Fred Astaire - Tumblr Posts
Are you kidding me?? Look at Fred Astaire! He did skateboarding!! He had an incredibly unique personal style which was more casual and he would frequently wear old ties as belts. I wish I had half of his dancing talent.
He was a really great singer as well as a dancer.
This is a three-way poll. Only one of these men will continue to the third round of the bracket.
Propaganda
Fred Astaire (Top Hat, Shall We Dance, Easter Parade)—Not just a dancer (but oh, what a dancer), we should also show nothing but respect to a man whose characters had the good sense to repeatedly fall in love with Ginger Rogers over the course of ten movies together!! He was such a style icon that even Cary Grant wanted to know where he got his clothes. Astaire was one of those men whose intense charisma and talent is best understood when seeing him in motion!! A genuinely lovely person who worked very hard and did his utmost to promote the standards of how dancing should look and be filmed on screen. Debbie Reynolds also had some lovely stories about him in her autobiography [clips and Debbie's anecdotes below]
Johnny Weismuller (The Tarzan movies)—no propaganda submitted
Boris Karloff (Frankenstein)—I feel like everyone should know Boris Karloff had Indian ancestry and grew up in the UK, so he deeply understood the outsider feelings he portrayed so beautifully onscreen...and that's never minding his gorgeous soulful eyes, his expressive hands. (plus he voices the grinch. how can you not love the grinch?)
This is round 2 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.
[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]
Boris Karloff propaganda:
"when he was out of the monster makeup he was touching, elegant, dignified"
Fred Astaire propaganda:
No additional propaganda was submitted for Johnny Weismuller.
The dynamic duo in their first film together. I love the way the dance grows out of the dialog, which continues in dance form throughout the pas de deux. Ginger wasn’t as accomplished a dancer as she’d later become, but she’s still damn good.
Fred & Ginger: “Roberta” 1935
That you dont need me anymore
your last words before you die are the 3rd line of the last song you listened to. what are we saying ladies?
FRED ASTAIRE and GINGER ROGERS in CAREFREE (1938) dir. Mark Sandrich
CAREFREE (Dir: Mark Sandrich, 1938).
A frothy RKO romance; the 8th pairing of the incomparable Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
This one has Fred as a psychiatrist and Ginger as his patient and fiancee of his best pal (Ralph Bellamy). Things get complicated when she falls for him and he hypnotizes her to remain faithful to the groom. The movie's outcome is clearly signposted from early on, but there is considerable fun to be had on the journey, nonetheless.
With only four full-blown song and dance numbers Carefree is less a musical than a screwball comedy with the occasional break for a song. The Irving Berlin score is pleasant enough, but by the composer’s own high standards is not especially memorable. 'Change Partners' and 'I Used to Be Color Blind' are the possible exceptions; both are considerably enhanced by Ginger and Fred's fabulous footwork. The highlight is undoubtedly Astaire's solo 'Since They Turned Loch Lomand into Swing' in which he ditches Rogers to partner a golf-club, proving as adept on the fairway as he is the dance-floor.
Allan Scott and Ernest Pagnos screenplay, while implausible, does include a fair amount of humorous moments. While director Mark Sandrich, by now a veteran of the Astaire-Rogers movies, handles the comedy and the dance numbers with equal aplomb. It is all a lot of nonsense, but all is forgiven when Fred and Ginger take the dance floor. There was never a classier screen couple than Mr Astaire and Ms Rogers and support is offered by a particularly distinguished cast, notably Ralph Bellamy and Jack Carson. Unbilled and underused in one of her many domestic help roles is the great Hattie McDaniel.
As its title suggests, Carefree is lighthearted, featherweight stuff. Often regarded as the weakest of the Astaire-Rogers partnership, it does pale in comparison to classics such as Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935) and Shall We Dance (Mark Sandrich, 1937). Still, at a little over 80 minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome. The old adage "they don't make 'em like that anymore" certainly applies here; fluff it may be, but it is consummately produced fluff, expertly performed by its legendary cast.
100+ movie reviews now available on my blog JINGLE BONES MOVIE TIME! Link below.
TOP HAT (Dir: Mark Sandrich, 1935).
From RKO Radio Pictures, Top Hat was the 4th of 10 pairings of the inimitable Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Where to begin? The screwball plot is some trifle about mistaken identity (isn’t it always?), as Ginger, believing Fred is the philandering husband of a friend, rebukes his advances and marries her dress designer instead (or does she?). Topnotch support comes from familiar faces Edward Everett Horton and Helen Broderick are the real husband and wife, Erik Rhodes the cuckolded couturier and Eric Blore as an asinine but resourceful manservant. As convoluted as it sounds the whole thing works beautifully. But who in the audience is really here for the plot? What we are here for is Astaire and Rogers at their artistic peak dancing up a storm to one of Irving Berlin's greatest musical scores and happily that is what we get.
Read the full review on my blog JINGLE BONES MOVIE TIME. Link below.
This movie made me fall in love with fashion at a young age. And the color pink. ☺️🎀✨
Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face - 1957
By Hubert de Givenchy
Note that the opening shots have semi-expected camera cuts, until the room rotation scenes begin.
We then get three long takes. One uninterrupted camera shot from 1:13-2:53, and again from 2:53-3:23 (there's a very slight jump which might indicate a sneaky cut being made, since the room starts rotating in the opposite direction here), and yet again from 3:23-4:12.
I feel like it needs to be emphasized that, on top of everything else, this is all really hard to do in an extended take.
FRED ASTAIRE performs "You're All the World to Me" — Royal Wedding (1951) dir. Stanley Donen
reblog and put in the tags famous people who share your birthday
Quick sketch of Fred + Ginger I did on the train ride home