SECOND CHORUS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 106, 4 July 1941, Page 17

SECOND CHORUS

(Paramount)

cold wet evening about ten or eleven years ago, I drifted into a little second-run theatre that was showing, as far as I could make out through

the mist, a film starring jeanette MiacDonald. I knew nothing whatever about the film, but I had an hour or so to fill in and I thought I might as well spend it listening to Jeanette singing, and there might even be an orchestra as well. But there wasn’t a chirp from Miss MacDonald throughout the entire performance, and the only music I

heard was the National Anthem. T have forgotten the name of the film, if I ever knew it, in fact I had forgotten the whole incident until, as I came away from Second Chorus I was suddenly back ten years, cold and wet and thoroughly annoyed at having been, as I considered, let down. All this may not seem to have very much to do with Second Chorus, Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard. But very much the same thing happened to me with this production. I wanted and expected to see Astaire dance. I was also anxious to see Astaire and Goddard dance together, as advertised. I saw one short number in which they appeared together, one other very short dance by Astaire alone and finally one longer sequence in the old Astaire manner, forming the climax of the film. These were neatly spaced-beginning, middle and end-and the time dragged between them. My criticism of Second Chorus is this: Here is a dancer with an immense following, a man who is a good light comedy actor, but who is first and foremost a dancer, with no equal. Here is a film that could easily have been made a dancing film, but evidently Paramount, having engaged Artie Shaw and the band, decided to concentrate on swing. That may be all very well for swing fans perhaps, but not for Astaire followers. Paulette Goddard struggles with a weak part and Burgess Meredith does his best to help things along, but it is heavy going for him. I expect swing enthusiasts will enjoy Second ChorusI nearly wrote Second Fiddle, which, to my mind seems to fit the film better. I have occasionally listened in awe to a swing band session over the air, when the bands are dissected and discussed by an evident authority; but swing means little to me and I must admit that I spent considerable time, while enthusiasts sat rapt about me, groping under the seat for a small, elusive, but eminently desirable (for I had gone without my lunch to see this film) piece of toffee!