The Barkleys of Broadway

                     
I wanted to like The Barkleys of Broadway, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' swan song as a dancing duo and their only film together in color, but could not. MGM and Arthur Freed had coaxed Astaire out of his first retirement in 1948 after a broken ankle forced Gene Kelly to withdraw from Easter Parade. That film was a sizable hit and MGM wanted to reunite the film's stars, Astaire and Judy Garland, with director Charles Walters for a follow-up. Garland was subsequently suspended from the production by Freed for reasons that have been well documented. The studio sought out Ginger Rogers whose career was in decline.

Even with Garland, I doubt The Barkleys of Broadway would have amounted to much. The script, by Betty Comden and Adolph Green with an assist from an uncredited Sydney Sheldon, is irritatingly thin. The Barkleys are a married musical comedy duo with a string of Broadway successes behind them in collaboration with a songwriting friend played by Oscar Levant. However, Rogers' character yearns to be taken seriously as an actress and ends up appearing as the young Sarah Bernhardt in a play by a handsome French playwright (Jacques François). Likewise, Astaire is ostensibly tempted by an young ingenue played by Gale Robbins. Billie Burke is also on hand in her go to part, a ditzy heiress.

Rogers was a gifted comedian and the plot suits her better than it does Astaire. However, no one wants to see these two bicker and the scenes of Rogers playing Bernhardt made my eyes and ears bleed. Levant is given the best one-liners, but, inexplicably, is also given two musical numbers. I enjoyed watching him attack Khachaturian's Sabre Dance for a minute or so, but I was appalled as Levant and an orchestra later launched into a Tchaikovsky piano concerto and went to the kitchen for a beer. Even the numbers between the star duo are below their august standard. I did like the reprise of "They Can't Take That Away From Me", originally sung by Astaire in 1937's Shall We Dance and the shared tap dance. Not so much Fred's number with a chorus of dancing shoes. Such gimmicky special-effect dance numbers (as in Anchors Aweigh and Royal Wedding) were a bane of the post-war era. The nadir is "My One and Only Highland fling", a Scottish number so cutesy that I took it as a slur on ye bonny land. 

As for Charles Walters, while he is not a schlockmeister, he is a conveyor of corn. However, The Barkleys of Broadway lacks the story-book pastel beauty of his best films such as Easter Parade or Lili. I would even call important elements of the flick, especially the production design and Irene's dresses, to be strikingly ugly. The Barkleys of Broadway was a moderate hit, but not enough of one to reunite Astaire and Rogers for future pictures. Perhaps they knew when to stop. Their combined talents were certainly more suited to the elegant, black and white, 1.33:1 1930s rather than the garish widescreen, Technicolor extravaganzas of the 1950s.

OK, not all of this film is ugly

Fred and sister Adele Astaire, 1906