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Doubled Selves: Eleanor Powell and the MGM Backstage Musical, 1935–37

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2013

ALLISON ROBBINS
ALLISON ROBBINS*
Affiliation:
allison.s.robbins@gmail.com
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Abstract

Beginning in the mid-1930s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios released a series of backstage musicals starring Eleanor Powell, a dancer known for her tuxedoes as well as her virtuosic tapping. Powell's tap routines are in and of themselves commanding, with her male dress seeming to originate from her confidence and the masculine aura of tap dance. Yet it is the narratives of her films, inspired by the so-called Cinderella stage musicals of the 1920s, that hold the key to her tuxedoed performances. MGM's backstage stories feature a young dancer, who dreams of Broadway stardom, and her show business boyfriend, who expresses reservations about her desire to perform. This tension between the couple's burgeoning romance and her desire for a stage career shapes the costumes, choreography, music, and camerawork of the show-within-the-film production number; ultimately, Powell's character impersonates her boyfriend in order to achieve theatrical success, a performance that illuminates a Depression-era understanding of a woman's place in show business as well as the backstage musical's “doubled” approach to narrative and number.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 65 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2013

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References

References

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Broadway Melody of 1940. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1940. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2003.Google Scholar
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I Dood It. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1943. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2009.Google Scholar
Lady Be Good. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1941. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar
Ship Ahoy. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1942. Santa Monica, CA: MGM/UA Home Video, 1993.Google Scholar
That's Entertainment! III. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1994. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2004.Google Scholar
The Broadway Melody. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1929. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar
Hot-Cha! Photo File B. White Studio Collection. Billy Rose Theatre Division. New York Public Library.Google Scholar
Powell, Eleanor. Photo Files B and C. White Studio Collection. Billy Rose Theatre Division. New York Public Library.Google Scholar
Altman, Rick. The American Film Musical. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Astaire, Fred. Steps in Time. New York: Harper and Row Publishers Inc., 1959.Google Scholar
Bell, Nelson B. “A Favorite Singing and Dancing Comedienne Scales Heights to Stellar Honors.” Washington Post, 24 October 1935.Google Scholar
Bell, Nelson B. “‘Born to Dance’ is Screen Hit at the Palace.” Washington Post, 11 December 1936.Google Scholar
Bigelow, Joe. “Born to Dance.” Variety, 9 December 1936.Google Scholar
Bordman, Gerald. American Musical Comedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Bordwell, David,Staiger, Janet, and Thompson, Kristin. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Cohan, Steven. Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Delamater, Jerome. Dance in the Hollywood Musical. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Glenn, Susan. Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Green, Abel. “B'way Melody of 1936.” Variety, 25 September 1935.Google Scholar
Hill, Constance. Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Johnson, Albert. “Conversation with Roger Edens.” Sight and Sound 27/4 (Spring 1958): 179–82.Google Scholar
Kobal, John. People Will Talk. New York: Knopf, 1985.Google Scholar
McLean, Adrienne. “Putting 'Em Down Like a Man: Eleanor Powell and the Spectacle of Competence.” In Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness, ed. Griffin, Sean, 89–110. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009.Google Scholar
McMillin, Scott. The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions Behind Musical Shows from Kern To Sondheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Melosh, Barbara. Engendering Culture: Manhood and Womanhood in New Deal Public Art and Theater. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Mueller, John. “Fred Astaire and the Integrated Musical.” Cinema Journal 24/1 (Autumn 1984): 28–40.Google Scholar
“New York Critics Hail Biggest Musical.” New York Times, 11 December 1936.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Melinda. “The Film Careers and Tap Dance Technique of Ruby Keeler, Eleanor Powell, and Ann Miller.” M.F.A. thesis, University of California, Irvine, 1988.Google Scholar
Powell, Eleanor. “Introduction.” In The Book of Tap: Recovering America's Long Lost Dance, ed. Jerry Ames and Jim Siegelman, ix–xiii. New York: David McKay Company, Inc., 1977.Google Scholar
Robertson, Pamela. Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Rodger, Gillian. Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Rodger, Gillian. “‘He Isn't a Marrying Man’: Gender and Sexuality in the Repertoire of Male Impersonators, 1870–1930,” In Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity, ed. Fuller, Sophie and Whitesell, Lloyd, 105–33. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Rogers, Bradley. “The Interpellations of Interpolation; or, The Disintegrating Female Musical Body.” Camera Obscura 67 (Spring 2008): 88–111.Google Scholar
Rubin, Martin. Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Schultz, Margie. Eleanor Powell: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Shearer, Lloyd. “Eleanor Powell: World's Greatest Woman Tap Dancer Comes Back.” Parade, 22 January 1961.Google Scholar
Stearns, Marshall and Jean. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Schirmer, 1964.Google Scholar
Wills, Nadine. “‘110 Percent Woman’: The Crotch Shot in the Hollywood Musical.” Screen 42/2 (Summer 2001): 121–41.Google Scholar
Wills, Nadine. “Women in Uniform: Costume and the ‘Unruly Woman’ in the 1930s Hollywood Musical.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 14/3 (2000): 317–33.Google Scholar
42nd Street. Warner Bros., 1933. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2006.Google Scholar
Born to Dance. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1936. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar
Broadway Melody of 1936. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1935. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar
Broadway Melody of 1938. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1937. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar
Broadway Melody of 1940. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1940. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2003.Google Scholar
Gold Diggers of 1933. Warner Bros., 1933. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2006.Google Scholar
Honolulu. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1939. Santa Monica, CA: MGM/UA Home Video, 1993.Google Scholar
I Dood It. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1943. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2009.Google Scholar
Lady Be Good. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1941. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar
Ship Ahoy. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1942. Santa Monica, CA: MGM/UA Home Video, 1993.Google Scholar
That's Entertainment! III. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1994. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2004.Google Scholar
The Broadway Melody. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1929. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2008.Google Scholar