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Friday, Jul 25, 2008
7:00 pm
It's Always Fair Weather
A mildly cynical title for this musical spoof of television, advertising, and even the Hollywood musical. Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd are GIs who vow eternal friendship at the close of WWII, and then suffer through a reunion ten years later. Each in his own way has turned into a two-bit huckster, with the exception of Dailey, who is a four-bit huckster in a gray flannel nightmare. His advertising and TV connections lead the trio out of their existential dumps and into the bright company of Cyd Charisse and Dolores Gray. The Arthur Freed production features Kelly's dance on roller skates, “I Like Myself”; the echt-fifties “ash-can” dance; Dailey's droll parody of advertising new-speak, “Situation-Wise”; and Charisse's “Stillman's Gym” number. Kelly and Donen's experiments with CinemaScope and split-screen-the big screen mocking the small one of TV-were highly influential.
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