Second Chorus is a 1940 Hollywood musical comedy film starring Paulette Goddard and Fred Astaire and featuring Artie Shaw, Burgess Meredith and Charles Butterworth, with music by Artie Shaw, Bernie Hanighen and Hal Borne, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The film was directed by H. C. Potter and produced independently for Paramount Pictures by Boris Morros, with associate producers Robert Stillman and (uncredited) Fred Astaire.[2] The film's copyright expired in 1968 and it is now in the public domain.[3]
Second Chorus | |
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Directed by | H. C. Potter |
Written by | Frank Cavett (orig. story)[1] |
Screenplay by | Elaine Ryan Ian McLellan Hunter Johnny Mercer (contributor) Ben Hecht (uncredited) |
Produced by | Boris Morros |
Starring | Paulette Goddard Fred Astaire |
Cinematography | Theodor Sparkuhl |
Edited by | Jack Dennis |
Music by | Artie Shaw Hal Borne Johnny Mercer |
Production company | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 84 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Danny O'Neill (Fred Astaire) and Hank Taylor (Burgess Meredith) are friends and rival trumpeters with "O'Neill's Perennials", a college band. Both have managed to prolong their college careers by failing seven years in a row. At a performance, Ellen Miller (Paulette Goddard) catches both Danny's and Hank's eyes. However, she serves them a summons notice for her boss, a debt collector, but the fast-talking O'Neill and Taylor soon have her working as their manager, where her business savvy increases their gigs. Meanwhile, tired of losing several gigs to the Perennials, Artie Shaw (playing himself) comes to persuade Ellen to be his booking manager.
Ellen tries to get Danny and Hank an audition for Artie Shaw's band, but their jealous hi-jinks get them the boot. Ellen talks Shaw into letting rich wannabee mandolin musician J. Lester Chisholm (Charles Butterworth) back a concert. It looks like Ellen's plan to get Chisholm as backer fails, when Hank pretends to be Ellen's jealous husband — then her brother. But using the brother ploy, Danny and Hank manage to get Chisholm back on board, then get Shaw to agree to put Danny's song into the show. All they have to do is keep Chisholm and his mandolin — which he wants to play in the concert — away from Shaw until after the show. Hank's solution is to drop sleeping pills into Chisholm's drink, but Chisholm knocks out Hank too, with the same stuff.
To Ellen's relief, Danny finally acts responsibly, arranging his number for the show, which Shaw says "has really grown up into something special." He hands the baton to Danny, who successfully conducts his own composition whilst simultaneously also tap-dancing in front of the band. Danny and Ellen then drive off together into the night.
Cast notes
Hermes Pan collaborated with Astaire on the choreography.
The only number involving Astaire and Pan, possibly the most important choreographic collaboration in the history of filmed dance[citation needed] - was "Me And The Ghost Upstairs", which was cut from the final film, but is currently included in some regional DVD versions of the film. In it, Pan, shrouded in a sheet, creeps up on Astaire and begins to mimic him. The two then dance a riotous number involving Lindy lifts and jitterbugging. It is not really finished to Astaire's usual standards, and this, combined with the fact that the figure under the shroud is obviously male, wearing women's high heels, may have led to its deletion.
In a 1968 interview, Astaire described this effort as "the worst film I ever made." Astaire admitted that he was attracted to the film by the opportunity to "dance-conduct this real swingin' outfit". In an interview shortly before his death, Shaw admitted this film put him off acting. Astaire and Shaw shared a striking series of personality traits in common: an obsessive perfectionism and seemingly endless appetite for retakes, profound musicality and love of jazz, personal modesty and charm, and in a late interview Shaw expressed his opinion of Astaire: "Astaire really sweat - he toiled. He was a humorless Teutonic man, the opposite of his debonair image in top hat and tails. I liked him because he was an entertainer and an artist. There's a distinction between them. An artist is concerned only with what is acceptable to himself, where an entertainer strives to please the public. Astaire did both. Louis Armstrong was another one."[5]
Notes
Bibliography
Films directed by H. C. Potter | |
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General |
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National libraries |