Born to Dance (1936)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Eleanor Powell is always worth watching, but James Stewart singing in a song-and-dance musical? Now that’s definitely worth a watch. No, as Born to Dance shows, he’s not good at it: there’s a reason why, in a long career, Stewart didn’t do many musical comedies. But to see him try to hold a note while Powell tap-dances up a storm around him is something well worth experiencing. The plot is an old staple of movie musicals: sailors on leave getting up to all sorts of romantic and comic hijinks. Still, it works well as a receptacle in which to place the musical numbers. Perhaps the most impressive of those is the finale, in which Powell tap-dances on a stage meant to look like a battleship: the kind of lavish, expansive musical numbers that defined the 1930s movie musical. Since Powell didn’t star in that many movies in a ten-year career, this performance (like many of her other ones) is a gem—and adding a young premier like Steward merely sweetens the pot. The rest of Born to Dance? Watchable, amusing, not necessarily memorable but quite entertaining in its own way. Powell, though: unforgettable.