Daddy Long Legs (1955 film)


Daddy Long Legs is a Hollywood musical comedy film set in France, New York City, and the fictional college town of Walston, Massachusetts. The film was directed by Jean Negulesco, and stars Fred Astaire, Leslie Caron, Terry Moore, Fred Clark, and Thelma Ritter, with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The screenplay was written by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, loosely based on the 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster.
This was the first of three consecutive Astaire films set in France or with a French theme, following the fashion for French-themed musicals established by ardent Francophile Gene Kelly with An American in Paris, which also featured Kelly's protégée Caron. Like The Band Wagon, Daddy Long Legs did only moderately well at the box office.

Plot summary

Wealthy American Jervis Pendleton III has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, Julie Andre. He anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Her nickname for him, Daddy Long Legs, is taken from the description of him given to Andre by some of her fellow orphans who see his shadow as he leaves their building.
Several years later, he visits her at school, still concealing his identity. Despite their large age difference, they fall in love.

Cast

bought the rights to Jean Webster's original Daddy Long Legs in 1931, releasing two versions of the film, one starring Janet Gaynor and one with Shirley Temple.
Producer Darryl F. Zanuck envisioned a remake, this time seeking to star singer-actress Mitzi Gaynor. The project would not be realized until Zanuck had met Fred Astaire, and was inspired to make Daddy Long Legs a musical film. While Zanuck still envisioned Gaynor for the main female role, Astaire insisted on casting actress and dancer Leslie Caron. Caron was then loaned to Fox by MGM, whom Caron was still under contract.
Production was halted in July, 1954, as Astaire's wife Phyllis became more ill from lung cancer. She passed away in September, putting Astaire in a state of grief and talling his work on the film. Although replacements were being sought for Astaire's role as too much money had been spent on the production already, he resumed and completed his work on the film despite his recent tragedy.

Key songs/dance routines

As his first film in Cinemascope widescreen – which he was to parody later in the "Stereophonic Sound" number from Silk Stockings - Daddy Long legs provided him the opportunity to explore the additional space available, with the help of his assistant choreographer Dave Robel. Roland Petit designed the much-maligned "Nightmare Ballet" number. As usual, Astaire adapted his choreography to the particular strengths of his partner, in this case ballet. Even so, Caron ran into some problems in this, her last dance musical, to the extent that Astaire mentioned in his biography that "one day at rehearsals I asked her to listen extra carefully to the music, so as to keep in time". Caron puts this down to flaws in her early musical training. The final result, however, has a pleasing and appropriate dream-like quality. In this respect, it is a more successful attempt to integrate ballet into his dance routines than his previous effort in Shall We Dance.
Daddy Long Legs was nominated for the Academy Awards for:
The film was also nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Musical.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: