Whistling Clarabella: 100 Awesome Things - Part 24

More from 100 Awesome Things...

This is different to anything I've posted before...

It's Rita Hayworth dancing to the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive".

You read that right. Lovely Rita dancing to "Stayin' Alive".

I first saw it a while back, but Roger Ebert posted it (and another of Rita dancing to Belafonte's Jump In The Line) today and I've watched it three times in a row. Just hypnotising.

A few things: whoever put this together has a lot of time. Just collecting the clips must've been a task and a half. Then to find the right bits to sync up... then to actually do it. It's amazing, incredible and terrifying.

I love the internet: it proves constantly that no matter how much of an obsessive fan I am, there's at least a dozen people even more so.

I love what a great reminder of Hayworth's brilliance it is. She wasn't a Cyd Charisse-league dancer (pretty much a club of One Person Called Cyd), but she was full of vivacious energy. One can tell she's working hard without looking like she's working hard. And anyone who can keep up with Gene Kelly must be at bare minimum a Pretty Bloody Good Dancer.

I love how it shows she could do All-American (once she was whitewashed by the studio, naturally) Cute Girl stuff like Cover Girl and harder-edged (for musicals) like Pal Joey.

I love how the song also pulls out even more of the raw sexuality of Miss Sadie Thompson. That's a very good film, by the way, and I recommend it to you all. Not a musical in the way you're probably used to, though she sings and dances a bit.

Mostly what I love is that, a bit like the That's Entertainment!i movies, this one little video reminds me why I love the movies.

Why I love those old musicals more than almost any other kind of movies (Valentino and Flynn's swashbucklers rate higher, but barely), and the undiluted joy and comfort they've provided me over the years. A window into a world where everything was beautiful, right triumphed over wrong by the end, where everyone was skilled in their arts. I knew then as I know now, that such a place exists only in movies.

In the depressed 1930s and in the martial 40s, musicals were spectacle and escape. Though there are notable variations, you more or less knew what you were getting with a musical. A nice love story, some comedy and fun, some great songs and some excellent dancing, and beautiful things on screen.

Singin' In The Rain is the best musical motion picture of all time because it does all of those things spectacularly well.

The genre worked itself to death, of course, like any successful genre will under capitalism. The great practitioners retired or died and weren't replaced. The death of the Studio System (sucky though it was to say the least) also meant that the training grounds disappeared. You don't get many true Triple Threats like Gene Kelly any more.

Mind you, I don't think there were many then, either... that kind of talent is always rare. That's probably why watching a clip like this is so enthralling. To see Miss Hayworth at her best, in such a strange variety of roles... I defy anyone to be unimpressed.

I know a lot of people think I'm grumpy, that I'm over critical, that I'm hard to please and don't like anything. None of those things are exactly true, because I have stuff like this running in my head.

My standards are higher than most people and things will ever meet, but I have access to unparalleled wonders and all I have to do is dream.

I also have a sekrit love of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Movie is dark as hell but brilliant for it. Soundtrack is the stuff one dances to in the living room at 2am. I apologise to no one.

C 2013.

100 Awesome Musical Things

Part One - Statesboro Blues - The Allman Brothers Band

Part Two - Octopus Jig - The Dubliners
Part Three - Got To Give It Up - Marvin Gaye