The Hollywood Musical

A dancer in a top hat wanted the camera to see all of him, from the hat to the shoes, and to cut away as seldom as it could; his name was Fred Astaire.

When he and Ginger Rogers danced “Cheek to Cheek” in Top Hat, her feathered dress shed as they moved, and afterwards he sent her a gold feather for her charm bracelet. At MGM a producer named Arthur Freed gathered the people who made the form look easy, and from 1939 to 1960 his unit made some fifty musicals, with Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly among its directors. Singin’ in the Rain, their comedy about Hollywood learning to talk, turns on a silent star with a shrill voice and the young singer who dubs her in secret. Debbie Reynolds plays the young singer, and when she records “Would You?” to dub the star, the voice is Betty Noyes’s.