Royal Wedding

For the ceremony, see Royal wedding.

Royal Wedding
Fred Astaire and Jane Powell in Royal Wedding
Directed by	Stanley Donen
Produced by	Arthur Freed
Written by	Alan Jay Lerner
Starring	Fred Astaire Jane Powell Peter Lawford Sarah Churchill
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	March 8, 1951 (U.S. release)
Running time	93 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,590,920 (estimated)

Royal Wedding (MGM) is a 1951 Hollywood musical comedy film known for Fred Astaire's dance performance on a ceiling and another with a coat rack. The story is set in London in 1947 at the time of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and stars Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford, Sarah Churchill and Keenan Wynn, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. The film was directed by Stanley Donen. It was his second film and the first film he directed by himself.

Astaire and Powell play a brother and sister song and dance duo, echoing the real-life theatrical relationship of Fred and Adele Astaire. Powell, who was not first choice for the role, surprised her colleagues with her all-round ability. She falls for Lawford, who plays an English aristocrat – mirroring Adele Astaire's romance and eventual marriage to Lord Charles Cavendish, son of the Duke of Devonshire.

Royal Wedding is one of several MGM musicals (another being Till the Clouds Roll By) that lapsed into public domain on their 29th anniversary due to failure to renew the copyright registration. As such it is widely available on Video and DVD, but the quality of these versions varies. In 2007, however, Warner Home Video issued a restored version of Royal Wedding in a DVD set along with The Belle of New York. The film was later featured in an episode of Cinema Insomnia.

Plot

The story sees brother and sister Tom and Ellen Bowen as stars of a show Every Night at Seven, a Broadway success. They are persuaded to take the show to London, capitalising on the imminent Royal Wedding.

On the ship, Ellen meets and quickly falls in love (a habit with her) with impoverished but socially well connected aristocrat Lord John Brindale. Whilst casting the show in London, Tom falls in love with a newly engaged dancer, Anne Ashmond. Tom assists Anne to reconcile her estranged parents and also asks his agent to locate Anne's supposed fiancee in Chicago – only to discover that he's married.

Carried away by the emotion of the wedding, the two couples decide that they will also be married that day.

Cast

• Fred Astaire – Tom Bowen
• Jane Powell – Ellen Bowen
• Sarah Churchill – Anne Ashmond
• Peter Lawford – Lord John Brindale

Key songs/dance routines

Choreographer Nick Castle collaborated with Astaire on several of the numbers. Although none of the songs is considered a standard, dance-wise, the film is notable for the inclusion of not one but two Astaire solos, both of which are amongst his best known works. Parody, of himself and of some well known colleagues, is an important theme of the choreography.

• "Ev'ry Night At Seven": A rather tired-looking Astaire (pretending to be a bored king) and a lively Powell sing and dance through this royal-themed number.

Fred Astaire in "Sunday Jumps"

• "Sunday Jumps": Astaire credits the idea for this famous solo to his long-time choreographic collaborator Hermes Pan. In it, Astaire parodies himself by dancing with a hatstand and appears to parody his rival and friend Gene Kelly by inserting a mock bodybuilding episode during which he kicks aside some Indian clubs in a reference to Kelly's routine with The Nicholas Brothers in The Pirate. The fame of the dance rests on Astaire's ability to animate the inanimate. The solo takes place in a ship's gym, where Astaire is waiting to rehearse with his partner Powell, who doesn't turn up, echoing Adele Astaire's attitude toward her brother's obsessive rehearsal habits to which the lyrics (unused and unpublished) also made reference. Controversially, in 1997, it was digitally manipulated to show Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner in Dirt Devil commercials. In a missive, later published in Time Magazine and Variety[1], Astaire's daughter Ava severely criticized the corporation's president, writing: "Your paltry, unconscionable commercials are the antithesis of everything my lovely, gentle father represented."[2] This number has been referenced by Mel Gibson in What Women Want and by David Byrne in the live film of his band, Talking Heads, and was also parodied by Kermit the Frog in The Great Muppet Caper.

• "Open Your Eyes": This lilting waltz is sung by Powell at the beginning of a romantic routine danced by Powell and Astaire in front of an audience in the ballroom of a transatlantic liner. Soon, a storm rocks the ship and the duet is transformed into a comic routine with the dancers sliding about to the ship's motions. This number is based on a real-life incident which happened to Fred and Adele Astaire as they traveled by ship to London in 1923.

• "The Happiest Days Of My Life": Powell sings this ballad to Peter Lawford, with Astaire sitting at the piano.

• "How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life" has what is considered the longest title of any song in MGM musical history. For the first time in his career, Astaire successfully casts aside all pretension to elegance and indulges in a deliberately vulgar comic song and dance vaudeville-style with Powell. The routine recalls the "A Couple Of Swells" number with Judy Garland in Easter Parade. Here, for the second time in the film, he seems to parody Gene Kelly by wearing the latter's trademark straw boater and employing the stomps and splayed strides that originated with George M. Cohan and were much favored in Kelly's choreography.

Fred Astaire in "You're All the World to Me"

• "Too Late Now": Powell sings her third ballad, this time an open declaration of love, to Lawford.

• "You're All The World To Me": In one of his best known solos, Astaire dances on the walls and ceilings of his room because he has fallen in love with a beautiful woman who also loves to dance. The idea occurred to Astaire years before and was first mentioned by him in the MGM publicity publication Lion's Roar in 1945. The number was filmed by building the room set inside a revolving steel barrel and mounting the camera and operator to the floor so they would rotate along with the room. The same technique would later be used to simulate a zero gravity environment in 2001: A Space Odyssey, to allow Lionel Richie to perform a similar dance in the video for "Dancing on the Ceiling," and to enable Clark Kent to walk up walls to change a light bulb in the pilot episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. It was also used in the music videos "Fly" by Sugar Ray and "Slash Dot Dash" by Fatboy Slim. Also, in an episode of the television series The Avengers ("The Winged Avenger", Season 5, episode 6), Emma Peel fights the villain while standing upside-down on the ceiling. Burton Lane's music was originally featured in the 1934 Eddie Cantor film Kid Millions, in the number "My Minstrel Man," sung by a ten-year-old Harold Nicholas to lyrics by Harold Adamson.

• "I Left My Hat In Haiti": This number, essentially the work of Nick Castle, involves Powell, Astaire, and chorus in a song and dance routine with a Latin theme.

Casting

Jane Powell was far from the first actress approached to play the role of Ellen opposite Astaire. Initially Ginger Rogers was asked, but she declined. Then June Allyson was signed for the role but had to drop out when she became pregnant. Judy Garland was then signed as Ellen but due to personal issues was fired from the film (and her MGM contract was terminated). Jane Powell ultimately replaced Garland.[3]

See also

• List of films in the public domain

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

External links

• Royal Wedding at the Internet Movie Database
• Royal Wedding is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• Royal Wedding at AllRovi
• Royal Wedding at the TCM Movie Database
• The Shelf: Review of Royal Wedding: 2007 Remastered DVD
• Film clip (Public Domain) of Astaire's Sunday Jumps Dance
• Film clip (Public Domain) of Astaire's You're All The World To Me Dance