Words and Music

"Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook" is the soundtrack of heaven. I discovered it in the CD collection of a girl I was dating in 1989. I married the girl and, twenty years later, we still have the CD. So when I heard that there was a Rodgers and Hart biopic and that it was pretty doggone good, into the queue it went. I wanted to learn about these guys and their music.

I learned that the music is good, but it’s really the performer who makes it live.

WORDS AND MUSIC follows the Rodgers and Hart career arc, but it's more a retrospective, with moments of story serving mostly to segue between performances by distinguished artists of the day. But here's the problem: in the hands of wrong people, R&H's music goes from smart and sly classics to dated pop. Lena Horne is great and all, but her rendition of “Lady is a Tramp” in the film just can’t stand up to Ella’s on disc. June Allyson’s “Thou Swell” is a wet noodle compared to Nat King Cole’s in “Live at the Sands.” And don’t even get me started on comparisons with Sinatra.

Don’t get me wrong: the movie’s ok, particularly if you’re interested in even a fictionalized biopic of Rodgers and Hart. It’s just that nearly every time someone sang, I found myself comparing the performance with that of a better artist. All things considered, I prefer to remember Rodgers and Hart with the help of Fitzgerald and Cole and Sinatra, not the folks behind this picture.

The Band Wagon

Musical! Musical! I’m sick of these artificial barriers between the musical and the drama! In my mind, there is no difference between the magic rhythms of Bill Shakespeare's immortal verse and the magic rhythms of Bill Robinson's immortal feet. I tell you, if it moves you, if it stimulates you, if it entertains you, it’s theater. –Jack Buchanan as Jeffrey Cordova in THE BAND WAGON

He’s right.

He’s particularly right when the actor playing Bill Robinson is Fred Astaire. In discussing this film, my brilliant and insightful wife observed that it’s of a time when “People would go to the movies to be entertained. To see singing and dancing and talent and all that human beings can achieve.” She’s right about the first part, but she’s even more right about the second. For the dancing of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse is entertaining, sure, but it’s more than entertaining. It’s the very best that we can do as a species. It’s all that human beings can achieve.

Movies like THE BAND WAGON exemplify what’s so wonderful about movies. Thanks to this medium, humanity can revel in the unbridled excellence of Astaire and Charisse for generations to come. It’s there, right there, just a mouseclick or a DVD slipcover away. Whether THE BAND WAGON is an entirely successful film or not, their performances are here to stay.

As it happens, THE BAND WAGON is not an entirely successful film. Yes, Astaire and Charisse are ably supported by Buchanan, as well as Nanette Fabray and (my personal favorite) Oscar Levant. The writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Greene (on whom Fabray and Levant’s characters are based), who’d done SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN the year prior, deliver a fine story. But the movie suffers because not every number moves the story forward. Some just feel like old songs that MGM owned rights to and wanted to get out there.

So it isn’t the tightest of narratives. But that’s ok, because it’s a showcase for the pyramids, for Hamlet, the Apollo program. It’s a showcase for the best that we can do. And that’s entertainment.