The Great Movies III

The overblown Faustian musical is a flop in New Haven; a stagehand observes, "You've got more scenery in this show than there is in Yellowstone National Park." As the depressed actors and dancers gather in a hotel suite, they cheer themselves with the "I Love Louisa" musical number, "but only for the time it takes them to sing and dance," writes the critic Joe McElhaney. "The moment the song is finished everyone goes into a depressed slump."

Levant in fact looks like he's depressed most of the time. A reallife hypochondriac whose character recites a list of complaints early in the movie, Levant was a friend and good-luck mascot for Arthur Freed, the key producer during MGM's golden age. That's how he got so many good supporting roles (as in An American in Paris), despite often looking grumpy and exhausted. "Oscar needed someone to yell at," Fabray remembers in an interview on the DVD. When he blew a line, he'd blame it on somebodyusually picking on Fabray, who was appearing in her first movie. After she told him to go to hell, she says, he backed off.

All of the interviews with the surviving cast members suggest the film was an unhappy shoot, although they don't quite say why. Minnelli's offstage marriage problems with Garland may have been one reason, Astaire's ambivalence about Charisse might have been another, Levant's daily appearance represented what he liked to call "a pharmaceutical miracle," and Buchanan was undergoing painful dental surgery. Still, a great musical emerged from the shambles, just as it does in the story.

Despite the elegance of "Dancing in the Dark" and the long "Girl Hunt" ballet sequence toward the end (with Astaire as a private eye and Charisse a slinky dame in red), my favorite musical number is an early one, "Shine on Your Shoes." Liza Minnelli, then seven, followed her father around during the filming, and remembers him scouting Penn Station for ideas about the soundstage sets.

Minnelli saw Leroy Daniels, a real shoeshine man who sang and danced as he worked, and that not only inspired the number, but got Daniels a trip to Hollywood and a scene where he costars with Astaire. He's a gifted performer, his timing as precise as Astaire's, and perhaps because he's the real thing, we sense a freshness and joy. Note, too, Astaire's casual strength when he lifts himself on the arms of the chair so he can kick in mid-air.

Most of the scene's charm is because of Astaire and Daniels, but some, too, was contributed by Minnelli. McElhaney recommends watching the "Shine on Your Shoes" number, but not focusing on Astaire and Daniels: "Instead, only take note of the direction of the extras; watch it again, and only note the function of the decor and the camera movements; then watch it one final time putting all of these elements together."What that exercise would illustrate is that for Minnelli, the whole screen was always in play, not just the foreground and the stars.

Many of the movie's songs, by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Deitz, already existed; MGM in those days didn't simply recycle Broadway hits but created new musicals from scratch, often using songs it already owned. That works here because, after dumping the Faustian musical, the performers decide to put on a revue. One song written new for the movie would become a touchstone: Deitz and Schwartz's "That's Entertainment," which celebrates show business in a way as joyous but not as zany as Donald O'Connor's "Make 'em Laugh" in Singin' in the Rain. One of their older songs that makes an unconvincing reappearance is "Louisiana Hayride," originally written in 1932; although in a revue anything, so to speak, goes, the hayride seems like a stretch.

Another musical sequence, the bizarre "Triplets," shows Astaire, Fabray, and Buchanan all apparently midgets dressed as babies, sliding down from their high chairs and dancing. Since we see their feet hit the floor and special effects seem impossible, how did they do it? By balancing on artificial legs strapped to their knees, Fabray reports; they fell dozens of times before getting it right, and relied on pain killers.

All of these backstage details seem like a distraction from the magic of The Band Wagon, but part of the film's appeal comes from our sense that what we see is not far removed from the actual process of making the movie. It's entertainment, all right, but it's also hard work, and Astaire chain smokes all the way through it. "I don't think a dancer should smoke," Charisse tells him early in the film, but by the end, she's bumming a cigarette.