If it’s not quite the big deal it maybe ought to be, Broadway Melody of 1940 does do one great service to posterity: it brings together for the only time on screen Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, whose ferocious tap skills Astaire admired and even feared.
The story is the corny Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers one of mistaken identities, with Powell as a successful Broadway star and Astaire as one half of a struggling song and dance act. Seeking to freshen up her act with some new blood, Clare Bennett (Powell) gets her agent to contact talented, committed Johnny Brett (Astaire), but instead winds up with his deadweight song-and-dance partner, King Shaw (George Murphy). It’s the sort of thing that could be all straightened out in a moment – the moment Bennett sees Shaw dance, in fact – but conveniently it isn’t, not least because Johnny Brett is presented as a helluva decent guy who just wants the best for his partner.
Cole Porter did the songs, and the musical numbers are divided up in a straightforward way – the first one introduces us to Johnny and King, the second to Clare, the third is wrong boy (King) with right girl, the fourth… you get the idea. It’s only really in the final number that Astaire and Powell really get to dance with each other in an uninhibited way. To the strains of Begin the Beguine they put on a display of tap dancing at its very best, him and her in white outfits on a black stage – very stylish.
Between numbers we get some Broadway background and glimpses of the sort of specialty acts who filled in the slots between the star turns – there’s a juggler in an agent’s waiting room, an emotional German who cuts out silhouettes from paper, a husband and wife duo who do messed-up opera recitals in which she squawks and he deadpans.
This was the last of the Broadway Melodies, following on from ones in 1929, 1936 and 1938, the last two of which had also starred Powell. She is not much of an actor, but is good enough to be competent and in any case we’re here to see her dance. And she is a hell of a mover, very physical, going into splits and twists and being hurled into the air by a troupe of male dancers dressed as sailors at one point. A regular problem – Hollywood’s cultural cringe – asserts itself in a “high tone” ballet number, which definitively demonstrates that Powell is not a ballet dancer, though things do improve once Astaire joins her.
Director Norman Taurog is also at his best here, using light and shade to cover up any shortcomings but more generally his directing of the dance numbers is slightly disappointing – he cuts when he shouldn’t. When dancers are this good, let’s see them doing it.
Powell is a creature of Broadway and probably smiles too much for movie-camera purposes but her loose-limbed dancing is spectacular, and her big number with Astaire is really what the whole film is about. More unrestrained than Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, she’s got that easy, rubber-legs joyousness that Rita Hayworth has in You Were Never Lovelier two years later (though Powell is technically the better dancer).
Watch Begin the Beguine on YouTube, if you like, it’s what the film is really all about. But Powell’s introductory number is also spectacular, the specialty acts are worth the price of admission and the whole thing is spankingly well lit. Perhaps it wasn’t the big hit it was meant to be, and it signalled the end of the Broadway Melody series, but at least the whole thing goes out with a bang.
Broadway Melody of 1940 – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
