphy had been her dance partner in the previous one, Broadway Melody of 1938, and here he shares the labor with Astaire. The story runs closer to the mood of the original The Broadway Melody than the earlier two reiterations, but with the genders reversed. There’s competition between members of a song-and-dance team for the affections of a fellow actor, backstage jealousies, sacrifices, a threatening high class troublemaker. Here, Murphy and Astaire play the team — Johnny Brett (Astaire) and King Shaw (Murphy) –, and the star that has preceded them to stardom on Broadway, Clare Bennett, is played by Powell. Less of a variety show featuring strange specialty acts than its predecessors, the narrative is fairly tight. Johnny wants to leave the futureless life of performing in small off-Broadway clubs, but he’s loyal to his partner. And the show must go on.
Cole Porter wrote the songs and music. Porter is said to have been in a down period of his career at the time. The songs aren’t diamonds like “Anything Goes,” but the Porter wit is evident even in “Please Don’t Monkey With Broadway” that introduces a pretty good vaudeville routine displaying what Astaire and Murphy had in common, and how they differed. I like Murphy’s affable dancing. Murphy trained in the Irish tap school that included Jimmy Cagney and Ray Bolger, which, coming out of the clog-to-tap tradition, usually keeps the upper body erect. That puts limits on the body-comedy. Here, the dance is mainly on Murphy’s terms. At this point in his career, freed from the yoke of having to dance with a constant female partner, Astaire was experimenting, adapting, and incorporating lots of different styles.
Johnny is enamored with Clare Bennet, the biggest dancing star on the Great White Way. He sneaks off regularly to watch her perform on the big stage. We’re introduced to her through a typical Powell spectacle, a naval-themed revue in which it’s made clear that on every level — the show, the narrative, and the dance hierarchy — she’s the Alpha. She has a male chorus, she’s the only female around, and her song tells us she’s “the captain of this ship.” (Porter did not write the woeful tune.)
I’ve said some unkind things about Powell’s dancing in other entries. Reading about her, I’ve learned that she was mightily respected by most of the show dancers of the time, both Black and White. She worked as hard as Astaire, rehearsing, preparing, and choreographing her own routines. After doing this film with her, Astaire gallantly commented that she had better technique than he had, but also that she danced “like a man” — notably, she didn’t like to be led or to be told how to dance. I think behind the gallantry there was also some evasion: Powell is obviously technically and rhythmically amazing, but she lacks taste, she can’t act (even in her dances), and her repertoire of steps is very limited. In film after film, you see the same tap steps, the balletic leg lifts and pirouettes, the majorette’s high-kicks, the striding and galloping traveling moves. Most marked for me is that she lacks fluidity through her otherwise impressive body. Compared with Astaire and Murphy, she has hips and buns so tight she can’t shimmy or slip. And through it all, the same rigid smile. It’s a throwback to Ziegfeld, and a throw-forward to drum majors leading a rah rah American parade.
King becomes her dance partner in the big show — the result of mistaken identity; the promoter had originally singled out Johnny for the role, but Johnny pretends to be King to avoid creditors. The real King gets to dance a duet with Clare to Porter’s “Between You and Me.” For me, this dance is just vapid. The general choreography of the film is attributed to Billy Connolly, one the most respected dance directors on Broadway and in Hollywood. I’m not sure whether he designed this pair routine or not. In any case, this imitation of high-Astaire-Rogers romantic dances is pure white kitsch. In waltz time and replete with balletic moves (Powell was originally trained in ballet), there are no Black or other ethnic elements involved. It signifies “high art dance” as only petty bourgeois imaginations can conceive it. It’s hard to avoid noticing that there’s no inner storytelling or relationship-building. It’s a jumble of moves that signify exhibition dancing, more akin to the Ice Capades than anything Astaire and Rogers put together. For Powell, Murphy is nothing more than a beard.
Clare happens on Johnny practicing alone to Porter’s “I’ve Got My Eyes On You,” pretending he’s dancing with — and proposing to — Clare. I love this little dance — it displays everything about Astaire’s mood, style, and attitude that Powell lacks. It’s not a little ironic that the most romantic couple dance in the film is performed solo by Astaire with Clare’s image on the cover of the sheet music.
The two finally get to do a real duet as they practice steps that develop into a lindy-style routine. The biographers say that Astaire and Powell worked on their own at opposite ends of the practice studio, after which they would come together to exchange ideas. It’s safe to say that this routine was a true collaborative design. Even so, it’s evident how much more flexible and present Astaire is than Powell. Both of them, I think, felt real life was downtime until they could dance. Powell, though, I feel is always thinking about her steps; she puts the pieces together like a puzzle; she’s always aware that she’s being looked at. I don’t feel any innerness in her; performance is all. Astaire is simply in the zone, and he’s having a lot more fun.
Back at the plot, King gets increasingly surly and thuggish as he suspects Johnny of trying to steal his amour and to undermine his now-successful career as Clare’s partner. Astaire gets to play a role unusual for him: the open-hearted, loyal, self-sacrificing friend who nonetheless stands tall. Director Norman Taurog momentarily takes the film into noir territory and Astaire is excellent with it. Tough. It’s strange that Astaire didn’t get chances to do straight noir, like Dick Powell.
The high-spirited partnership of the Jukebox Dance turns lugubrious when Johnny, secretly filling in for the dead-drunk King, dances a long duet in a routine that is as pretentiously artsy as the Jukebox Duet was funky. Using a masked carnival theme that was already old in 18th century, the piece begins with a Powell solo in what was considered to be her other wheelhouse than tap, show ballet. As a masked singer (Douglas McPhail) sings an oily version of “I Concentrate on You,” Powell performs a, to me unwatchable, pastiche of ballet moves. It’s all supposed to signify high art now available to the masses on Broadway and in movie houses. High art it ain’t. Even in this putatively elegant number, Powell can’t prevent herself from slipping into vaudevillian postures.
Things get worse — or better, depending on how ironic you feel — when Johnny appears masked and attired as Pierrot. I can’t find any information about the insipid choreography; most likely it was all Connolly’s brainchild, but Powell may have had a hand in it, and maybe even Astaire. I’ve found it embarrassing for a long time; recently, though, I am seeing this use of Astaire in a toney, mincing dance in a new light. In Shall We Dance, one of the last RKO Astaire-Rogers movies, Astaire plays a dancer torn between his love of ballet’s discipline and jazz-tap’s “mood.” Ballet was beginning to acquire enough cultural jam in the U.S. that musicals were expected to incorporate it, and to synthesize it with more raggedy popular, Black-derived show dancing. I read Shall We Dance as Astaire’s statement that he can indeed incorporate ballet into his Big Tent style, but only as subordinate to jazz, the “mood” of freedom, improvisation, and joy. Now, after watching some of Astaire’s subsequent films (especially his first with Rita Hayworth, You’ll Never Get Rich), I see Shall We Dance as celebrating a pyrrhic victory. Where the Astaire-Pan choreographies of the Thirties worked out a dialogue between ballroom dancing (with its associations of classy romance) and jazz-tap, by the early Forties both ballroom’s and tap’s stock were down. Instead, while the high/low dialectic was retained, ballet replaced ballroom as the art representing elite tastes, and lindy-jitterbugging was taking over the role of tap. In his group and couples dances in the Forties the always flexible and astute Astaire fully accepted the trend towards including more balletic elements. Still, the “I Concentrate on You” routine gives Astaire nothing to work with but pretentious posturing, enhanced (or mitigated, take your choice) by the sorts of special lighting and camera effects that Astaire prohibited in his own films. So, now I give Astaire credit for trying to acquire some new “science” for his later syntheses.
The multi-part finale set to Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” continues the kitsch-parade, as Astaire and Powell dance a faux flamenco, using their taps chops to imitate flamenco dancers’ stomps and the sound of castanets. Not much to see here, but then…
The finale of the finale is simply a magnificent jam session by the two greatest white tappers of the age. I still feel that Powell is thinking in terms of the steps that she has pre-mapped in her mind, but this is one of the most musical and virtuosic performances of pure tap she ever filmed, jettisoning all the mugging and athletic showboating. This is probably the routine that they worked out in their rehearsal exchanges. The music falls away, leaving only the sound of two of brilliant tap percussionists, cutting, matching, riffing, and counting at the highest level. To top it off, King appears onstage (having engineered his own secret self-sacrifice for Johnny’s sake) and we get a fine closing trio that even includes some ribbing of Powell’s signature moves — not something you see very often.
Bonus 1: Although Broadway Melody of 1940 has fewer of the weird novelty acts that the other Broadway Melodies have far too many of, it does have a couple. One is an unimpressive female juggler. The other one is funny — a screwball aria performed by Charlotte Arren and her accompanist-husband, Johnny Broderick. It’s one of the funniest of these insets, almost on a par with the Chicken Lady’s Song in Every Night at Eight. (That fan!)
Bonus 2: “Begin the Beguine” the way it’s supposed to sound. (It’s interesting that the jazzy arrangement that Powell and Astaire dance to includes more clarinet work than Artie Shaw’s hit version does.)
Bonus 3: But then there’s also this.
Bonus 4: I really like this obscure version of “I’ve Got My Eyes On You.”
