Yolanda and the Thief
Encyclopedia
Yolanda and the Thief is a 1945 MGM
musical
-comedy film
set in a fictional Latin America
n country, and stars Fred Astaire
, Lucille Bremer
, Frank Morgan
, Ludwig Stossel
and Mildred Natwick
, with music by Harry Warren
and lyrics by Arthur Freed
. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli
and produced by Arthur Freed
.
The film - a long-time pet project of Freed's to promote his lover Bremer's career - which fared disastrously at the box-office, was an attempt to create a whimsical fantasy and ended up - in the words of critic John Mueller - as "egg-nog instead of the usual champagne", despite admirable production values. The music is merely competent, the orchestration syrupy, Bremer's acting is poor, whereas the already fragile plot and some good comedy elements were scuppered by last-minute injudicious cutting by Minnelli. It ruined Bremer's career and discouraged Astaire, who decided to retire after his next film Blue Skies
.
Perhaps it also vindicated Astaire's own horror of "inventing up to the arty" - his phrase for the approach of those who would set out a priority to create art, whereas he believed artistic value could only emerge as an accidental and unpremeditated by-product of a tireless search for perfection. In his autobiography, Astaire approvingly quotes Los Angeles Times
critic Edwin Schallert:" 'Not for realists' is a label that may be appropriately affixed to Yolanda and the Thief. It is a question, too, whether this picture has the basic material to satisfy the general audience, although in texture and trimmings it might be termed an event." Astaire himself concluded: "This verified my feeling that doing fantasy on the screen is an extra risk."
was responsible for most of the choreography, with Astaire for once taking a back seat and only contributing in parts. Tactfully, Astaire claimed he wanted to see what it would be like dancing to other choreographers' ideas, a move some critics have attributed to a putative temporary decline in Astaire's creative powers around this time, but it is equally possible that he found the artistic pretensions of the project somewhat off-putting.
In any event, the dancing saves the day in what is also Astaire's most visually arresting color film, featuring possibly the first example on film of the deliberate integration of color and visual pattern with dance - a theme which Minnelli explored on a larger scale and to such celebrated effect six years later with Gene Kelly
in the dream ballet finale of An American in Paris
. Astaire had already created an early dream dance on film with "I Used To Be Color Blind" in Carefree
(1938), and had worked with Minelli on a dream ballet insert for the "Limehouse Blues" number from Ziegfeld Follies
(1946). The dream ballet genre achieved popularity when Agnes de Mille
choreographed a celebrated number for the 1943 stage hit Oklahoma!
.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
musical
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
-comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
set in a fictional Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n country, 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...
, Lucille Bremer
Lucille Bremer
Lucille Bremer was an American film actress and dancer.Bremer was born in Amsterdam, New York and began her career as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, aged 16. Bremer, along with fellow stars Vera-Ellen and June Allyson, appeared as a 'Pony Girl' in the Broadway musical Panama...
, Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
, Ludwig Stossel
Ludwig Stössel
Ludwig Stössel was an actor born in Lockenhaus, Austria. He was one of many Jewish actors and actresses that were forced to flee Europe when the Nazis came to power in 1933....
and Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick
Mildred Natwick was an American stage and film actress.- Early life :A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born to Joseph and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. She graduated from the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore...
, with music by Harry Warren
Harry Warren
Harry Warren was an American composer and lyricist. Warren was the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song eleven times and won three Oscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison,...
and lyrics by Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a Jewish American lyricist and a Hollywood film producer.- Biography :Freed began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago...
. The film was directed by Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli was an American stage director and film director, famous for directing such classic movie musicals as Meet Me in St. Louis, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris. In addition to having directed some of the most famous and well-remembered musicals of his time, Minnelli made...
and produced by Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a Jewish American lyricist and a Hollywood film producer.- Biography :Freed began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago...
.
The film - a long-time pet project of Freed's to promote his lover Bremer's career - which fared disastrously at the box-office, was an attempt to create a whimsical fantasy and ended up - in the words of critic John Mueller - as "egg-nog instead of the usual champagne", despite admirable production values. The music is merely competent, the orchestration syrupy, Bremer's acting is poor, whereas the already fragile plot and some good comedy elements were scuppered by last-minute injudicious cutting by Minnelli. It ruined Bremer's career and discouraged Astaire, who decided to retire after his next film Blue Skies
Blue Skies (film)
Blue Skies is a 1946 Hollywood musical Technicolor comedy film, released by Paramount Pictures and starring Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Joan Caulfield, Olga San Juan and Billy De Wolfe, with music, lyrics and story by Irving Berlin; most of the songs were recycled from earlier works. The film was...
.
Perhaps it also vindicated Astaire's own horror of "inventing up to the arty" - his phrase for the approach of those who would set out a priority to create art, whereas he believed artistic value could only emerge as an accidental and unpremeditated by-product of a tireless search for perfection. In his autobiography, Astaire approvingly quotes Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
critic Edwin Schallert:" 'Not for realists' is a label that may be appropriately affixed to Yolanda and the Thief. It is a question, too, whether this picture has the basic material to satisfy the general audience, although in texture and trimmings it might be termed an event." Astaire himself concluded: "This verified my feeling that doing fantasy on the screen is an extra risk."
Production
Filming began on January 15, 1945 and the film was first previewed on July 11, 1945 in Glendale, California. It cost $2,443,322.31 to make and suffered a net loss of $1,644,000.Key songs/dance routines
Eugene LoringEugene Loring
Eugene Loring American ballet and other dance-forms dancer, choreographer and teacher and administrator.-Biography:...
was responsible for most of the choreography, with Astaire for once taking a back seat and only contributing in parts. Tactfully, Astaire claimed he wanted to see what it would be like dancing to other choreographers' ideas, a move some critics have attributed to a putative temporary decline in Astaire's creative powers around this time, but it is equally possible that he found the artistic pretensions of the project somewhat off-putting.
In any event, the dancing saves the day in what is also Astaire's most visually arresting color film, featuring possibly the first example on film of the deliberate integration of color and visual pattern with dance - a theme which Minnelli explored on a larger scale and to such celebrated effect six years later with Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
in the dream ballet finale of An American in Paris
An American in Paris
An American in Paris is a symphonic tone poem by the American composer George Gershwin, written in 1928. Inspired by the time Gershwin had spent in Paris, it evokes the sights and energy of the French capital in the 1920s. It is one of Gershwin's best-known compositions.Gershwin composed the piece...
. Astaire had already created an early dream dance on film with "I Used To Be Color Blind" in Carefree
Carefree (film)
Carefree is a 1938 musical film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. With a plot similar to screwball comedies of the period, Carefree is the shortest of the Astaire-Rogers films, featuring only four musical numbers...
(1938), and had worked with Minelli on a dream ballet insert for the "Limehouse Blues" number from Ziegfeld Follies
Ziegfeld Follies (film)
Ziegfeld Follies is a 1945 Hollywood musical comedy film directed by Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, Robert Lewis, Vincente Minnelli, Merrill Pye, George Sidney and Charles Waters...
(1946). The dream ballet genre achieved popularity when Agnes de Mille
Agnes de Mille
Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.-Early years:Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors...
choreographed a celebrated number for the 1943 stage hit Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
.
- "This is a Day For Love": Bemelmans conducts the school pupils in their national anthem.
- "Angel": Conned into believing that Astaire is her guardian angel, Bremer sings this song of anticipation.
- "Dream Ballet": An extended (c. 15mins.) routine for Astaire, Bremer and various others, which Minnelli has described as "The first surrealistic ballet in film". The DaliSalvador DalíSalvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
-esque scenery and the main characters (Astaire and Bremer) are dressed in pastel shades as are characters in harmony with them - such as the three handmaidens near the end. Most of the other characters - who have an aggressive, disruptive quality, and bring spiky dance rhythms into play - wear vivid primary colors making them stand out from the background scenery and from the main characters, adding to the powerful illusion of space - a quality remarked upon by New York Times dance critic James Martin at the time. In the middle of the ballet, Astaire inserts a beautiful partnered romantic duet for himself and Bremer to "Will You Marry Me," performed by Bremer and the dubbed-in voice of Trudy Erwin, and much of the choreography of this section seems to bear the signature of Astaire himself. - "Yolanda": Astaire serenades Bremer with this attractive melody while playing a harp (dubbed by jazz harpist Bobby MaxwellRobert Maxwell (songwriter)Robert Maxwell is a harpist and songwriter, who wrote the music for two well-known songs: "Ebb Tide" and "Shangri-La ....
). He follows the song with a very brief but enchanting solo dance routine around the harp. - "Coffee Time": A jazzy, innovative and exuberant dance routine for Astaire, Bremer and chorus, blending complex repeated syncopated rhythms (inspired by Loring's idea of setting a five-count dance phrase against a four-count musical phrase) in a visually stunning setting incorporating a wavy black and white dance floor (designed by Irene Scharaff) and chorus dancers dressed in brightly-colored costumes. The costumes, hypnotic singing and twirling dance style of the chorus are evocative of whirling dervishDervishA Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus.-Etymology:The Persian word darvīsh is of ancient origin and descends from a Proto-Iranian...
es. The floor earns a reference in the recent romantic comedy Simply IrresistibleSimply IrresistibleSimply Irresistible is a 1999 American romantic comedy film starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sean Patrick Flanery. It was directed by Mark Tarlov and was written by Judith Roberts. Simply Irresistible is notable as the last movie reviewed by film critic Gene Siskel...
(1999).
Contemporary reviews
- New York Times November 23, 1945; Bosley CrowtherBosley CrowtherBosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
: "Taste and imagination are so rare these days in musical films that a good bit of both is sufficient to offset a pack of obvious faults. So that's why this corner is cheering for Metro's Yolanda and the Thief...a pleasing compound of sparkling mummery and glistening allures for eyes and ears...the terpsichorean cavorting of Lucille Bremer and Fred Astaire is simply grand. A Dream Ballet number, expanded against Daliesque decor, with Mr. Astaire as the dreamer, is a thing of pictorial delight...Coffee Time puts movement and color to such use as you seldom behold on the screen...Mr. Astaire and Miss Bremer are plainly thrown considerably out of stride when they are called upon to ramble through some of the talkative scenes. The humor, to put it bluntly, is obvious and dull...It is a long established principle that Fred Astaire's name on a picture is a guarantee of fine dancing, and if Mr. Astaire retires as he is threatening to do, it will remove one of the truly great American dancers of the age." - VarietyVariety (magazine)Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
October 17, 1945; Kahn: "There's an idea in this yarn, but it only suggests itself. It becomes too immersed in its musical background...A musical number attempts to be symbolic but only serves to waste too many moments of the over-long film...Miss Bremer is a beaut who has a friend in the cameraman...Astaire, on the other hand, gets no such camera treatment, and some of the close-ups are particularly unflattering. But his performance, as usual, is casual and sure."