Broadway Melody of 1940 (1939)

She was trained in ballet and acrobatics, but Eleanor Powell actually didn’t like tap and thought it was ungraceful, hard to believe since she practically floated above the floor and had been named “world’s greatest tapper” at the age of 17. Legend has it that when she lost a few stage roles to dancers who could tap, she began training her lightning footwork with sandbags strapped to her waist to add weight to her statuesque frame. Competitive? You bet! The result was the strongest legs on Broadway and arguably the best dancer ever to grace Hollywood, male or female.

She didn’t usually dance with a partner and didn’t need to; little wonder as so few men could keep up. Her films centered around her getting the starring role and then getting the cute guy, in that order — not the other way around as with all the other Broadway hopefuls in the gold digger era. Her success seemed to happen in spite of love — and male meddling: check Jimmy Stewart trying to get her a job as a chorus girl only to discover she’s already landed the role of lead understudy in Born to Dance, or Robert Taylor sending the nice girl home on a train not realizing she was about to steal the lead in his show disguised as the outrageous diva LaBelle Arlette in Broadway Melody of 1936. Her leading men constantly underestimate her, and in what should be an inspiration to ALL women: she follows her career and allows love eventually bring the men around to her side. (Frustratingly, the better remembered Rita Hayworth would spend her entire filmography doing the opposite, throwing away success for some undeserving lout.)

But more than just an independent woman, Eleanor Powell wears the pants — literally. In her previous finales she dons the top hat and tails and brings the show to a close as the sequined narrator, the dashing ringleader — the role usually left to a man. In Broadway Melody of 1940, she is at the peak of her Hollywood career and there are more than a few digs about her being the boss. No longer a struggling girl next door, her character is already the queen of Broadway, appearing nightly in a review that introduces her as the captain of the ship with a bevy of awestruck sailors willing to serve under her gentle command. Later when she is paired romantically with co-star George Murphy, he sends her flowers with a card that reads “To my Leading Lady, and I do mean leading“!

The team-up with Fred Astaire was going to be legendary. No other dancer in Hollywood had as much influence and power. His pairing with Ginger Rogers although not a strong dancer herself was boxoffice gold, but appearing with Eleanor Powell intimidated even him. Astaire later said of Powell in his autobiography: “She ‘put ‘em down like a man’, no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.” The audience was ready to see sparks fly as two untouchable athletes tear up the stage together. But that’s not the way Hollywood works. Astaire was never a manly man, and RKO had always been careful not to embarrass him with competition from more virile male co-stars. Little surprise that Powell appears in the most feminizing wardrobe of her career: big hats, huge bows, even her captain uniform is a swirling pleated skirt. The big finale set to Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine finds her uncharacteristically in a bare midriff and exotic jewelry. When the three stars break character at the end, Murphy and Astaire wear elegant white tuxedos. In contrast, Powell wears a girlish puffy frock that makes her look all of fourteen. She strikes one of her signature poses coyly resting a finger against her cheek while hammering out an impossible timestep. Murphy knocks her hand away from her face while Astaire pretends to stamp on her feet. She takes their ribbing with a laugh.

Powell’s career didn’t exactly take a nosedive after Broadway Melody of 1940, but a short illness sidelined her momentum, and even though she got top billing in her later films the real story would be played out among the other actors. Broadway Melody sequels were planned, including one with Gene Kelly the only other dancer after Astaire worthy of her talents, but it never materialized. She was increasingly marginalized as a specialty act or a cameo performer until she retired to raise her son.

A generation of female dancers claimed Powell was their inspiration, and at the urging of her grown son she launched a successful nightclub career, always maintaining her figure and athleticism. She eventually became an ordained minister in the Unity Church, a gender-equal denomination that believes in reincarnation, the inherent goodness of all people, and that war will end only when mankind stops killing animals for food.