Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Tuesday's Forgotten (or Overlooked) Film: DADDY LONG-LEGS (1955) starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron.


Let me say going in that I've never found Leslie Caron a scintillating screen presence except for maybe, in GIGI. So there's that to consider. But I can see Fred falling for her French bubbly effervescence - why not. He's an old guy, she's young and vibrant. There's that accent AND she really, really knows how to dance. Plus she's awfully cute. What more could any man want?

And I know that there are MANY people who think Fred was just too old for this role - I've even heard that some people find the whole thing creepy. I don't, but then far as I'm concerned Fred was ageless. But let's not dwell on the reality, ladies and gents. This is a movie. A musical. In Technicolor. It's Fred Astaire. Honestly, who cares how old he really was? It's make-believe!

I'll tell you a secret, I found Gene Kelly much more objectionable (age-wise) opposite Caron in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS. But that's just me.


DADDY LONG-LEGS (1955) is a film directed by Jean Negulesco with a screenplay by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron based on the wonderful (maybe even legendary) epistolary novel of the same name by Jean Webster. Read more about that version on my earlier blog post here.

As with most adaptations of novels, the movie takes liberties, but that's to be expected. For instance, in the book, the young American waif is named Jerusha 'Judy' Abbott. But since Caron is so obviously French, her name was changed to Julie Andre and she becomes a waif in an orphanage in the French countryside.


Traveling in France, Jervis Pendleton III (Fred Astaire) a fabulously wealthy businessman, stops off at an orphanage which he sponsors. He spots a charming young girl, Julie Anders (Leslie Caron) and decides to underwrite her education in the states. To that end, Julie shortly gets shipped off to a college in New England where her roommate and friend will be (coincidentally) Jervis's niece, Linda (Terry Moore). (Not that Julie knows about the family connection. She has no idea that Jervis is 'her' Daddy Long-Legs.)

You know how girls's colleges were depicted in movies once upon a time: fun, fun, and more fun. Sweater-sets, plaid skirts, saddle shoes, singing, dancing, the students all perky and bright-eyed and looking to connect with husband material. (There's a male college conveniently near by.)

At the orphanage, Julie's only glimpse of Jervis had been of his shadow - just enough to capture her imagination. He is tall and thin with long legs, hence the moniker 'Daddy Long-Legs'. But she is told by the orphanage administrator that she and her benefactor will never meet, that is one of the scholarship's provisos.

Jervis worries that if anyone found out he was sponsoring a lovely young girl, gossip might be hurtful not only to her but to his corporate dealings - Jervis is a hard headed business man first and foremost. He has no interest in friendship with his new ward. In fact, before too long he forgets about her.

Julie, however, has been told she must write to her mysterious sponsor and let him know of her life at school but she must not expect any replies to her letters. Huh?

I don't know about you, but that seems just the teensiest bit off-putting to me. But hey, she's getting a scholarship and a chance to have a better life, so why not. Besides she doesn't really believe he actually means not to respond to her letters.

But as the years pass and she writes her 'Dear Daddy Long-Legs' letters to Jervis - letters which he doesn't even bother to open - she finally realizes that her guardian did, indeed, mean what he said. Though that doesn't stop her continuing to write and unburdening herself to him. She is, after all, very grateful for this chance at a new life, not to mention his continued generosity.

When over time Jervis's gruff secretary, Alicia Pritchard (the wonderful Thelma Ritter) reads some of Julie's letters, she is so touched, she begins to chide her boss for not responding. Even Jervis's equally gruff associate Griggs (the equally wonderful Fred Clark), eventually gets in on the notion. Life is more than just about business, Miss Pritchard insists, to Jervis's surprise. Really? At the very least, he decides to read a letter or two.

Despite his inclination to keep ignoring the young girl he's uprooted and installed in a state-side school, Jervis decides - finally - to check up on her. Yes, he is touched by her letters too. He will drop in at the school to visit his niece Linda never admitting to Julie - whom he meets and is again enchanted by (in the way that only a younger woman seems able to enchant an older man) - who he really is.


Once they dance together (Sluefoot!), of course, it's all over but the wedding invitations. But that's a little later in the story. First Julie and Linda (who can easily see that her uncle dotes on Julie) travel to NYC on school break while Jervis tries to figure out how to tell Julie who is and Julie, smart girl that she is, begins to suspect.

It's all happily ever after of course, and even if we all know (including Jervis) that he's too old for Julie, it doesn't seem to matter much - love will find a way. It's only thirty or so years difference after all.


Several terrific songs and dances later, all's well that ends well. You know how that goes.

Don't forget to check in at Todd Mason's site, Sweet Freedom, to see what other films and/or audio visuals other bloggers are talking about today.

18 comments:

  1. "Sweater-sets, plaid skirts, saddle shoes, singing, dancing, the students all perky and bright-eyed and looking to connect with husband material." Love this. A concise summary of the 1950s.

    I was never terribly fond of this movie, but I liked the book and I really loved the musical play now being shopped around in regional theatre, with Megan McGinnis and Robert Adelman Hancock.

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    1. Thanks, Jacqueline. :) I must say I loved the book as well. This is not my favorite Fred Astaire, but it's better than none. :)

      Maybe the play will come to B'way. One can only hope.

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  2. I haven't seen this one in so long that I honestly can't remember much of it. My favorite Leslie Caron appearance was in "Lili," which I found thoroughly enchanting. As for Astaire, its hard to pick just one, but perhaps "The Band Wagon" would have to be my favorite. And where ARE the equivalent movies today? Sigh.

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    1. Nothing today can even remotely compare - unfortunately. My favorite Astaire? As you say, hard to pick just one. I love TOP HAT and THE GAY DIVORCEE. But THE BAND WAGON would be right up there as well. Besides Astaire, I adored Jack Buchanan.

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  3. Dear Yvette,
    I'm with you: TOP HAT is my favourite Fred movie. What a greg movie that was to see as a rerun on Sunday Afternoon TV back in the 1980s and 1990s...

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    1. I seem to remember watching it all the while I was growing up, Kirk. Television then had many movie channels which primarily showed oldies. I loved Fred and Ginger and Edward Everett Horton and all the other loonies who joined in the fun. Those were the days. :)

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  4. Yvette, I recall watching Fred Astaire's musicals on the VCR along with those of Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Donald O'Connor and, of course, Frank Sinatra. I liked both Astaire and Kelly equally though I think Astaire was a touch more graceful. I'm sure I've seen this film although I remember liking FUNNY FACE opposite Audrey Hepburn a lot.

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    1. Oh definitely, Prashant - Gene Kelly was the more athletic dancer and Fred the more graceful. I know they appeared on screen only once in a short dance sequence, but I so wish they'd made a whole movie together.

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  5. I so agree with you, Yvonne, not one of my favorites Astaire movies either but better than none!

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  6. I've loved this movie since I was a kid. The best part is the Slewfoot song! Good post.

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  7. Yvette, though I'll admit FUNNY FACE is more my speed, you sure made this movie version of the book sound charming! And like I said before, if Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn could make a May-December romance work in CHARADE, so could Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron -- especially with Thelma Ritter and Fred Clark rooting from the sidelines! :-) Swell review, my friend, as always! :-)

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    1. Thanks, Dorian. Glad you enjoyed it. I liked FUNNY FACE enormously - primarily because of the art direction and the setting. I mean, PARIS! Fred, Audrey and Kay Thompson - who practically steals the movie from under the stars' noses. I adore Kay Thompson.

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  8. Pretty sure this was the first movie I saw.

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    1. Wow, Patti. You're a spring chicken. :) My first movie is lost in memory. But I have a feeling it was Disney's Snow White. :)

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  9. I have a real soft spot for this film - which is to say that I like it despite the fact that the age gap is so huge, which would less of a problem if it weren't for the quasi-parental nature of the relationship - it's as if at the end of AMERICAN IN PARIS she had gone off with Georges Guetary instead of Kelly. I know what you mean about Kelly vs Astaire in this regard - and I think that when you refer to Astaire as 'ageless' that is very fair but it also implies (correctly, in my view) that he is also a bit sexless, which you could not say about the much more masculine charms of Kelly. But I love the look and feel of this film - and 'Something's Gotta give' is wonderful! So I love it, for all its weird faults!

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    1. Oh, I think we all like it well enough 'for all its weird faults', Sergio. As for Fred being seen as 'sexless' well, I think that's a persona he cultivated, whether purposely or not, it's debatable. I know exactly what you mean. EXCEPT when he was dancing. I read somewhere that when Astaire danced with a woman, THAT'S when he made love to her. And I agree. Just watch him dancing with Ginger Rogers to Night and Day in TOP HAT. Near the end, Ginger is faint, almost speechless with emotion. That, my friend, was Fred's specialty on film.

      Whereas, Gene Kelly was all energy and physical stamina and raw sexual power. He and Leslie Caron in the fountain during the ballet - AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, an otherwise sexless film in my view. But it's that Gershwin music which heightens those scenes of course.

      Otherwise near the end I always get the feeling that Caron is running away with someone who will be all wrong for her in a couple of years. If you really look at the film 'realistically' (I know, I know, hard to do) Nina Foch is the right woman for Gene. Caron and he hardly know anything about each other. He has idealized the Caron character. She - ? - who knows what she thinks of Kelly. It's all surface far as I can see. And yet I always watch the film for the ballet sequence and for Oscar Levant and for the 'Stairway to Paradise' number.

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