Daddy Long Legs (1955 film)

Daddy Long Legs
Directed by	Jean Negulesco
Produced by	Samuel G. Engel
Written by	Henry Ephron Phoebe Ephron Jean Webster (novel)
Starring	Fred Astaire Leslie Caron Terry Moore Thelma Ritter Fred Clark
Music by	Alex North (ballet music)
Cinematography	Leon Shamroy
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	May 5, 1955 (1955-05-05)
Running time	126 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Daddy Long Legs (1955) is a Hollywood musical comedy film set in France, New York City, and the fictional college town of "Walston" in Massachusetts. The film was directed by Jean Negulesco, and stars Fred Astaire, Leslie Caron, Terry Moore, Fred Clark, and Thelma Ritter, with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The screenplay was written by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, loosely based on the 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster.

It was one of Astaire's personal favorites, largely due to the script which, for once, directly addresses the complications inherent in a love affair between a young woman and a man thirty years her senior. However, the making of it was marred by his wife's death from lung cancer. Deeply traumatized, Astaire offered to pay the production expenses already incurred in order to quit the project, but then changed his mind.

This was the first of three consecutive Astaire films set in France or with a French theme (the others being Funny Face and Silk Stockings), following the fashion for French-themed musicals established by ardent Francophile Gene Kelly with An American in Paris (1951), which also featured Kelly's protégée Caron.

Plot summary

Wealthy American Jervis Pendleton III (Fred Astaire) has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, Julie Andre (Leslie Caron). He anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Her nickname for him, "Daddy Long Legs", is taken from the description of him given to Andre by some of her fellow orphans who see his shadow as he leaves their building.

Several years later, he visits her at school, still concealing his identity. Despite their large age difference, they soon fall in love.

Key songs/dance routines

His first film in Cinemascope widescreen - which he was to parody later in the "Stereophonic Sound" number from Silk Stockings (1957) - provided him the opportunity to explore the additional space available, with the help of his assistant choreographer Dave Robel. Roland Petit designed the much-maligned "Nightmare Ballet" number. As usual, Astaire adapted his choreography to the particular strengths of his partner, in this case ballet. Even so, Caron ran into some problems in this, her last dance musical, to the extent that Astaire mentioned in his biography that "one day at rehearsals I asked her to listen extra carefully to the music, so as to keep in time". Caron herself puts this down to flaws in her early musical training. The final result, however, has a pleasing and appropriate dreamlike quality. In this respect, it is a more successful attempt to integrate ballet into his dance routines than his previous effort in Shall We Dance (1937).

• "History Of The Beat": An Astaire song and dance solo using drumsticks performed in an office environment. While the use of drumsticks recalls the Nice Work If You Can Get It routine from A Damsel In Distress (1937), and the Drum Crazy number from Easter Parade (1948), it is a pale shadow of either, and, given that this was the first number to be filmed, some commentators have speculated that it was affected by Astaire's grief at his wife's death.

• "Daddy Long Legs": An off-screen female chorus sing this attractive number while Caron muses fondly at a blackboard cartoon sketch of Astaire.

• "Daydream Sequence": Astaire appears in three guises: A Texan, an international playboy, and a guardian angel based on images of him described in letters from Caron. As a Texan he performs a comic gallumphing square dance routine to a short song dubbed for him by Thurl Ravenscroft - the only time in his career that Astaire's voice was dubbed. As an international playboy he tangoes his way through a flock of women, one of whom is Barrie Chase - who was later to be his dance partner in all of his television specials from 1958-1968. The third routine is a particularly attractive and gentle romantic partnered dance with Caron, where she performs graceful ballet steps while Astaire glides admiringly around her.

• "Sluefoot": A boisterous and joyous partnered dance with Astaire and Caron with a lot of sharp leg movements in which, atypically, Astaire inserts a short and zany solo segment. The chorus join in towards the end.

• "Something's Gotta Give": Astaire was deeply grateful to his friend Mercer for composing this now famous standard as he felt the film sorely lacked a strong popular song. In the romantic partnered routine which follows Astaire's rendition of the song, he exploits - albeit reluctantly - the wide lateral spaces afforded by the Cinemascope format. While the routine has many attractive qualities and the ending is particularly fine, some commentators have detected a certain stiffness in Caron, especially in her upper body.

• "Nightmare Ballet": A solo routine for Caron frequently criticised for its rather meaningless content and length (it lasts all of twelve minutes).

• "Dream": A short but much admired celebratory romantic partnered routine for Astaire and Caron with dreamlike twirling motifs and, unusually for Astaire, incorporating a kiss.

Award nominations

Daddy Long Legs was nominated for the Academy Awards for:

• Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color (Lyle R. Wheeler, John DeCuir, Walter M. Scott, Paul S. Fox).
• Best Music, Original Song (Johnny Mercer, for the song "Something's Gotta Give")
• Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Alfred Newman).

The film was also nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical (Phoebe Ephron, Henry Ephron).

References

• Fred Astaire: Steps in Time, 1959, multiple reprints.
• John Mueller: Astaire Dancing - The Musical Films of Fred Astaire, Knopf 1985, ISBN 0-394-51654-0

See also

Other versions of the Jean Webster novel:

• Daddy-Long-Legs (1919 film) with Mary Pickford
• Daddy Long Legs (1931 film) with Janet Gaynor
• Curly Top (film), 1935 film with Shirley Temple based on the novel
• Daddy Long Legs (1938 film) Dutch film
• My Daddy Long Legs (1990) Japanese anime TV series
• Daddy-Long-Legs (2005 film) Korean film

External links

• Daddy Long Legs at the Internet Movie Database
• Daddy Long Legs at AllRovi