Marge Champion's Documentary is Available to Watch Online

The Marge Champion and Donald Saddler documentary Keep Dancing (2009) is on Vimeo for a short while as of January 27, 2016. Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/153283760

We've discussed before that Marge Champion is not only a wonderful dancer on film (Show Boat, Jupiter's Darling), stage and supper club, but she also has a wonderful outlook on aging. "You can adjust," she says. "You can celebrate each decade for what it gives you, not dwell on what it takes away."

Further Resources

• Dancing with the Stars: Marge and Gower Champion in the "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" number from Lovely to Look At
• A Marge Champion interview  with Guideposts TV from 2011.
• Marge Champion tells her life story in this 3-hour interview with The Archive of American Television.

January Favorites

Every time you blog, older posts are buried in your archives and often are not read again. So today, we are combing through our classic movie archives like Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, opening her treasure box and scooping out memories.

Here are a few favorite blog posts from previous Januarys.

January 2011

    As a part of James Bond January, I took a look at 007 pop culture in 1967. This is the year of You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery. It's also the year his brother performed in a spoof of the Bond franchise.

Click here for James Bond in 1967: Bits of Trivia.

January 2012

This is the year we continued discussing The Heiress, starring Olivia De Havilland, about a woman who doesn't know if a guy loves her for herself or for her wealth.

This movie is a well that never runs dry. It bears repeat viewings. So Java's Journey talked about the symbolism of the garden muse in this film. How it represents new beginnings for the protagonist.

Click here to read The Heiress (1949): The Garden Muse.

January 2013

This year we took a look at classic movie remakes that are in development. Two of these films have made it to the big screen: Annie and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Read a comparison of old and new Mitty here.). The rest are still in development.

Read Classic Movie Remakes in Development.

 

 

January 2014

I happened to be watching an episode of the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour  ("Lucy Hunts Uranium") and noticed similarities in both plot and framing in a later film - It's a Mad, Mad , Mad, Mad World (1964). I just had to share it.

Click here for Lucy Hunts Uranium vs. Mad World

 

January 2015 

Last January was pretty tough for me, so I joined a Joan Crawford Facebook group. (Naturally.)  I had rarely ever watched Crawford films; I couldn't shake from my mind her alleged scandalous child-rearing skills.

The group convinced me (1) that there was room for doubt in the scandal and (2) that I'm missing out on some great theater. They were right on both counts.

So I watched a smattering of Crawford and was blown away! What a talent! In January 2015, I  reviewed Humoresque and was acquainted with some of the earlier work of Issac Stern, the violinist who made the fiddling in The Fiddler on the Roof so distinctive. In the Crawford film, it's Stern's work you hear when John Garfield fingers the violin.

Even in the strange circus world of Berserk!, Crawford stands out as the best part of the film - the concerned ring master who's workers are being mysteriously murdered.

Read Humoresque
Read a review of Berserk.

Harold Hill and Broadway's Hamilton | Now and Then, Part 1

In The Music Man, Harold Hill's theme song is "76 Trombones," which has the same melody as Marian's song, "Goodnight, My Someone." The movie (as well as its stage version) creates a moment when the two leads alternate singing lines from their own songs, then they start singing each others' tune. This shows their connection and oneness. (You'll see that in dances in the movies as well - the two create separate patterns of movement around the floor, then they dance in unison.)


This pairing of songs reminded me of something similar in a different Broadway show.

Currently, on Broadway is a popular and critically-acclaimed show: Hamilton: The Musical, created by Lin-Manuel Miranda (Tony-winning creator of In The Heights). The story follows the life of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury in what would later be called the United States.


There is a lovely intricacy of songs and storytelling. Alexander has several songs, parts of which can be heard throughout the songs of other characters. The first one, "Alexander Hamilton," sums up his story to the age of 19. It has a throbbing bass line, hard hitting to express the young man's determination to become an influential man.

That same through line of music can be heard several scenes later in his wife's ballad, "Burn." There has been heartache in the marriage and she's burning his letters. They are as separated as two married people can be, and yet, in a subtle way, his song makes its presence known in hers. Later (as in real life) Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton would bear her husband's legacy; she is still inextricably interwoven in his life, and he in hers.

It's a heartbreaking reminder that, for better or for worse, they are one.


Is this a constant pattern in musical storytelling, interweaving one person's song into another's? Probably. Movies have helped me to understand and appreciate subtleties in musicals.