MY FIVE FAVORITE VERA-ELLEN FILMS

As a lifelong fans of movie musicals, I have always loved the dancing in movies. Vera-Ellen was never my favorite dancer growing up. (Eleanor Powell was always my favorite.) However as I get older I have come to really appreciate the movies of Vera-Ellen more. Here are my five favorite Vera-Ellen musicals...

5. THE BELLE OF NEW YORK (1952)
Set in turn-of-the-century New York, wealthy playboy Charles Hill (Fred Astaire) falls in love with Angela (Vera-Ellen) a Salvation Army worker. The plot is slight but the musical numbers are top notch. The highlights was the musical number "Baby Doll" , which was sung by Astaire and danced by Astaire and Vera-Ellen with much emphasis  on twirling motifs and platform work and "Naughty But Nice", which was sung by ghost singer Anita Ellis but danced beautifully by Vera. The film lost money in its initial release, but it is a cute movie.

4. THREE LITTLE WORDS (1950)

This film was a "biography" of songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Fred Astaire played Kalmar and Red Skelton played Ruby. Vera-Ellen's role was not great, but he played Fred Astaire's wife in this fictional biography. The best number was 'Where Did You Get That Girl" which was danced by Astaire and Vera-Ellen. It was the highlight of the film and most of the other numbers went to Fred Astaire and Red Skelton. Another number not to miss was "Come On Papa". It was another high-kicking song and dance routine, this time for Vera-Ellen though!

3. WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)

This film is the movie that Vera is most remembered for. It also was her last big movie musical appearance, which is a pity. Vera got the chance to perform some great Irving Berlin numbers, and she never looked lovelier dancing to Berlin songs like: "Abraham" and "Mandy". The film belonged to Bing Crosby, but Vera-Ellen was great as Rosemary Clooney's sister and Danny Kaye's love interest. Vera and Danny Kaye had a beautiful musical dancing to a newer Irving Berlin song "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing". The movie was a great end to a short movie musical career.

2.WORDS AND MUSIC (1948)

This film was another musical biography that MGM was famous for. This time it was the life story of composers Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It is sad that Vera-Ellen is only in the movie for one number, but it was one of the greatest dances ever captured on film. Vera dances with Gene Kelly to the classic number "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue". The movie is basically fiction but the appearance that Vera makes in the film is definitely the best part of the film.

1. ON THE TOWN (1949)

Set in New York City, this classic movie musical probably featured Vera-Ellen the most. The whole film is spent with three soldiers (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin) trying to find Miss Turnstiles (Vera). I am not a big ballet fan, but I love the "Miss Turnstiles Ballet" (an instrumental number from Leonard Bernstein's score). Vera's dance numbers in the movie tended to be more of a ballet orgin, but the dances were flawless. Although Vera appeared with Fred Astaire and Danny Kaye in a lot of movies, I think the screen chemistry of Vera and Gene Kelly were the best. Vera possessed that athletic and enthusiastic dancing ability that Gene Kelly possessed.

THE BELLE OF NEW YORK: A 1952 REVIEW

To start off our month of Vera-Ellen, here is the original review of the forgotten Vera-Ellen/Fred Astaire gem The Belle of New York (1952). This was written by Bosley Crowther and appeared in the NY Times of  March 6, 1952...

Add to the list of young ladies who have danced on the screen with Fred Astaire the name of Vera-Ellen and mark it with a star. For this agile and twinkling charmer, who accompanies the ageless Mr. A. in his latest if not his greatest Metro musical, "The Belle of New York," is as graceful and pleasing a dancer as any that has gone before, and she adds a considerable presence to this trifle at Loew's State.

And, believe us, a presence is needed, in addition to that of Mr. A., for little of any marked distinction is in evidence, outside the two stars. A couple of bright production numbers, including a series of Currier & Ives tableaux that have a beguiling sparkle in the Technicolor used; a couple of Johnny Mercer lyrics, attached to some Harry Warren tunes, and that is about the total—outside of Vera-Ellen and Mr. A. If it weren't for them and their dancing, "The Belle of New York" would be kaput.

As it is, the two nimble performers have just about all they can do to keep this slight musical moving for the brief hour and twenty minutes that it runs. Somehow the script about a playboy who falls wildly and buoyantly in love with a prim hallelujah singer on the sidewalks of gaslit New York is so thin and dramatically boneless that it couldn't possibly move from here to there on the strength of the trifling complications with which it is barely endowed or the mild incidental assistance of Keenan Wynn. Alice Pearce and Marjorie Main.

And so Director Charles Walters desperately calls upon his stars to remedy the vast emaciation with the frequent use of their muscular limbs, to which enterprise of salvation they apply themselves with a will. Together they cut some darling figures in those Currier & Ives tableaux, directed by Robert Alton in a cutely exaggerated style. A game of old-fashioned badminton is burlesqued with delicacy and grace and a gay figure-dance on an ice pond is actually done by the two on skates. Together they also scamper to a nice tune called "Baby Doll" and frolic all over a horse-car to a frivolous jingle called "Oops!"

It is separately, however, that they deliver their best, to our taste—as if vyeing with one another in pedal dexterity. Mr. A. gets first go with a dizzying and reminiscent tap, in top hat and tails, while perched precariously atop the Arch in Washington Square. That is put in the shade by Vera-Ellen when she does a delicious pantomime, in opera-length hose and ruffled scanties, to the tune of "Naughty But Nice." And just when you're starting to pity the old master for being outclassed Mr. A. pops back in a honey of a soft-shoe sand dance that takes the prize. The title of the tune to which he does it? With pleasure: "I Wanna Be a Dancin' Man!"

But again, as we say, there's little cooking but Vera-Ellen and Mr. Astaire in this handsomely costumed, brightly lighted, dramatically empty film. Punning upon the nursery jingle, "The Belle of New York" has only toes.

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