Let's Dance (1950 film)

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Let's Dance
Let's Dance FilmPoster.jpeg
theatrical release poster
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Screenplay by Allan Scott
Dane Lussier (additional dialogue)
Based onLittle Boy Blue (story, 1948) by
Maurice Zolotow
Produced by Robert Fellows
Starring Betty Hutton
Fred Astaire
Roland Young
Ruth Warwick
Cinematography George Barnes
Edited by Ellsworth Hoagland
Music by Robert Emmett Dolan
Production
company
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release dates
  • November 29, 1950 (1950-11-29)(New York) [1]
  • December 14, 1950 (1950-12-14)(Los Angeles) [2]
Running time
111-112 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$2.4 million (US rentals) [3]

Let's Dance is a 1950 American Technicolor musical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Betty Hutton, Fred Astaire and Roland Young, with music composed by Frank Loesser. The film was produced and released by Paramount Pictures.

Contents

Plot

During World War II, Kitty McNeil and her dance partner Donald Elwood are performing for troops in London. Don announces his engagement to Kitty on stage, but Kitty later tells him that she has recently married pilot Richard Everett, a member of a wealthy Boston family. Everett is killed in combat soon after the marriage.

Five years later, Kitty is locked in a struggle with her late husband's grandmother Serena for the custody of Kitty and Richard's son Richie. Serena dislikes Kitty and thinks that she knows best about Richie's education. Kitty flees to New York City with Richie.

Desperate for money, Don has taken a job at Larry Channock's nightclub. Don sees Kitty at a café and arranges a job for her as a cigarette girl. However, Serena has sent her lawyers Pohlwhistle and Wagstaffe to the club, where they subpoena Kitty in an attempt to gain custody of Richie. Don persuades Larry to offer Kitty a steady job as his dance partner at the club, but various potentially embarrassing details emerge in court. However, all concerns are easily answered by the kind nightclub staff. The judge allows Kitty 60 days to provide Richie a stable home life, and Don and Kitty plan to marry. However, they argue at the marriage-license bureau, ending their short-lived engagement. Kitty becomes engaged to Don's rich friend. Don is jealous and ends the engagement.

After Serena wins custody of Richie, Kitty kidnaps him and hides him at the club. However, Don, who has earned a substantial amount of money by selling a racehorse, calms the rift between Kitty and Serena. Kitty is delighted and agrees to marry Don.

Cast

Production

Following the great success that MGM found in teaming Astaire with its greatest female musical star Judy Garland in the 1948 musical Easter Parade , Paramount sought to team Astaire with its own leading female musical star, Betty Hutton. The studio purchased the rights to a magazine story titled "Little Boy Blue", written by Maurice Zolotow, as the basis for the screenplay. [4] The film's early working title was also Little Boy Blue, but Paramount announced the title change to Let's Dance in May 1949. [5]

Reception

In a contemporary review for The New York Times , critic Thomas M. Pryor called the screenplay "a curious mixture of comedy, farce and sentimentality that is stretched beyond the point of comfortable endurance" and wrote: "The trouble with 'Let's Dance' is that it is freighted with too much plot, and most of it wallows in cheap sentiment that is not smartly enough burlesqued to add up to hearty laughter." [1]

Critic Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times wrote: "'Let's Dance' has a plot so insistently complicated that its sole purpose appears to be to keep the stars out of the musical spotlight; and when they do manage to get into it the songs Frank Loesser has written for them seem hardly worth the effort." [2]

References

  1. 1 2 Pryor, Thomas M. (1950-11-30). "The Screen: 3 Films Have Premieres Here". The New York Times . p. 42.
  2. 1 2 Scheuer, Philip K. (1950-12-15). "Astaire, Hutton Match Talents in 'Let's Dance'". Los Angeles Times . p. 30.
  3. ↑ 'The Top Box Office Hits of 1950', Variety, January 3, 1951
  4. ↑ Grant, Jack D. (1948-10-11). "Betty Hutton Bounces Back from London Into Comedy 'Little Boy Blue'". Los Angeles Mirror . p. 16.
  5. ↑ "Hutton-Astaire Film Titled 'Let's Dance'". Tulsa World . 1950-05-15. p. 7, Part 5.


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