Gene Kelly brought Leslie to America to star, appropriately enough, in An American in Paris. The film contains the hit song “Something’s Gotta Give,” Fred’s last hit 2 an excellent, though too brief Astaire solo (“A History of the Beat”) and, most of all, it has Leslie Caron. The age-defying magic that had propelled Fred through his two great “late” films - Royal Wedding and The Band Wagon- was starting to disappear.ĭaddy Long Legs, though a definite step down from the near-continuously delightful Band Wagon, is far from a total loss. But at 56, playing a sugar daddy chasing 24-year-old Leslie Caron, Fred looked just a little too gray. Eight years later, he appeared with 22-year-old Jane Powell in The Royal Wedding. Back in 1943, at age 44, he had appeared with 17-year-old Joan Leslie in The Sky’s the Limit. Thus, the dewy-eyed Grace Kelly ended up in the seriously mature arms of Gary, Cary, Clark, and the ever-so-fortunate Bing Crosby, 1 while Audrey Hepburn was passed around by Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, and Coop, not to mention Fred himself.įred, of course, was no stranger to such pairings. were still box office, but when it came to the ladies, fresh faces were preferred.
The “first wave” of leading men since the advent of the talkies - Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, et al. The fifties were Hollywood’s golden age - one of them, at least - of the May-December romance. Come on, do the Sluefoot? That I can resist.
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