Prepare yourself for the feel-good sex trafficking movie of 1954, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  Let’s buckle in for a down-home romp with a bunch of strange ideas about how to court a lady.

Grab your best gal and hit the dusty trail, we’re in for a musical western.  I think Hollywoood had like 3 title font types in the 1950s, and generic western block font was one of them.

Adam Pontipee, a lumberjack in 1950′s Oregon, wanders into town one day to trade a few animal pelts for a new wife.  The general store owners are understandably horrified by the way he starts examining the unmarried females as if he were buying a new plow, and shoo him off to hunt for a woman somewhere off their property.

Howard Keel is the perfect casting for Adam, as he’s a 6ft 4in massive wall of a man.  Even when he’s acting creepy as fuck, that face and voice make me forgive a whole number of sins cause I want him to destroy me.

Milly (Jane Powell), the local bar cook, feels the same way I do apparently, as she is so charmed by Adam she agrees to marry him after two very short interactions and an ultimatum that he doesn’t want to wait 5 months to court her cause he needs to get back to his trappin’ cabin.  The reverend and his wife express their concern with the union, considering they know nothing about Adam, and they were hoping Milly would marry one of their kids.  Milly was like, nah, I’m excited to bone this dude, and the reverend helps them tie the knot.  Later, as Adam is riding his wagon through the town with his new wife, the General Store owner utters the best line delivery in the history of movies. 

Milly tells Adam on the drive up to the cabin how excited she is that she’ll only have to cook for one man for the rest of her life.  He bites his tongue, because, turns out, he has an army of brothers at home waiting for a woman to cook and clean for them.  It’s always men like Adam who want a strong woman to fix their entire lives without doing any of the work to earn it…

When Milly is introduced to the other 6 men that will be living with her and her husband, and the deplorable state they had been living in, she hides her anger behind her smile and gets to work whipping her new home into shape.  These uncultured boys show no appreciation to the work she put in all day to feed them, so she flips the table full of food and storms upstairs because she is a queen that takes no shit from nobody.

Adam sulks upstairs with the hopes of consummating their marriage, but Milly gives him the what-for, as she has now discovered Adam was looking for a servant instead of a wife.  Adam decides to sleep in a tree, as that is the least complicated solution to his current problem of marrying a woman who demands respect.  Milly, for some reason, decides she may have been too harsh on him (she wasn’t), and invites him back inside to break the bed frame.

The next morning, she whips the brothers in shape by dangling food in front of their faces.  They repay her kindness by getting into a street fight with some townsfolk, which not only embarrasses Milly, but shows how much work she needs to do to get these boys married and moved the fuck out of her house.

Milly wastes no time, and gives the boys advice on how to court a woman in order to set them up for success when they all trek to the barn raising/picnic event at the end of the summer.  They are receptive to her feedback, as it’s Jane Powell, and she’s charming and adorable and impossible not to love.  Seriously, that smile can persuade anybody to do anything.

The Pontipee’s, dressed like the Monkees, head to the barn raising, and Adam is shocked at his brother’s new, polite behavior.  The townsfolk women are also impressed, as they have 6 new clean-shaven, attractive, strapping men willing to carry their food from the carriage to the table.  Once the townie men see how good the Pontipee brothers are at dancing, they know their days are numbered.

The barn dance is so fucking good.  Even though I spent the majority of it nervous someone was going to break their neck or take an axe to the face, it is truly unbelievable the feats these men performed.  Did they hire dancers or gymnasts?!  The choreographer Michael Kidd had concerns when he was hired for the job, as the Pontipee’s were lumberjacks, and they needed to look “manly” when they danced.  I think he succeeded, as these dance numbers are a perfect marriage of choreography and displays of athleticism.  Honestly, I couldn’t pull my focus away long enough to take notes, I didn’t want to miss anything.  

Also, peep a baby Russ Tamblyn (Gideon) getting dancing and fighting experience on his resume several years before West Side Story.  The snap dancing in WSS does nothing to showcase what this man is capable of.

After the dance, the barn raising begins, and a “friendly” competition arises between the groups of men on who can raise their part of the barn first.  The Pontipee’s have it down on lock, since they’re all seven feet tall and built like Oxen.  The townsfolk see the writing on the wall and try their best to sabotage Adam and the boys by hitting them with tools and pushing them off of ladders.  The boys take the abuse since Milly cautioned them against fighting, but fucking Adam tells them to nut up and instigates an all-out brawl that topples the barn, turns off the women, and causes Milly to cry.

The boys regret their actions, but Adam tells them to suck it up, because one woman is pretty much like every other woman.  This logic doesn’t work on his brothers, and they continue to spend all winter lethargically cutting trees in snow.  Adam tries to put an end to their misery by convincing them the best way to win back their loves is to kidnap and force them to marry them.  He said it worked in a book about Romans that Milly had, ultimately proving educating men is a terrible idea.

This is a truly terrifying song that features lines like, “They acted angry and annoyed, but secretly they was overjoyed!  You might recall that when corralling your steers.  Oh, them poor little dears.”

That’s it, humanity cancelled, everybody go home now.

This rallying cry incites the brothers to go down to town and kidnap their crushes while they fought them off and sobbed.  As they’re being hauled away in the wagon, Adam strategically uses the women’s screams to start an avalanche, closing the pass between the town and the Pontipee cabin.  This not only prevents the women from leaving, but also hinders the townsfolk from going up there and rescuing them until the snow melts.

When the men return with the women, Milly is fucking livid.  She relegates her brother-in-laws to the barn, and Adam runs off to the trapping cabin, because the two things he’s good at is being a dick and running away from his problems.  I mean, good, he can live in the trapping cabin forever for all I care – fuck that guy.

The kidnapped women at first are terrified and upset, but after several months of being trapped on a mountain with nothing else to focus on other than their handsome prison guards, they fall in love with them.  When Milly reveals she’ll be expecting a baby, the women, with their ovaries swollen and ready to pop, decide they want to get married.  Catwoman herself, after wondering what man used to sleep in her bed, expresses her desire to get married in June.

Spring finally rolls around, and the girls act like how we’re all going to once the pandemic is under control, by getting their fuck on next to a group of birds who were obviously ziptied to a tree.  Milly silently gives birth, and Gideon goes up to the trapping cabin to tell Adam he has a daughter.  Adam tells him to fuck off, because, and I cannot stress this enough, he is the absolute worst.  Gideon rightfully knocks his block off because he understands Milly is a strong, amazing woman that doesn’t deserve his lousy brother.

When the pass has melted, Adam returns home, because As A FAtHeR oF a DaUgHtEr, Adam finally understands that what he did was horrific, and he’s decided to return the girls back to the village.  The brothers, at first, don’t want to give up their prize, but Adam convinces them it’s the only way to get their families permission to marry.  The brothers quickly come around, since it doesn’t take them nine months and a baby for them to understand empathy.

The girls, unfortunately, don’t want to go back, so when the townsfolk mob finally arrive they witness the brothers trying to unsuccessfully corral them into the wagon.  The townsfolk would have captured and hung the brothers, but they discover a baby on the premises, and with nobody copping up to its parentage, the reverend decides the best path forward is to marry everybody lest a baby exist out of wedlock.  Everyone gets hitched at gunpoint.  The end.

One of the more hilarious aspects of watching this movie on TCM was that they dragged three people onscreen before it started to acknowledge Seven Brides is problematic, but then downplayed that aspect by saying it was satire written by women, so if anybody was to blame for the mixed messages, it was them!  My favorite bit was the guy who kept saying how he would absolutely allow his family to enjoy this movie, but then conceding he wouldn’t want his daughters to think this was an acceptable way to conduct romantic relationships.

Look, I get that movies made in the past are never going to live up to what today’s standard of woke is, but I don’t find it entirely unhelpful to unpack these storylines and analyze how they informed the viewers perception on what a healthy human relationship is.  Adam is clearly painted as the villain in this story, and Milly is our hero, so I didn’t walk away from this thinking it was romanticizing kidnapping.  While the brothers do end up with brides, it was because they showed kindness and love, not because they put blankets over the girls heads and fireman carried them into the back of a wagon.

What does annoy me is the expectation that all it takes is a good woman to fix a man.  Why are women constantly set up to be responsible for men’s emotional growth?!  Also, positioning getting married as the only way to achieve ultimate happiness is tired as fuck.

Anyway, this movie is kind of great even if it’s cringy in parts, sooooo… watch it and just keep in mind it’s a bad idea to sex-traffic women hoping they’ll eventually want your dick and enjoy the barn dance scene.

It’s 1947 and the marriage bug is apparently contagious.

Y’know, I’m fairly certain Fred Astaire’s movies comes up on this list more than any other actor or actress.  This is yet another traditional “couple of show folks getting into shenanigans” story, but the one difference here is Jane Powell.  And this week we will focus on her two collaborations with director Stanley Donen.  I will write about Mr. Donen several more times before the end of this project, which is great, because he does some crazy creative things in his films that make them stand outs in this genre.

I was first introduced to Jane in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (which you’ll be treated to later this week), and boy, she made an impression.  She has a robust voice that holds its own against everyone, especially that sexy baritone of Howard Keel, but I had *no idea* she could dance as well as she does here.  Full transparency, I’ve been binging Fred and Ginger movies because they were leaving HBO Max, so I figured this would be a nice change of pace where I’d be treated to a beautiful voice, but light on the dancing.  This would have been totally fine, not everyone has to be Fred or Ginger.  But nope, Jane Powell can tap dance the pants right off you.

These skills aren’t immediately showcased in the first few performances of this movie, however.  In Royal Wedding, Fred and Jane play Tom and Ellen, a brother and sister dancing duo who select very questionable romance-based musical numbers for their act.  I would SEVERELY roll my eyes at a 30 year age difference for a romantic relationship, but it’s somehow more hilarious that they’re supposed to be siblings because he could feasibly be her father instead of her brother.  Paired with the fact he constantly calls her baby and honey, their on-screen pairing was just steeped in Weird Vibes TM.  For example, their first number together, “Every Night at Seven”, features Fred/Tom as a king making the moves on a maid who works in the palace, his sister, Jane/Ellen.

After their show has completed its run, we’re introduced to the premise of the film – Tom and Ellen’s agent Irving informs them they’ve been invited to England to perform their show during the several week lead-up to THE royal wedding between Queen (then princess) Elizabeth and Phillip Mountbatten.  The self-assured and charismatic Ellen is a bit of a serial dater, and several men are disappointed when she departs on an ocean liner to head across the pond.  Tom, on the other hand, has no interest in dating whatsoever, with his singular focus being their upcoming gig.  This gets awkward when Ellen makes heart eyes at another man on board she would rather spend her time with, and Tom is forced to find ways to entertain himself.

Once the ship’s captain discovers he’s got two famous performers on board, he recruits them to perform after dinner.  They’re warned the ship may be hitting some rough waves, but Tom decides to move forward full speed ahead.  Ellen shrugs her shoulders and uses the opportunity to seduce Lord John, her latest romantic attraction.

Dude, I just love this.  Jane’s voice starts off heavenly and strong, and as the ship hits choppier water the whole number devolves into chaos. I was chuckling at the fruit rolling by, but when the drum barreled into them I totally lost it.  This is clever and impressive, and foreshadows future inside-the-box dance numbers we’ll be treated to.  Also, Jane deserves a medal for sliding around in those heels.

Once the duo arrives in London, Tom accosts a poor woman in the street.  Much like in Swing Time, this lady, Anne, becomes Fred’s new dance partner in the show they’re producing.  He asks her on a date, and it isn’t until after dinner, drinks, and a visit to the woman’s father to shake him down for an alimony payment, that Anne reveals she’s engaged to a jolly old chap from Chicago named Hal that will totally marry her once he’s saved up enough money, never mind he hasn’t called her in 2 months.  Tom continues to date Anne anyway without the promise of romance, while Ellen and John’s relationship gets more serious every time Ellen sings at him.

After several weeks of rehearsal, the show goes off without a hitch, and Jane and Fred have yet another bizarrely-toned number together that features a very strange bit where they put on some really cheap accents.

How are they tap dancing and chewing gum like that?!  And just like, as a general question, why has tap dancing come out of favor in modern day?  It’s so much fun to watch.  When I was a child in the 90’s, my only exposure to tap dancing was little girls shuffling away to “Animal Crackers in my Soup” at the Community Center and Michael Flatley’s showboaty Riverdance phenomenon (which, for someone with Irish heritage, was fucking annoying to be constantly associated with).  Is it because tap dancing is connected to a time of great prosperity and optimism and we haven’t been the mood for it as our mental health has declined?  Or do we not want to be interested in things that our parents (or grandparents) thought were cool?

Anyway, after opening night when Anne’s fiancé Hal fails to call from Chicago and congratulate her, Tom’s rightfully intuits the situation as sus and asks his agent Irving’s British brother Edgar (both played by Peter Lawford in a Parent Trap-esque split-screen situation) to get Irving to conduct a background check on Anne’s Yank “boyfriend”.  Although their relationship is supposed to be platonic while he waits for news from the States, Tom struggles not to get his hopes up as he’s completely smitten with Anne.

“You’re All the World to Me” is the standout performance of this film because Fred blew everyone’s fucking minds by dancing on the furniture, then the walls, and then the ceiling.  It’s so cool to watch, especially since my first exposure of this filming method of a stationary camera hooked to a moving room were MTV-era music videos that didn’t fully take advantage of the medium.

“Virtual Insanity” really fascinated me when I was a child, and the room isn’t even rotating, it’s only sliding around.  Also, I love that when the blood comes out at the end everything remains stationary because they didn’t want to replicate what happens when a roomba sucks up a dog turd.  Whatever happened to Jamiroquai, anyway?  Did Napoleon’s rendition of “Canned Heat” kill their career?  

Guys, this will be the first (and probably only time) a reference I make to Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo is *actually* relevant to the conversation.  It’s the best homage to this, really, so kudos to Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers for making dancing on the ceiling look as much fun as Fred Astaire being in love.  Other applications of this technique in music videos are mostly people sliding around and not taking the actual room movement into account during the choreography.  But let me tell you the joy I felt listening to Mark McGrath talk about using Royal Wedding as an inspiration for “Fly”.  That man is full of surprises.

Anyway, after the fun number, we get Fred acting like a creep because he’s discovered that Hal has married someone else, leaving Anne single and available to date.  I swear, this movie’s musical number formula is just Easter Parade with different clothes on.

Singing and dancing about Haiti as an American is… an interesting choice to make while the US were a military presence in their country, simultaneously being a loan shark and a hired murder squad to take out any political dissidents.  But hey, their white people are beautiful, it’s easy to get distracted and forget a hat!

I take that back, the alternative of them not casting a single black person to play the Haitians is the dancers wearing blackface, which is objectively worse.  And y’all haven’t even seen my Swing Time post, yet.  It’s not a Fred Astaire movie unless we get at least one questionable dance number that references a culture he’s not a part of.  Not to mention, this is just a bizarre number to end the movie with as it has absolutely nothing to do with the story whatsoever.

But finally, the day of the royal wedding arrives and Ellen and Tom decide to take a cue from Elizabeth and Phillip and impulsively marry John and Anne even though they’ve only known each other a few weeks.  The end.

Royal Wedding features several outstanding dance numbers that not only are iconic in their own right, but also changed how choreography and cinematography collaborate.  It’s unfortunate these numbers are strung together with a plot that’s a bit of a dud.  Thankfully Gentlemen Prefer Blondes comes a few years later where we get an entertaining version of the story of a double act traveling to Europe on a ship, dancing in a gym, and beginning a romance that ends with a double wedding.