EASTER PARADE United States 1948 Director: Charles Walters
Cast: Fred Astaire [Don Hewes], Judy Garland [Hannah Brown], Peter Lawford [Johnny Harrow], Ann Miller [Nadine Hale]
Rating: 3 out of 5
An MGM musical doesn't come much nicer and sweeter than Easter Parade. Someone who found anything in it upsetting should reconsider what is valuable in life. I think it's obvious that the production didn't start with a screenplay, it began with someone thinking: "Hey, let's do a musical filled with the songs of Irving Berlin!". The plot between the singing and dancing is the standard musical plot: Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl gets seperated, boy and girl meets again. This time it's Fred Astaire and Judy Garland as the couple in love.
Don Hewes and Nadine Hale is a dancing team on various theatres. But Nadine wants to build a career on her own and leaves him. He picks up the next dancing girl he meet, Hannah Brown, as his new dancing partner. Although he falls in love with her, he keeps their relationship strictly a business arrangement. Hannah falls in love with Don but believes incorrectly that he loves Nadine and that he only keeps her as a temporary stand-in until Nadine comes back to him.
Gene Kelly was first cast as dancer Don Hewes. After breaking his ankle he suggested that he was replaced with Fred Astaire, at the time in semi-retirement. Production couldn't be delayed, since Garland was in a good mood and the producer's was afraid that her mood should change for the worse. No one seem to have remembered that Astaire was old enough to be Garland's father.
Fred Astaire was a wonderful dancer and he shows it in several sequences, most impressively in "Steppin' Out With my Baby", where an Astaire in slow motion proves his talent to the audience. Although Garland got first billing, Astaire is the one who makes the movie memorable.
Ann Miller plays Astaire's ex-partner Nadine. Is it a coincidence or did she always play self- centered unsympathetic roles? Anyway, she replaced Cyd Charisse who had a broken tendon. Rumour has it that she (Miller) was dating MGM boss Louis B. Mayer at the time.
Mattias Thuresson mattias.thuresson@mbox300.swipnet.se 980414
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