Daddy Long Legs (film)
Encyclopedia
Daddy Long Legs is a Hollywood musical comedy film set in France
, New York City, and the fictional college town of "Walston" in Massachusetts. The film was directed by Jean Negulesco
, and stars Fred Astaire
, Leslie Caron
, Terry Moore
, Fred Clark
, and Thelma Ritter
, with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer
. The screenplay was written by Phoebe Ephron
and Henry Ephron
, loosely based on the 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs
by Jean Webster
.
It was one of Astaire's personal favorites, largely due to the script which, for once, directly addresses the complications inherent in a love affair between a young woman and a man thirty years her senior. However, the making of it was marred by his wife's death from lung cancer
. Deeply traumatized, Astaire offered to pay the production expenses already incurred in order to quit the project, but then changed his mind.
This was the first of three consecutive Astaire films set in France or with a French theme (the others being Funny Face
and Silk Stockings
), following the fashion for French-themed musicals established by ardent Francophile Gene Kelly
with An American in Paris
(1951), which also featured Kelly's protégée Caron.
Several years later, he visits her at school, still concealing his identity. Despite their large age difference, they soon fall in love.
widescreen - which he was to parody later in the "Stereophonic Sound" number from Silk Stockings (1957) - provided him the opportunity to explore the additional space available, with the help of his assistant choreographer Dave Robel. Roland Petit
designed the much-maligned "Nightmare Ballet" number. As usual, Astaire adapted his choreography to the particular strengths of his partner, in this case ballet
. Even so, Caron ran into some problems in this, her last dance musical, to the extent that Astaire mentioned in his biography that "one day at rehearsals I asked her to listen extra carefully to the music, so as to keep in time". Caron herself puts this down to flaws in her early musical training. The final result, however, has a pleasing and appropriate dreamlike quality. In this respect, it is a more successful attempt to integrate ballet into his dance routines than his previous effort in Shall We Dance (1937).
for:
The film was also nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award
for Best Written American Musical (Phoebe Ephron, Henry Ephron).
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, New York City, and the fictional college town of "Walston" in Massachusetts. The film was directed by Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco
Jean Negulesco was a Romanian-born American film director and screenwriter....
, and stars Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
, Leslie Caron
Leslie Caron
Leslie Claire Margaret Caron is a French film actress and dancer, who appeared in 45 films between 1951 and 2003. In 2006, her performance in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit won her an Emmy for guest actress in a drama series...
, Terry Moore
Terry Moore (actress)
Helen Luella Koford , better known as Terry Moore, is an American actress. Terry Moore made her film debut at age 11 and grew up with all the icons of the Hollywood era that made Hollywood what it is today, also known as "The Golden Age of Hollywood". Moore is an Academy Award nominated actress...
, Fred Clark
Fred Clark
Frederick Leonard Clark was an American film character actor.-Career:Born in Lincoln, California, Clark made his film debut in 1947 in The Unsuspected. His 20-year film career included almost 70 films, and numerous television appearances...
, and Thelma Ritter
Thelma Ritter
Thelma Ritter was an American supporting and character actress from the 1940s until her death in 1969.-Early life:...
, with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...
. The screenplay was written by Phoebe Ephron
Phoebe Ephron
Phoebe Ephron was a playwright and screenwriter who often worked with her husband, Henry Ephron. She was active as a writer from the early 1940s through the early 1960s...
and Henry Ephron
Henry Ephron
Henry Ephron was a playwright, screenwriter and film producer who often worked with his wife Phoebe Wolkind Ephron.Born in Bronx, New York, He was active as a writer from the early 1940s through the early 1960s...
, loosely based on the 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs
Daddy-Long-Legs (novel)
Daddy Long-Legs is a 1912 epistolary novel by the American writer Jean Webster. It follows the protagonist, a young girl named Jerusha "Judy" Abbott, through her college years. She writes the letters to her benefactor, a rich man whom she has never seen....
by Jean Webster
Jean Webster
Jean Webster was an American writer and author of many books including Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy...
.
It was one of Astaire's personal favorites, largely due to the script which, for once, directly addresses the complications inherent in a love affair between a young woman and a man thirty years her senior. However, the making of it was marred by his wife's death from lung cancer
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...
. Deeply traumatized, Astaire offered to pay the production expenses already incurred in order to quit the project, but then changed his mind.
This was the first of three consecutive Astaire films set in France or with a French theme (the others being Funny Face
Funny Face
Funny Face is an American musical film released in 1957 in VistaVision Technicolor, with assorted songs by George and Ira Gershwin. The film was written by Leonard Gershe and directed by Stanley Donen. It stars Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, and Kay Thompson...
and Silk Stockings
Silk Stockings (film)
Silk Stockings is a 1957 MGM musical film remake of Ninotchka. It was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse...
), following the fashion for French-themed musicals established by ardent Francophile Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
with An American in Paris
An American in Paris (film)
An American in Paris is a 1951 MGM musical film inspired by the 1928 orchestral composition by George Gershwin. Starring Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, and Nina Foch, the film is set in Paris, and was directed by Vincente Minnelli from a script by Alan Jay Lerner...
(1951), which also featured Kelly's protégée Caron.
Plot summary
Wealthy American Jervis Pendleton III (Fred Astaire) has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, Julie Andre (Leslie Caron). He anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Her nickname for him, "Daddy Long Legs", is taken from the description of him given to Andre by some of her fellow orphans who see his shadow as he leaves their building.Several years later, he visits her at school, still concealing his identity. Despite their large age difference, they soon fall in love.
Key songs/dance routines
His first film in CinemascopeCinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
widescreen - which he was to parody later in the "Stereophonic Sound" number from Silk Stockings (1957) - provided him the opportunity to explore the additional space available, with the help of his assistant choreographer Dave Robel. Roland Petit
Roland Petit
Roland Petit was a French choreographer and dancer born in Villemomble, near Paris, France. He trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet school, and became well known for his creative ballets.-Biography:...
designed the much-maligned "Nightmare Ballet" number. As usual, Astaire adapted his choreography to the particular strengths of his partner, in this case ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
. Even so, Caron ran into some problems in this, her last dance musical, to the extent that Astaire mentioned in his biography that "one day at rehearsals I asked her to listen extra carefully to the music, so as to keep in time". Caron herself puts this down to flaws in her early musical training. The final result, however, has a pleasing and appropriate dreamlike quality. In this respect, it is a more successful attempt to integrate ballet into his dance routines than his previous effort in Shall We Dance (1937).
- "History Of The Beat": An Astaire song and dance solo using drumsticks performed in an office environment. While the use of drumsticks recalls the Nice Work If You Can Get It routine from A Damsel In DistressA Damsel in Distress (film)A Damsel in Distress is a 1937 English-themed Hollywood musical comedy film starring Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns, and Gracie Allen. With a screenplay by P. G...
(1937), and the Drum Crazy number from Easter Parade (1948), it is a pale shadow of either, and, given that this was the first number to be filmed, some commentators have speculated that it was affected by Astaire's grief at his wife's death.
- "Daddy Long Legs": An off-screen female chorus sing this attractive number while Caron muses fondly at a blackboard cartoon sketch of Astaire.
- "Daydream Sequence": Astaire appears in three guises: A Texan, an international playboy, and a guardian angel based on images of him described in letters from Caron. As a Texan he performs a comic gallumphing square danceSquare danceSquare dance is a folk dance with four couples arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, beginning with Couple 1 facing away from the music and going counter-clockwise until getting to Couple 4. Couples 1 and 3 are known as the head couples, while Couples 2 and 4 are the side couples...
routine to a short song dubbed for him by Thurl RavenscroftThurl RavenscroftThurl Arthur Ravenscroft was an American voice actor and singer best known as the deep voice behind Tony the Tiger's "They're grrreat!" in Frosted Flakes television commercials for more than five decades. Ravenscroft was also known, however uncredited, as the vocalist for the song "You're a Mean...
- the only time in his career that Astaire's voice was dubbed. As an international playboy he tangoesTango (dance)Tango dance originated in the area of the Rio de la Plata , and spread to the rest of the world soon after....
his way through a flock of women, one of whom is Barrie Chase - who was later to be his dance partner in all of his television specials from 1958-1968. The third routine is a particularly attractive and gentle romantic partnered dance with Caron, where she performs graceful ballet steps while Astaire glides admiringly around her.
- "Sluefoot": A boisterous and joyous partnered dance with Astaire and Caron with a lot of sharp leg movements in which, atypically, Astaire inserts a short and zany solo segment. The chorus join in towards the end.
- "Something's Gotta GiveSomething's Gotta Give (song)"Something's Gotta Give" is a popular song with words and music by Johnny Mercer in 1954. It was published in 1955. It was written for and first performed by Fred Astaire in the 1955 musical film Daddy Long Legs....
": Astaire was deeply grateful to his friend Mercer for composing this now famous standardGreat American SongbookThe Great American Songbook is a hypothetical construct that seeks to represent the best American songs of the 20th century principally from Broadway theatre, musical theatre, and Hollywood musicals, from the 1920s to 1960, including dozens of songs of enduring popularity...
as he felt the film sorely lacked a strong popular song. In the romantic partnered routine which follows Astaire's rendition of the song, he exploits - albeit reluctantly - the wide lateral spaces afforded by the Cinemascope format. While the routine has many attractive qualities and the ending is particularly fine, some commentators have detected a certain stiffness in Caron, especially in her upper body.
- "Nightmare Ballet": A solo routine for Caron frequently criticised for its rather meaningless content and length (it lasts all of twelve minutes).
- "Dream": A short but much admired celebratory romantic partnered routine for Astaire and Caron with dreamlike twirling motifs and, unusually for Astaire, incorporating a kiss.
Award nominations
Daddy Long Legs was nominated for the Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for:
- Art Direction-Set Decoration, ColorAcademy Award for Best Art DirectionThe Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
(Lyle R. WheelerLyle R. WheelerLyle Reynolds Wheeler, , was an Academy Award-winning American motion picture art director....
, John DeCuirJohn DeCuirJohn DeCuir was a Hollywood art director.He studied at the Chouinard Art School, joined Universal in the late 1930s, and by the mid-1940s was designing sets. In 1949, he signed with 20th Century Fox where he worked on productions noted for their elaborate sets...
, Walter M. ScottWalter M. ScottWalter M. Scott was an Academy Award-winning set decorator who worked on films such as The Sound of Music and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid....
, Paul S. FoxPaul S. FoxPaul S. Fox was an American set decorator. He won three Academy Awards and was nominated for ten more in the category Best Art Direction.-Selected filmography:Fox won three Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and was nominated for ten more:Won...
). - Best Music, Original Song (Johnny Mercer, for the song "Something's Gotta Give")
- Best Music, Scoring of a Musical PictureAcademy Award for Original Music ScoreThe Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
(Alfred NewmanAlfred NewmanAlfred Newman was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of music for films.In a career which spanned over forty years, Newman composed music for over two hundred films. He was one of the most respected film score composers of his time, and is today regarded as one of the greatest...
).
The film was also nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award
Writers Guild of America Award
The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
for Best Written American Musical (Phoebe Ephron, Henry Ephron).
See also
Other versions of the Jean Webster novel:- Daddy-Long-Legs (1919 film)Daddy-Long-Legs (1919 film)Daddy-Long-Legs is a 1919 silent comedy-drama film directed by Marshall Neilan, and based on Jean Webster's novel of the same name. The film stars Mary Pickford.-Plot:A police officer finds a baby in a trash can, and Mrs...
with Mary PickfordMary PickfordMary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences... - Daddy Long Legs (1931 film)Daddy Long Legs (1931 film)Daddy Long Legs is a film about an orphan who is taken under the wing of a wealthy benefactor. The original story, written in 1912 by Jean Webster, took in the social aspects of the wealthy compared with the upbringing optained in an orphanage...
with Janet GaynorJanet GaynorJanet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel... - Curly Top (film), 1935 film with Shirley TempleShirley TempleShirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
based on the novel - Daddy Long Legs (1938 film)Daddy Long Legs (1938 film)Daddy Long Legs or Vadertje Langbeen is a 1938 Dutch romantic comedy film directed by Frederic Zelnik, based on Jean Webster's novel of the same name - one of several adaptations of that book .-Cast:...
Dutch film - My Daddy Long LegsMy Daddy Long Legsis a 1990 Japanese anime television series based on the novel Daddy-Long-Legs written by Jean Webster. The show was part of the container World Masterpiece Theater produced by Nippon Animation studios and was awarded the Excellent Movie Award for Television by the Japanese Agency of Cultural...
(1990) Japanese animeAnimeis the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
TV series - Daddy-Long-Legs (2005 film) Korean film