Friday with Fred Astaire
The Sky’s the Limit
Fred Astaire as an American Flying Tiger ace during World War 2 is the appeal of the underappreciated The Sky’s the Limit. The set-up is the point of the picture, which was apparently lost on critics including the New York Times’s critic Bosley Crowther, who dismissed this movie. That’s too bad because it’s delightful despite the challenge of an age difference between Fred Astaire and his leading lady, Joan Leslie, who was 17 years old during filming.
This is a musical. Like most Fred Astaire movies, the plot’s thin. The music, by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, is partly what attracted Fred Astaire to return to his former studio, RKO. Songs are uniquely suited to the underlying dramatic premise. As with most Fred Astaire films, and with most movies during Hollywood’s Golden Age, you either accept the wispy premise or you don’t. Here, opening scenes are essential to understanding Fred Astaire’s playboy character and the cavalier attitude he adopts during a respite from war. The Sky’s the Limit unfolds during an interval in which the flying ace knows he’s being used by the U.S. military to recruit and promote the Second World War. Being older, having been in air combat, he knows life is finite.
Enter the ambitious young woman played by Joan Leslie. She wants to be a photojournalist. She wants it badly. Her boss, played by Robert Benchley, has other ideas but she’s a serious and determined woman. Her seriousness is the ideal match and motive for Fred Astaire’s ace pilot, who goes rogue and embarks on a campaign to win her over. A back-and-forth ensues as he choreographs a courtship in which he bends certain rules. Only the audience knows the justifying context.
The contrast underscores a dramatic current that runs throughout the picture, including the song and dance routines such as “One for My Baby.” In every gesture and line of his face, the mysterious gentleman displays the art of the playful against the daunting truth that lies underneath. Only he knows where he’s been and where he’s going and, in the selfish young woman intent upon career advancement in pursuit of chronicling her nation at war — she volunteers at the local canteen to support the troops — he finds the one who reflects his values.
This makes him want to spare her suffering. And of course it leads to his withdrawal, inducing anger. The Sky’s the Limit is not a dramatic motion picture musical. On the contrary, most of what I’m writing about is nowhere near explicit on screen. But it undeniably looms, especially in dance numbers in which Fred Astaire takes her onto a terrace and shows her what it means to be loved in a starlight dance before he returns to war. It’s in a song and dance of broken glass—Fred Astaire cut his ankles during those cathartic scenes—and it’s layered throughout the film’s signature song, “My Shining Hour”. This last captures the essence of 1943’s The Sky’s the Limit, which, whatever its conventions, ploys and flaws, skillfully dramatizes the tension of woman and man holding strong and high during love and war. Thanks again to Fred Astaire.
Friday with Fred Astaire