"I just dance."

Warning, this post is going to be silly. There seems to be some confusion on the topic of roller-skating in film. While this is by no means a scholarly look, I thought it might be fun to do a brief overview of roller skate dances in classic film. The common misconception is that the first filmed tap-dance on roller skates came in 1955 with Gene Kelly's film, "It's Always Fair Weather." This is not the case.  Based on a quick stint of film-research on the topic, I think that the first scene in a film that could possibly constitute someone "dancing on roller skates" came in 1916 with Charlie Chaplin's film, " The Rink ."  The skating stuff comes right around 10:45. I have not watched enough copies of this film to know which has the best restoration, but this one seems passable, if without a score.  What he does here is an absolutely incredible combination of skating, dance, physical comedy, and fight choreography. There ...

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...