LET'S DANCE: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1950) Kino Lorber

Two of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters, garrulous gal, Betty Hutton and tap-dancer extraordinaire, Fred Astaire teamed up for director, Norman Z. McLeod’s Let’s Dance (1950) – a decidedly tepid downbeat in each’s career. While the picture did make money, it could hardly be considered an artistic triumph. In the sort of quid pro quo, for which the moguls of yore were well-regarded, Louis B. Mayer loaned Astaire out to his rival, presumably to gain access to Hutton for MGM’s Annie Get Your Gun (also made and released in 1950) after Metro’s #1 musical star, Judy Garland, proved much too ill to continue with it. Like Garland, Hutton’s own supremacy was on the downswing by the time she committed to Let’s Dance. But that is really where any and all comparisons to these ladies should end. While Garland’s pictures continue to resonate with audiences today, Hutton’s have quietly faded into obscurity with time. Garland was released from her MGM contract after making Summer Stock (1950). But Hutton would hang on to her digs at Paramount until mid-decade. Even so, Garland proved to have the upper hand, with the comeback to end all comebacks - Warner Bros. A Star is Born (1954) – a legendary offering for which Hutton’s subsequent output on celluloid has no equal.

Yet, it is important to denote how wildly popular Betty Hutton was in her heyday. Discovered by band leader, Vincent Lopez in 1938, by the mid-1940’s she had ousted Dorothy Lamour as Paramount’s top female box office draw and was under a personal contract to producer, Buddy DeSylva, who guided her career with ginger ease. When DeSylva died in 1950, Hutton lost all autonomy at the studio. Her expectations for ‘star treatment’ clashed with Paramount execs who increasingly found her more of a nuisance than an asset, and Hutton – after memorable departures into live theater and a Vegas act, succumbed to chronic depression, arguably brought on by her addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. Conversely, costar, Fred Astaire could not have been in greater demand. Having effortlessly graduated from RKO’s art deco fantasy-scapes in 1939, first as a freelancer at Paramount, then as an MGM contractee, Astaire could be counted upon as the grand old man of the dance. Throughout the fifties, he showed remarkable resilience in his staying power with younger audiences and virtually no signs his energies were slowing down, appearing in such iconic musicals as Funny Face and Silk Stockings (both made and released in 1957).

Astaire’s breezy congeniality, wed to Hutton’s gregarious good-nature, ought to have provided the necessary 'ying' to 'yang' ratio for another big-time, box office dynamo. Yet, despite an electrifying solo from Astaire, and some intermittent well-intended comedy for Hutton to play, Let’s Dance is a leaden experience almost from the moment the credits roll. There is just something horrendously off and deadly off-putting about the chemistry between these musical titans. Difficult to assess the actual fault. By all accounts, Astaire got on famously with Hutton. She was, in fact, in awe of Astaire. But Hutton’s inability to approach anything near subtlety clashes with Astaire’s ensconced verve for understatement. Thus, something had to give. That 'something' was Astaire’s usual grace and charm. To keep up with Hutton, Astaire attempts – with marginal success – to match her loud-mouthed mania, tit for tat. In the several dances they share, this ostensibly pays off. But the score by Frank Loesser, is among the picture’s weakest assets, presumably as Loesser was then squeezing all his creative juices into his pet project, Guys and Dolls.

Deprived of those welcomed respites to simply let their respective hair down, breathe, and engage a scene for its quiescence (Hutton even cries loud), Let’s Dance desperately unravels into an obnoxious mess for which Hutton’s behind-the-scenes neuroticism and inimitable scene-chewing camera antics run afoul of good taste, and, almost always, right off the rails into high-decibel hypocrisy, deriding the essential lightheartedness for any musical/comedy to thrive. The screenplay by Allan Scott (who had written most of the Astaire-Rogers hits at RKO) is as much a bundle of nervous goings on, haplessly strung together with clumsiness. The names and attributes lent our stars’ alter egos are more arbitrary than lived-in: Astaire’s Don Elwood, a milquetoast in everything but taps, and, Hutton’s Kitty McNeil a boisterous ball of brashness without the bubbles. And then, there is Lucile Watson’s Serena Everett to reconsider. As the dowager/baddie of the piece, whose son, Richard (whom we never meet) has been killed in the war, though not before marrying Kitty on the fly, Watson emerges as a formidable force, despite Serena being a ‘nothing’ part, inexplicably placated by either the milk of human kindness or yoke of this picture’s rank and relentless need for a happy ending.

Scott’s story is set at the height of WWII: performers, Kitty McNeil and Donald Elwood are entertaining troops in London when Don makes an impromptu announcement he and Kitty are engaged to be married. News to Kitty, who plays along until she is forced, rather cruelly to inform Don she has already married flyboy, Richard Everett, who derives from a moneyed Bostonian blue-blood background. Predictably, Richard is downed while engaging the enemy, leaving his young, pregnant bride, a widow. From here, Serena enters – laying custodian claim to her grandson, Richard Everett VII (played with sickening precociousness by Gregory Moffett). Serena dislikes Kitty on principle. Her son was merely attracted to Kitty’s flash. She, undoubtedly, was lured in with the promise of living well off his family’s inheritance. Worse, Serena believes only she knows how to best further Richie's education. And hence, Kitty decides to retreat to Manhattan with her son. Having dissolved the act, Don is now desperate for money. He takes a job at a nightclub and inadvertently runs into a down-and-out Kitty. Taking pity on ex-partner, Don gets Kitty a gig as the club’s cigarette girl.

Meanwhile, Serena has sent her ghoulish attorneys, Edmund Pohlwhistle (Roland Young) and Charles Wagstaffe (Melville Cooper) to subpoena Kitty for custody of Richie. Don persuades his boss, Larry (Barton MacLane) to hire Kitty as his dance partner. Alas, this too backfires when young Ritchie prefers the club, watching rehearsals, rather than attending school. An empathetic Judge MacKenzie (George Zucco) gives Kitty sixty-days to stabilize the child’s home life. To this end, Don agrees to wed Kitty. Too bad old habits die hard. Kitty and Don get into a heated argument at the license bureau and Don storms out. So much for wedded bliss. Kitty now turns to Don’s wealthy pal, Timothy Bryant (Sheppard Strudwick) for solace and companionship. But a jealous Don thwarts their engagement, allowing for Serena to win custody of Ritchie. In a moronic gesture, Kitty kidnaps her own son and conceals him inside the club. Having traded in a prized racehorse for some quick disposable capital nobody knew about, Don arrives to smooth over the rough edges in Kitty and Serena’s strained relationship. An inexplicably reformed Serena renounces all legal claims to her grandson and a relieved Kitty agrees to marry Don anyway.

Let’s Dance is such a harbinger of bad-timing, bad taste, bad acting and badly bungled scenarios that go nowhere fast, its one saving grace remains Astaire’s dance routines. Some of these, especially the ‘Piano Dance’ are mesmerizing examples to affirm Astaire’s legacy. In the art of dance, this likely will never be diminished. But the electrifying solo arrives at the outset of the movie, leaving the remainder of Loesser’s output to founder in its afterglow. The most enjoyable moments thereafter are owed the finale, ‘Tunnel of Love’ and, to better effect, ‘Oh, Them Dudes’ where Astaire matches Hutton in all her loud-mouthed excellence. The tragedy, of course, is that there are other songs interpolated that only illustrate the great divide between Hutton and Astaire’s respective styling. Odd and awkwardly mashed together, the tepid score and even less memorable staging of these sequences deflates the joy, leaving the comedy to carry the load. Yet, the laughs are more belligerent than buoyant and frequently interrupted by tearful excess, with Hutton screeching pity to the rafters. It doesn’t work – none of it. Curiously, the picture made money – largely on the drawing power of its two stars. But today, Let’s Dance should be regarded as little more than an embarrassing footnote in both Astaire and Hutton’s careers.  

Let’s Dance was one of Paramount’s last 3-strip Technicolor releases. But you would never guess it from Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray. Let’s be honest – the heavy lifting here, or lack thereof, ought to have been done by Paramount to ready the picture for its hi-def debut. Overall, the image exhibits remarkable crispness. The main titles are appallingly soft, but afterwards everything snaps together. It’s just that the vintage color throughout is anemic at best. Certain scenes appear as to have been photographed in 2-strip Kodachrome rather than 3-strip Technicolor. When colors marginally improve, they are still light-years removed from that glorious vibrance generally associated with vintage 3-strip Technicolor. And most certainly, George Barnes’ original cinematography never looked so pallid in 1950. The 2.0 DTS mono is fairly standard. While vintage mixing of dialogue, score and SFX is solid, the overall characteristic here is just flat, dull and uninspired. Kino has shelled out for a new audio commentary by noted historian, Lee Gambin who has taken Hutton’s manic style to heart and is all over the place in his thoughts and anecdotal reflections. It is an exhausting experience. Kino stacks this one with trailers for virtually every musical they have released over the last 2 years. Bottom line: Let’s Dance should be considered ONLY for Astaire/Hutton completionists. It’s not an engaging musical in any way. The Blu-ray is just adequate. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2

VIDEO/AUDIO

3

EXTRAS

1