Daddy Long Legs

Fred Astaire was best known as a dancer. All his most famous films were musical comedies and he certainly showed a talent for everything in those films, from singing to comedic timing, but if he were to be remembered for one thing and one thing only, it would be his dancing. This is no more apparent than in Daddy Long Legs, which sells itself as a romantic musical comedy but is, in actuality, a dance showcase through and through.

Daddy Long Legs is really unique in this regard. It is barely a musical. There isn’t much singing at all, and the singing itself tends to be quite short: just a few bars or a small refrain. However, it is structured like a classic movie musical. The flow and cadence of the piece is honestly not that dissimilar to Singing in the Rain or Oklahoma. The twist is that where a musical might resolve a moment of heightened emotion with a song, Daddy Long Legs does it with dance.

This movie, perhaps to accommodate Astaire’s costar, Leslie Caron, leans far more into the realm of ballet than any of the other Astaire pictures I’ve seen. Caron, a ballet dancer before becoming a film actress, is given solo and duet numbers that reflect her emotional state the same as Astaire. As such there is not one, but two dream ballets and, unlike the dream ballets of An American in Paris or Flower Drum Song, it actually features classical dance choreography and technique to a very high level. I particularly like the number where Caron’s Julie imagines all the different and intriguing men that her anonymous benefactor, Astaire’s Jervis, could be; from rich Texas oilman to international playboy.

The movie is not the first adaptation of the book by the same name, and though I think most everyone involved is immensely talented, I don’t think it’s the best either. Daddy Long Legs makes several deviations from the original source material, and as a result, many of the other adaptations as well. While the original work is largely concerned with falling in love through the more mundane aspects of life, the film is more interested in the grand and romantic side of their coupling.

Like You’ve Got Mail or Shop Around the Corner, there is an element of falling in love through the post. In all versions of the story, this communication is one-way, with the girl writing and the benefactor reading. However, through the construct of the movie, it takes awhile for Jervis to begin to react to the letters and form his romantic affection for Julie. The film also drops the subplot about Jervis’ desire to see Julie develop as a writer, the original justification for the letter writing and a nice foreshadowing to his growing love of her prose.

This creates an imbalance in the characters, particularly in the ways in which we understand them as individuals and as part of a potential couple. The stage musical by John Caird and Paul Gordon, for example, gives us roughly equal access to the girl’s crush and the millionaire’s misgivings, as well as her misgivings and his romantic jealousy. Her eventual growth into a published author gets her to a place of self-actualized independence and gives her greater agency. In this movie, however, she is mostly infatuated with him, both the one she meets and the one she is unknowingly communicating with through letters, and he waffles about the propriety of the situation, the end of his bachelorhood, and the like.

People may have a problem with the May-September romance of the film, the power dynamics of a benefactor dating his financial dependent, or that (like You’ve Got Mail) one character uses supposedly secret and personal communiqué to seduce an unwitting target, but I think all of that doesn’t have to be an impediment if the story gets the details right. If the movie set the groundwork for deep and genuine connection that exists both because and in spite of the circumstances of their courtship then I think the story still works. I just think this adaptation of Daddy Long Legs doesn’t quite get there.

Would Recommend: If you are forever entranced by Astaire’s dancing prowess.

Would Not Recommend: If you are turned off by May-September romances.