Okay, maybe “great” wasn’t the right word to use, but I imagine saying that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a good actress is not controversial. And as an actress, she can move her body, on command, in ways that audiences find entertaining, and that’s far more than I, an actual bad dancer, can do. And not just “entertaining” but she can sell “bad dancer” to audiences, whereas I would just look like a very poor actor trying to dance well and failing. Her dance was funny and entertaining despite being “bad”, mine would be cringeworthy, embarrassing, and not at all entertaining.
It takes talent to dance badly, is what I’m saying. Maybe not Fred Astaire talent, but talent nonetheless.
And of course Lucille Ball was amazingly talented, in many ways. I wouldn’t have believed that was really in question after all these years.
Fred Astaire danced really badly in Swing Time. He had to take a lesson from dance instructor Ginger Rogers and kept fucking up so he could keep holding her in his arms. Her boss (Eric Blore) fired her for failing to teach him anything, so Fred had to do his real thing to save her job.
The tune was Jerome Kern’s “Pick Yourself Up.” Swing Time is consider the best Astaire/Rogers film by dance professionals. The clip is well worth watching.
That’s what I came in here to say. It’s like the probably apocryphal story about Fred Astaire’s screen test result; “Can’t act, slightly bald, can’t sing, dances a little.”. Comedy is the hardest damn thing in the world, and the OP tosses it aside like chopped liver. Which, come to think of it, is also pretty damn good.
She didn’t start out as a comedy actress, that is just where she finally found massive success in her late 30s. But she began work as a model at 18 and over the first couple decades of her career her jobs in film and on stage included song and dance as well as dramatic roles.
I’d like to think that we can have a discussion about an actress’s level of talent without having to share porn in the thread. Let’s cut the discussion of where, whether, or how to see Lucy’s tits.
I didn’t see American Gods, but I did read it. That’s why I let the initial comment slide. It was only when people starting taking it seriously and discussing how one might actually see said tits that I felt the need to intervene.
For the benefit of those who do not know American Gods, the original statement was meant to highlight the ridiculous crassness of the media. Highlighting the crassness is fine; I just didn’t want us to take part in the crassness ourselves.
For those of you who didn’t get the reference in my original comment;
In the show, American Gods, Gillian Anderson* does a fantastic job as Lucy, appearing on every TV in a store to attempt to sway Shadow Moon to their side.
She actually plays Media, one of the new gods, who takes the form of past stars. In this case, Lucille Ball.
Several years ago, probably around the time he was on Dancing with the Stars, I came across a reference to actor Alfonso Ribeiro having a background as a dancer. I found this surprising, as Ribeiro is probably best-known for his role on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as Carlton, a notoriously bad dancer. It had been many years since I’d watched Fresh Prince though, so I pulled up a video of Carlton dancing on YouTube.
I don’t know much about dance, but it does seem obvious now that Carlton’s dancing isn’t bad in the sense that it’s unskilled. It’s bad in the sense that it’s goofy and unhip, which is appropriate for the character. Carlton is not trying to do cool dance moves that he lacks the technical ability to pull off, he’s properly executing dance moves that aren’t cool (and are exaggerated for comedic effect). “Doing the Carlton” the way Ribeiro did it would take more energy and coordination than an untrained and unskilled dancer like me could manage. If you put me on camera and told me to dance badly, you’d get a sort of halfhearted attempt at a 1960s style TV backup dancer – basically just some hip swaying and slow arm movements.
Lucille Ball broke her leg in a skiing accident in 1972 and was in a cast for much of that season’s “Here’s Lucy”. She was 61 at the time. Whether that would have affected her dancing for “Mame”, I don’t know. Sometimes you don’t heal as well when you are older.
She also was a cigarette smker. In the 190s with her failed comeback, her character was supposed to be a health fanatic when in real life she just quit smoking after 30 years (the characters on “I Love Lucy” were encouraged to smoke by their tobacco sponsor).
While she is no Ginger Rogers, she is lovely and graceful in this clip where she dances with Van Johnson from an “I Love Lucy” episode.
Also, note her fine acting chops as “Lucy Ricardo” transitions from almost too nervous to move a muscle into enjoying her golden chance to dance with a big celebrity. I think she more than holds her own: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHnxAY3mG8
The quality of the image here is quite poor, but there may be better versions of the same clip available elsewhere on the net.
