“Royal Wedding,” starring Fred Astaire and Jane Powell, featured some of the most advanced special effects seen in Hollywood up to that point. I’ll fill you in on the details throughout the review.
Tom and Ellen Bowen (Astaire, Powell) are a brother/sister dance team who have made quite a name for themselves on the New York circuit. Their next engagement will take them to London, where they will play their show during the same time span as a royal wedding, and they’re delighted to be a part of those festivities. There’s just one fly in the ointment – Ellen has a whole string of boyfriends, and Tom is tired of all the interference with their rehearsals and performances. He tells his sister that while they’re in London, she is not to date anyone. She holds him to the same promise, and the bargain is struck.
However, once on ship, she meets Lord John Brindale (Peter Lawford) and they begin spending time together behind Tom’s back. While waiting for Ellen to show up at rehearsals one afternoon, Tom does a dance routine with a hat rack, for which he was to become known more than almost any other number he ever did.
The ship hits a stormy patch in the sea and begins to roll just as Tom and Ellen are getting ready to perform for the guests aboard. This was filmed on a stage that really did tilt from side to side, so as you watch this scene and see the fruit go rolling by on the floor, etc – all that was real and speaks to the ingenuity of the dancers for not falling flat on their faces in the middle of it all.
They arrive in London and Ellen continues to see John. Meanwhile, Tom has developed a little bit of a crush on one of the British dancers in the show, a lady named Anne who wants nothing to do with him. But hey – he’s Fred Astaire! She has to melt before long, and she does.
One night while daydreaming about her, Tom does another amazing dance number. It appears to the viewer that he’s dancing on the ceiling, but in actuality, they built the room inside a drum, and when he was ready to walk up a wall, they slowly rotated the drum. Astaire had a great deal to do with the conception of that scene, and again, it’s another for which he’s extremely well-known.
Of course, in the end, he gets his girl and Ellen gets her guy, and they all get to watch the royal wedding processional as it goes by. It’s a wonderfully romantic film full of some of the best dancing you’ll ever see.
This film was not rated.
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