"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Girl of the Day - Leslie Caron


The Regular Guy was up late last night working on a brief, and I had on in the background a 1950s musical that I hadn't ever seen before, Daddy Long Legs, with an older Fred Astaire as a rich bachelor who anonymously sends a young French orphan girl, played by Leslie Caron, to college in the U.S., only to fall in love with her.   These kinds of April-December romances were common in movies of that era -- I'm thinking of the various pairings of a waifish Audrey Hepburn with Gary Cooper (Love in the Afternoon) or Humphrey Bogart (Sabrina) when each was in their mid-50s -- but now they seem a little icky.

Anyway, when Daddy Long Legs came out, Caron was 24 and Astaire was 56.   A little odd, particularly when she's calling him "Daddy" as a nickname.   A great dancer and a great, though unorthodox beauty, Caron also starred, of course, in the greatest of movie musicals, An American in Paris, with (again, older) Gene Kelly.

Here she is in a show-stopper with Astaire:

No comments:

Post a Comment