"I just dance."

Donald O'Connor is underappreciated. Nowadays when you mention Donald O'Connor you have to add on: "You know, the guy who flips off the wall in Singing in the Rain?" before anyone knows who you are talking about. While "Make em Laugh" is a brilliant dance from a brilliant movie, I figured I would start us on the O'Connor train with a less well-known film.  Donald O'Connor was a pretty big star in his time. He was the leading man in quite a few hit movie-musicals (including one opposite Marilyn Monroe) plus the Francis the Talking Mule movies.  For those of you unfamiliar, they were a series of movies about a guy and his... talking mule. Pretty self-explanatory. They were a really big thing at the time, so much so that when Donald O'Connor finally quit, they dragged in Mickey Rooney to do the last film! Trivia : Mr. Ed was based heavily on Francis the Talking Mule Really Obscure Trivia : Leonard Nimoy (Known best as Mr. Sp

When you do musical theatre, you hear about Fred and Ginger. I was first introduced to them as a teenager and basically, all I knew was that they were old, did movies in black and white (at the time a scary concept for me) and that they danced. My family and I used to be a part of this film club that was run by our local paper's film critic. He decided that Top Hat was a worthwhile film to show on the big screen and somehow I ended up sitting in the audience. When I figured out which one was Fred Astaire I was underwhelmed. That's it? That odd-looking man? He looks a bit like a stick bug... Even when he did his first dance ("Fancy Free" the sand dance) I didn't get it. Then he danced with Ginger. That's when it clicked. Thus began my love of dance films, old films, and of course, Fred Astaire. About the Dance: This is hands-down my favorite Fred and Ginger dance, maybe because it is the one that made me fall in love with Fred. One of the th