Royal Wedding (1951)

Description

Style. Grace. Fun. Sophistication. A Fred Astaire double feature! Fred Astaire slips on his dancing shoes for two magical musicals. In roles loosely based on Fred’s career with his sister Adele, he and Jane Powell play siblings whose London stage engagement overlaps Princess Elizabeth’s Royal Wedding. Stanley Donen directs this delight which features Astaire’s famous dance with a hat rack, as well as his famous dancing on the walls and ceiling to the song “You’re All The World To Me”. Lovely Jane Powell was given her first “adult” role in this smash hit, in which she introduced the Oscar-nominated Burton Lane/Alan Jay Lerner hit “Too Late Now”. On the other side of the pond, Fred and Vera-Ellen star in The Belle of New York. Loosely based on a turn of the century stage play, this 1952 screen treatment is a showcase for sensational songs by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer, and the incomparable talents of the two stars, all under the inspired direction of Charles Walters. Fred plays a playboy who sings (I Wanna Be a Dancin’ Man). She’s a charity worker likelier to prefer a guy with his feet on the ground…until Fred dances her off her feet and into the sky!