November 28, 2019
Volume 49 - No. 48
By Friedrich Gomez
Why is it that the megacelebrities in our rearview mirror seem so much bigger, more legendary, and even vastly more talented than movie stars, singers, and dancers today? Perhaps we’re blinded by stardust in our eyes as we wistfully peer through rose-tinted glasses, backward in time.
Perhaps we succumb to a sentimental journey whenever we The Paper - 760.747.7119
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watch late-night re-runs of Hollywood’s Golden Movie Era.
Is all this affection for yesteryear’s entertainers merely an exaggerated distortion in our nostalgic minds? Were they truly that great? Even greater than our current crop of entertainers? In the estimation of many entertainment historians and critics, these past performers were, indeed, unmatched super stars of the first-magni-
tude, and most deserving of their legendary status.
Today, do we truly have anyone who even remotely approaches the level of dance artistry as showcased by Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? They were, arguably, the greatest genre dancers in entertainment history. Their filmed dance sequences were so advanced, extraordinary, and precision-perfect that even after three-quarters of a century, and viewing them through the prism of time,
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they still cause us to shake our heads, speechless and thunderstruck, with no adequate words to describe them.
Astaire and Kelly remain, to this day, the very personification of dance artistry which all other dancers, of their genre, are measured. As such, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly are, by themselves, the very embodiment of greatness and, therefore, their only frame of reference is themselves.
There are those who say that even the music back then,