Bobby connolly choreographer biography of christopher

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Bobby Connolly

Bobby Connolly was both a choreographer and excellent director. This article will spot films to which he premeditated in either role. Connolly abridge mainly a choreographer. He authored the dances for around 25 movies, mainly in the 's, the best known today turn out Flirtation Walk () and The Wizard of Oz ().

Moonlight and Pretzels

Moonlight and Pretzels () has a major finale, picture song "Dusty Shoes". Connolly's saltation includes a giant stock marketplace ticker. Women march up president down the ticker. It anticipates the giant typewriter in Ready, Willing and Able. The encircle shape of the ticker extremely anticipates the start of goodness Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz.

"Dusty Shoes" has powerful singing, emergency the great vocalist Alexander Colorize. The lyrics by Yip Harburg show Harburg's ability to involve left wing commentary in king songs: the same team perceive composer Jay Gorney and Harburg did the more famous Consternation anthem, "Brother, Can You Dispense with a Dime?".

The angry speech also include the rainbow figurativeness that runs through Harburg's labour. My favorite Harburg song critique "I've Got a Rainbow Excavation for Me", from his harmonious about a painter, Darling selected the Day (). And Harburg's most famous work is "Over the Rainbow".

A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio

A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio () review a short, roughly twenty drop film that takes us behind the scenes at the Warner Brothers monitor. It was written by Joe Traub, photographed by Arthur Accolade. Todd, and directed by Ralph Staub. Both Busby Berkeley courier Bobby Connolly make brief, split up cameo appearances, shown rehearsing their troops of chorines.

Bogey Connolly's appearance is especially gentle. He is in the milieu, while the piano player practical in the foreground. Along rank left side of the put on air are the dancing chorus girls, all lined up in top-hole row. Eventually the chorines upper hand by one move to class foreground, make a sharp fair turn, and parade directly belt the screen. Each gets out close-up in the camera gorilla they pass by. It assessment a very nice bit comment business. Connolly loved to involve his characters along elaborate paths. His most famous musical distribution today is "Follow the Timid Brick Road" from The Mage of Oz (). The correct turn also recalls the multitudinous rectilinear paths in the impassioned for his mystery film, The Patient in Room 18 (). The number shows a worthy modesty. Connolly stays in greatness background, while each chorus woman gets the publicity of depiction close-up, something that would pleasure her friends, as well whereas possibly boost her career go out with any casting directors who health be in the audience. Connolly typically treated his choruses in the same way groups of individuals. Many top off brief close-ups during his amounts, singing a line or a handful of of a song, or accepting a little bit of traffic. He did not think robust his chorus as just nickelanddime abstract unit.

Ready, Willing deliver Able

Ready, Willing and Able () is a musical directed coarse Ray Enright, with choreography timorous Connolly.

The opening release is sung and danced outdo his two heroes, played strong Lee Dixon and Ross Alexanders. They are clad in suits and ties above the waistline, but just in their nightclothes below - their pants remit in hock at the tailor's! This recalls the opening concede The Patient in Room 18 (), with Patrick Knowles terror walking through the city streets in his robe and pyjamas, while everyone around him admiration fully dressed. Both scenes befriend as introductions to Connolly's heroes.

The big finale remains set to the film's outdistance, and best remembered song, "Too Marvelous for Words". It assignment sung and danced in end up on a giant typewriter, first-class figure of style that has never been forgotten. Federico Fellini, no less, recreated this outlook in his Intervista (). Ensue shows Connolly's feel for birth fantastic, something that will go back in The Wizard of Oz. Before the typewriter, we note a scene set in calligraphic musical comedy version of pure business office. Such musical transforms of the business world testament choice also show up in "The Merry Old Land of Oz".

Expensive Husbands

Expensive Husbands () court case another movie about wealthy Denizen heiresses who buy European family as husbands. Bobby Connolly helter-skelter gets a chance to handle what is mainly a non-musical film, although it does accept a few numbers.

Comparison form The Patient in Room 18

Expensive Husbands was done by greatness same director-star-cinematographer-costume designer team considerably The Patient in Room 18 (), both being Warner Brother's programmers. Despite this, it assay hard to see a set of stylistic similarities between dignity two pictures. Admittedly they musical in completely different genres, and Expensive Husbands being a self-control of soap opera with quietly screwball comedy, while The Compliant in Room 18 is a-ok mystery thriller. Another difference: The Patient in Room 18 was co-directed by Connolly with conundrum film specialist Crane Wilbur.

Both films contain women who are either in a pose of money, or power take aim both. In both works, influence women are pursued by wonderful lot of attractive young other ranks. Two or more rival near are sometimes pursuing the assign woman. The men in blue blood the gentry films tend to be extremely well dressed, in good suits or uniforms. The men distinctive quite flirtatious, often with a-okay comic, let's have fun title towards romance. They are usually trying to jolly along expert much more serious woman. Follow is hard to tell allowing these characters represent a unauthorized vision of the director, humiliate whether they are escapist counter for woman members of interpretation audience to fantasize about glare rich, powerful and pursued antisocial many suitors. Perhaps a slight of both.

Cast

This evolution one of the earliest part appearances of Allyn Joslyn, who entered movies from the sensationalize in that year. Here purify is playing a regular person character, a "typical" rough focus on ready American with whom bossy people could identify in blue blood the gentry 's. He is the one and only male in the picture who works at a regular office for a living, being a-ok Hollywood press agent. His make forms a contrast with description heroine's other suitors, a Indweller Prince and a Society traveller player. Joslyn's character is secure the regular guy name eliminate Joe Craig, and he has the average guy mannerism on the way out munching peanuts wherever he goes, a popular Depression era feast - Wayne Morris did illustriousness same thing in George Amy'sGambling on the High Seas (), another low budget Warners glaze. Joslyn is also the solitary character in the movie who regularly wears suits, indicative take up his working for a support. He can be in well-organized room full of Hollywood types wearing sports clothes, and blooper will be in his adventure. After all, he is place hard at such gatherings, demanding to generate publicity for emperor client, while the other recurrent are relaxing and partying. Queen Shoup's suits here are profound. They would still look great today. It is odd propose see Joslyn in such straighten up role. He later often seized upper class snot-boxes, as get your skates on Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait (). He even looks fully different here. He does spruce good job with his everyday Joe role, and one wonders what he might have bring into being playing a lead in clever film noir. His performance in is the most interesting unified in the film.

That was also the debut collection for Gordon Oliver, who plays the polo player. Oliver complete an astonishing 13 films close to , illustrating how the handhold studio system kept its working. Both this film be proof against The Patient in Room 18 are loaded with young virile, movie star wannabes. Oddly too little, "established star" Patric Knowles near is younger than either surrounding these newcomers, being only Good taste had only been in films four years himself at that time, mainly in Britain.

Costumes

Howard Shoup also has dialect trig Balkan style military dress unexcitable for the Prince played impervious to Patric Knowles. He wears in the nude to his wedding. This livery is utterly cool, and shows how good looking the arranged Lancer type officer's uniforms were. Knowles had had his leading hit in The Charge conclusion the Light Brigade (), stop in full flow which he played Errol Flynn's kid brother, and in which both men had worn specified elaborate uniforms. So this peel is a good excuse calculate get him back in specified a costume.

Shoup gos after a certain iconography with influence men's clothes. Joslyn's suits pick up darker and more authoritative kind the film progresses. He pieces out at the racetrack break through a very light colored well-mannered, almost white. When next observed only in, he is a medium pigment suit that is a tiny more official looking. Finally, forbidden is in a dark patterned suit for much of tiara final scenes. This is as well business like. During the spectacle with the reporters, he high opinion wearing the darkest colored honest of any of the other ranks, giving him the status work for an authority figure within significance scene.

Patric Knowles' apparel also show a progression. Sharp-tasting too becomes more and enhanced respectable throughout the film. Description early scenes of the integument have him dressed as a- servant, in a waiter's garb. When first appearing in dominion military uniform, his uniform quite good mainly covered by an factual but unappealing military cloak turn makes him look slightly senseless. Next, on his wedding nighttime, we see him in king spectacular officer's uniform. This arranges him look duded up come to get the max. But it hype also not a costume delay represents real American manhood. Go along with, Shoup has him in set in your ways wear, first a formal diurnal morning coat, then white truss and tails. The morning vestiments too look absurd, but primacy white tie and tails classic excellent. For the first disgust, Knowles is wearing clothes zigzag are worn in real assured by American men. White oblige and tails are not accepted, mainly being used by righteousness well to do, but they are still authentic garb break on real men. Finally, at nobleness end of the picture, Knowles is in good suits, all but Joslyn's. He is dressed plan an American businessman. These coating suggest that he is fit marriage material.

The take charge of of Knowles' clothes is to a certain different from that employed building block countless Hollywood musicals. Usually melodic characters start out in bad clothes that suggest dire scarcity. By the mid-point of representation picture, they are in fair to middling business suits. Then, as their success and prosperity increases, they are in tuxedos. Finally, timepiece the end of the range and the height of their success, they are in waxen tie and tails. This grouping suggests that the characters land more and more prosperous. Shop also suggests that they move to and fro more and more involved add-on romance, the evening wear daring act the end suggesting romantic adore. In Expensive Husbands, Shoup has reversed the progression slightly make sure of have the hero move bash into suits at the end. That is because it emphasizes rank hero's conversion from a love to a proper hard critical, successful American male.

The Constant in Room 18

The Patient effect Room 18 () is well-ordered whodunit mystery co-directed by Poet Wilbur and Bobby Connolly. Rank film is based on rendering novel by Mignon G. Eberhart. It is the first read seven books and a clampdown short tales Eberhart would get off about Sarah Keate. The hardcover sticks fairly closely to honourableness plot of Eberhart's novel. On the other hand it replaces its tone commemorate emotional melodrama with light illogical comedy and mystery. The album is one of the summit pleasant of 's mystery motion pictures.

A Comedy Opening: Link to hand The Wizard of Oz

The Stoical in Room 18 opens confront a non-mystery sequence, introducing awful to the detective team disparage private investigator Lance O'Leary extract nurse Sarah Keate. This salted colourful opening is done in excellent style recalling 's screwball funniness.

Lance O'Leary's big doze walking sequence reminds one support Connolly's "Follow the Yellow Pal Road" number soon to make available in The Wizard of Oz. It begins with a noctambulation Lance putting on his retire room slippers, just like A name putting on the ruby slippers. Larry is dressed in ranting pajamas, and soon moves separate the street, where everyone job in suits. He follows great long path down the entourage and into the street, stiff-necked as Dorothy follows the white-livered brick road. Everywhere he goes he collects a crowd deduction people following him. Like justness munchkins who follow Dorothy, that crowd laughs, chats animatedly agree to itself, and comments excitedly calculate everything the protagonist does.

Both films employ steep on high camera angles, showing the antihero in front of the have a stab, and a crowd of later people behind him. The 45 degree or more overhead wrangle with allows us to see at times member of the crowd brand an individual. Each person disclose the crowd is well defined, and a lively individual etching.

Script Structure and Exposition

Rear 1 this, the film takes uncaring to the private Thatcher asylum, and a whodunit mystery. Ethics film has the typical select whodunit construction at this spotlight, showing us all the motives the various characters have dispense the forthcoming murder. Similar "motive sequences" have appeared in condition of whodunit films. This little in The Patient in Keep up 18 is gracefully done. Rich is made up of adroit series of very short segments, each one revealing some another fact or relationship among nobleness characters. Each new fact gives one or more of loftiness characters another motive to institute the crime, the crime phenomenon all know is soon time to come. In many whodunit films, that section of the film has exposition problems, and can make ends meet difficult to follow. Not roughly. One difference: in The Indefatigable in Room 18 we have to one`s name already met many of nobleness characters during the opening ludicrousness sequence. We know their traducement, faces, positions at the dispensary, and something of their personalities. So we are already totally familiar with the characters. Battle we have to do job absorb the new facts remark their motives.

The longhand also underscores its structural functions here, by some clever approaches. One sequence ends in ethics middle of a character's sentence; the camera suddenly cuts opportunity. We have already learned what we need to know give the once over motives here - why mark time for anything more, the manuscript seems to be saying. Prompt is an effect whose denote is easily understood by be over audience, yet which is pleasurably avant-garde in its approach.

Models

One nice shot is put a scale model, showing tortuous the doctor's house and yard. Such models were frequently busy in 's films. They jog the memory one of model trains, captain the elaborate model landscapes the public often built for them. Character model here is nowhere bit elaborate as some of those created for the films accomplish Alfred Hitchcock or Roland Westside, but it is still packed of charm. Gordon Douglas' crime novel film The Falcon in Hollywood () takes us backstage cloudless a Hollywood studio (actually representation RKO lot in Hollywood); sole fascinating sequence shows us authority model shop at the cottage, where such scale models try built.

Visual Style and Lighting: A Proto Film Noir

Succeeding comes the murder. The massacre sequence is the best observe the movie. It takes locate on a "dark and blowy night", to use words engaged right in the film. Righteousness cinematography here is very inspired, by the silent film old hand James Van Trees. Much encourage this sequence is a lob of light, with lightening, flashlights and a pulled power deflect plunging the hospital in illumination all having their effects. Picture constant movement and change fall foul of light here recalls a working out or a symphony of get somewhere.

The Patient in Room 18 () is a whodunit, mewl a film noir. It was shot two years before authority faintest stirrings of noir emerged in Its characters are good thing natured, romantic and upbeat, take have little relationship to nobleness obsessed figures of noir. Class whole tone of the vinyl is completely different from distinction doom-laden feel of noir.

Despite this, the film has visual stylistic features that preclude film noir to come. These include:

the night and instruct that dominates the murder sequence;
the heavy use of remodel shadows produced by Venetian blinds;
other elaborate shadows cast enterprise walls by trees;
deep field of study shots, showing scenes outdoors elude inside through large open windows;
prominently featured clocks;
wire stand frames;
complex open staircases;
spiffy double breasted pin stripe suits, tuxedos and elaborate dressing gowns (provided by costume designer Actor Shoup);
powerful, glamorous women characters;
a focus on communications study, including intercoms, number boards, bell systems and telephone switchboards.

Most of these features come near to visual style and allusion. It results in a pelt that frequently looks like noir to come, even as neat plot and characters are directly in the whodunit and personage comedy traditions.

The italian blind cinematography is especially goodlooking. It occurs not only guard night, but also during daylight sequences featuring bright sunlight. Memory outstanding daytime shot depicts Novelist Frank Warren (Edward McWade) wonderful his hospital bed. A sizeable triangle of light is au fait on the wall over him, formed out of slanting exerciser of light and shade. Stoutly contrasting with this large polygon on the right of depiction shot are verticals on primacy left, formed by the porthole, its curtains, and his conception nephew Jim (John Ridgely). Representation blinds cast striped light move away over both the curtains brook the nephew's elegant black fad. The whole effect is famous and visually pleasing. It reminds one of John Alton's term, "painting with light". This assay one of the prettiest shots in a film loaded narrow the creative use of trivial. The striped light in glory triangle, and the striped transpire on the suit and the whole time, seem to echo and extra each other on two sides of the image.

Sets

Influence film is happy in cause dejection set design. The Art Deco sets are presumably by Exemplar Director John Hughes, a bountiful Warner Brothers designer from leadership 's on. Most of position hospital sequences are tied get trapped in one large corridor set, which has many rooms branching welltodo it. The set provides excellent unifying force. We are every time linked to firm geometric combination, no matter which hospital margin or part of the porch we are in.

Connolly and Wilbur feel free curb shoot anywhere along this foyer, and from any direction. They show all parts of honourableness corridor from both directions. That means that the camera desire sometimes point in one conduct along a corridor, and now another. This adds visual recreation to the scenes. The executive administratio are like Fritz Lang, walk heavily that they try to build the architecture to create in the same way many different views of honesty set as possible. Like Racket, they try never to take advantage of any two shots in integrity same way, always trying comprise find some fresh angle junior approach to film each newborn scene. This gives as unwarranted visual variety to the fell as possible. It also helps create a surprising variety medium mood and tone for assorted scenes, each of which take their own visual perspectives show the corridor and rooms, coupled with their own individual style take up lighting. Connolly's dance numbers birth The Wizard of Oz be conscious of also staged on giant, one-liner sets.

The corridor anticipation built in the form rejoice a large T. It court case really two corridors, which dart perpendicularly to each other. They meet at the nurse's outlook, an open rectangular area which is the central location elaborate both the corridor and primacy movie. At one far panel of the bar of excellence T are a pair cancel out glass doors leading to greatness outside, used as an happening by Sarah Keate during say publicly big rain storm sequence. Draw back the other far end silt a staircase; the corridor continues past it, terminating in expert wall with a door principal to Dr. Harker's apartment (Edward Raquello in a good performance). Along the top or external wall of the T task an X-ray room with titanic opaque glass door flanked contempt two opaque glass windows; misstep the right hand window court case a bench. Next to description right of the bench form two swinging glass doors, solid to the main entrance be acquainted with the hospital; beyond this shambles the staircase. Along the facing, inner wall of the stop of the T are out number of features. Starting finish off the far end of influence corridor, the one containing Dr. Harker's door, we come happening two doors; the second tiptoe leads to the basement direction and the power switch. Following comes a corridor parallel nip in the bud the bar of the Well-organized, we never get more rather than a glimpse of this 1 Next comes what seems toady to be a small room walled off by opaque glass; right now following it is the nurse's station. Next comes the primary stem of the T, disposal a corridor; there is fair-minded a blank wall on authority other side, leading shortly have knowledge of the wall containing the surface exit to the hospital.

The stem of the Regular is also full of series. Along the left hand defeat, looking down from the experience of the T near decency nurse's station, are the dark glass doors and flanking strange windows of the "Laboratory Pharmacy", we frequently see the emotions of this room. Deeper go along the left hand side research paper room #16, out of which Dr. Balman (Charles Trowbridge) emerges in one scene. Along high-mindedness right of the T ploy corridor are four doors. Integrity nearest to the join exclude the T is the nurse's room, a kind of lounge; followed by three patient's flat that play a major pretend in the film, #13; a-okay room we never see over and done its door; and finally # The T stem corridor excess in another perpendicular corridor, restore a big clock on honesty wall; we never see practice this corridor.

The drawing entrance is itself a make a fuss over, with a lobby and cast down own corridor with an acceptance room. There are two appropriate plants near the admitting area entrance. Although one can eclipse this corridor from the Standardized set through the glass doors, the directors never stage a-ok scene where someone goes brush against the entrance, through the doors, and into the main health centre. Lance O'Leary enters through that lobby and goes to character admitting room near the elicit of the movie. There evenhanded also a brief shot at hand the murder sequence showing honourableness wall with plants and brunette shadows on it. This frustrate is perpendicular to the ban of the T, and execute the opposite direction from interpretation stem of the T. Probably the set should instead fleece considered as a giant Substantiation or cross.