Three thoughts about "Singin' in the Rain" just as soon as I dry off....
1. I've seen this movie countless times over the years — for awhile, when he was a toddler, it was my son's favorite — but today was the first time I'd ever seen it on the big screen. Even in this era of gigantic home entertainment systems, there's STILL nothing like seeing a movie on the big screen.
2. A lot of the songs in this movie were used previously in the 1928 Best Picture-winning "Broadway Melody" which ... doesn't hold up well. A lot of the jokes about the rise of the the "talkie" era of movies probably came from the earlier production, I'm guessing — Arthur Freed was involved in both flicks.
3. Gene Kelly stomping through the water is as pure an expression of joy as has ever been put on film.
I believe that ever-hardening polarization between the parties in America helped Donald Trump ascend to the presidency, yet his ascension to the presidency seems to mean that now is precisely the wrong moment to try to make nice.
Just finished the annual family viewing of "White Christmas." So good. And the movie's secret weapon? John Brascia.
Who's that? This guy dancing with Vera-Ellen:
Here's my theory: John Brascia's role in this movie makes no sense at all. Danny Kaye is Vera-Ellen's love interest in the movie. He should be, by the usual logic of Hollywood storytelling, her duet partner in all her big dances. Indeed, Kaye and Vera-Ellen have a lovely dance early in the movie:
After that, though, it's Brascia — who utters no lines in the movie (see the comments below) — who is the main dance partner. It's aided by the show-within-a-show conceit of the movie: They're practicing for an upcoming musical, you see. But again, this doesn't make a whole lotta sense...
...unless you consider this possibility: Brascia, and not Kaye, was the only dancer on set who could keep up with Vera-Ellen.
Yes, Kaye was enormously gifted as a dancer. But he was already in his early 40s when "White Christmas" was made. Brascia is a good 21 years younger. And Vera-Ellen is a hell of a dancer.
Watch this. Watch Brascia's feet, especially.
Love me some Danny Kaye. But he's not keeping up with Vera-Ellen there. John Brascia is.
It's OK! That's not a knock on Kaye. Vera-Ellen's vocals were reputedly dubbed by Rosemary Clooney. This movie knew what its performers strengths and weaknesses were and adjusted accordingly. More than 60 years later, it's still a hell of a watch. And John Brascia, whose name I bet you didn't know, is one big reason why.
National Review detects something interesting in the exit polls:
The 2016 CNN Exit Poll found, for instance, that Trump won among married voters, winning 52 percent, but lost decisively among the unmarried (see table below). The 26-point marriage gap in the 2016 electorate is large. (The marriage gap is calculated by taking the difference between the two candidates for the married and adding it to the difference between the two candidates for the unmarried.) In fact, it surpasses the 24-point gender gap also found in the CNN Exit Poll of the 2016 electorate.
Who is married? It isn't the white working class — at least, not as much as it used to be.
Over the last few decades, members of the white working class have also become less likely to be married. As this chart from economists Shelly Lundberg and Robert A. Pollak shows, marriage rates have fallen for whites without a college degree. About 55 percent of white men and 60 percent of women with no more than a high school diploma are married, compared to about 70 percent of men and women with four-year college degrees.
More about the "marriage gap" here. What's interesting is that divorce rates for college graduates has fallen back to about where they were in the 1960s, before the rise of no-fault divorce. It's the working class that's increasingly full of broken and never-been marriages.
And the point here is not to sneer at that. But given the overlap between elites and marriage, National Review's discovery suggests maybe that "white working class" narrative about Trump's victory has some holes in it.
That style, including his opaque personal financial dealings and his sudden shots at certain companies, has helped unnerve a corporate America that traditionally craves stability. Some business leaders and economists have worried whether executives can speak their minds about the president-elect or his policies without fear of facing Trump’s rage.
