Song & Dance 1953

From the movie: SMALL TOWN GIRL 1953
This number features two of the best song and dance performers of the 1940's and 50's, Bobby Van and Jane Powell. Bobby Van should have been a bigger star than he was, but unfortunately he got to Hollywood at the tail end of the big MGM musical era in the 1950's.
Sadly he died young at only 51. Jane Powell on the other hand is still with us at almost 92.

[annamariapirknernenador]

This movie is fantastic but I'm afraid it difficult to come at. Thank' for the clip and I'm waiting for more!

[esmeephillips]

Jane Powell was not one of the most deplorable losses when musicals faded. Pert and petite but average as a singer and dancer, she let Joe Pasternak- always nostalgic for the dear, dead days of Deanna- slather her in syrup. She played too young for too long, and when she tried to be dramatic in a film with Hedy Lamarr... ouch.

She let herself be pushed around- the polar opposite of her prewar MGM namesake. Why did so many actresses capitulate like this, after Depression and WW2 had bred confident, arrestingly independent women?

Jane's game was raised only in 'Royal Wedding.' As a version of Fred Astaire's spiky and uproarious sister Adele, she cuts loose with Numero Uno to great effect. But here she is trapped in an incoherent screenplay and a routine by Busby Berkeley in which she grins like one more of his chorines; she ends by wagging her head cutesy-wutesily at the audience like an amateur.

Bobby Van occupied the same awkward space between flash novelty and mainstream leading man as Ray Bolger. But together with Ann Miller (who has little to with the plot) Van had his finest hour in 'Small Town Girl' as the neighborhood hopper of the Street Dance. Ann's moment was 'I've Got to Hear That Beat' with the disembodied orchestra. It is for these tours de force, not Jane, that the movie is remembered.