Main Cast: Fred Astaire, Joan Leslie, Robert Benchley, Robert Ryan, Elizabeth Patterson
Release Year: 1943
Country: US
Run Time: 89 minutes
Plot
After a four-year absence, Fred Astaire returns to RKO Radio for the Ginger Rogers-less The Sky's the Limit. Astaire plays a war hero who wants to spend a quiet furlough in New York. Since the city is poised to give Astaire a ticker-tape welcome, he sneaks into town incognito. He meets photojournalist Joan Leslie, who assumes that Astaire is a slacker and a coward because of his apparent unwillingness to contribute to the war effort. Just as in the earlier Astaire-Rogers vehicles, all misunderstandings are swept away at the end. Robert Benchley shows up to deliver a variation on his old "Treasurer's Report" monologue, while Clarence Kolb, Eric Blore, Neil Hamilton and Peter Lawford make uncredited appearances. Entertaining though the Astaire-Leslie duets may be in The Sky's the Limit, Astaire wraps this one up with his solo One for My Baby and One for the Road. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Coming on the heels of the immensely popular Holiday Inn, Fred Astaire's The Sky's the Limit was deemed something of a letdown. On its own terms, however, it's an engaging and appealing little film and somewhat more insightful than most musicals of the period. Although the dialogue is fairly weak, the script does at least dally with the concept of a career woman and includes a rather tearful finale that is unusual for the genre at the time. Also of interest is the fact that Astaire is essentially playing a traditional Gene Kelly role, that of a persistent male who is a bit overbearing in his pursuit of a female (and is in the armed forces, to boot). There's less music than in most Astaire films (which is one reason why the deficiencies of the script are more apparent), but it does feature two lovely duets with Joan Leslie, as well as Astaire's classic, rowdy bar dance. The score itself features two first rate songs, the haunting "My Shining Hour and the immortal "One for My Baby," as well as the lesser-known but charming "I've Got a Lot in Common with You." Astaire is in top form throughout, and he and Leslie make a wonderful pair. They have a definite chemistry, and her dancing blends very well with his. Robert Benchley provides solid support, especially with his memorable befuddled monologue. Astaire would follow Sky with the more ambitious but very uneven Yolanda and the Thief. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Carroll Clark - Art Director, Albert S. D'Agostino - Art Director, Sherman Todd - Associate Producer, Fred Astaire - Choreography, Rene Hubert - Costume Designer, Renie - Costume Designer, Ruby Rosenberg - First Assistant Director, Edward H. Griffith - Director, Roland Gross - Editor, Harold Arlen - Composer (Music Score), Leigh Harline - Composer (Music Score), Johnny Mercer - Composer (Music Score), Leigh Harline - Musical Direction/Supervision, Harold Arlen - Songwriter, Johnny Mercer - Songwriter, Russell Metty - Cinematographer, David Hempstead - Producer, Claude E. Carpenter - Set Designer, Darrell Silvera - Set Designer, Vernon Walker - Special Effects, S.K. Lauren - Screenwriter, Lynn Root - Screenwriter, Frank Fenton - Screenwriter
There is no limit (to ambition, aspirations, expense, or the like). For example, Order anything you like on the menu--the sky's the limit tonight, or He's so brilliant he can do anything--the sky's the limit. This metaphoric idiom was first recorded in 1920.
This drama, a dark comedy, was an unusual departure for Astaire, one which caused some consternation among film critics and fans at the time, though not enough to prevent the film doing well. Aside from the dancing - which contains a famous solo performance in the standard "One For My Baby", described by Astaire as "the best song specially written for me" -- the script provided him with his first opportunity to act in a serious dramatic role, and one with which his acting abilities, sometimes disparaged, appear to cope. Astaire, who plays a Flying Tiger on leave, portrays a complex and troubled character. The comedy is provided by Benchley (his second appearance in an Astaire picture) and Blore—a stalwart from the early Astaire-Rogers pictures.
Key songs/dance routines
All dances were choreographed by and credited to Astaire alone, another unusual departure for him, as he generally worked with collaborators. What is not unusual is the selection of dance routines, which is the standard Astaire formula of a comic partnered routine, a romantic partnered routine and a "sock" solo, each of which is seamlessly integrated into the plot.
My Shining Hour (song): Arlen and Mercer's simple and hymn-like wartime ballad, the picture's signature song, is mimed by Joan Leslie (dubbed here by Sally Sweetland) against the crude backdrop of a band whose instruments are framed with illuminated neon outlines. It became a hit, albeit slowly.
A Lot In Common With You: Astaire muscles in on Leslie's (her own voice this time) on-stage song-and-dance routine which develops into a mock competitive comic side-by-side tap dance using a range of leg-before-leg hurdling steps, some of which had been developed for The Shorty George number in You Were Never Lovelier, but had not been used.
My Shining Hour (dance): This partnered ballroom-style romantic dance with Joan Leslie is one of consummation, exploring the spatial themes of distance and closeness. Astaire uses distance to admire Leslie and closeness to embrace her, and this is juxtaposed with the music of Shining Hour - whose lyric refers to imminent parting - to emphasise the film's wartime themes of fragility and mortality.
Fred Astaire dancing on a bar counter in "One for My Baby" from The Sky's the Limit (1943) (RKO)
One For My Baby: In this hard-driving solo Astaire explores the themes of anger, violence, frustration and drunken despair deploying a single-minded focus to create as much noise as possible with his taps, by way of emotional catharsis. The number took two and a half days to shoot, after seven days of full set rehearsal. After a drunken rendition of the song he furiously tap dances up and down the bar as a choreographic device to reflect a sense of pointlessness, pausing only to smash stacked racks of (real) glasses and a mirror. Astaire's first drunk dance was the comic routine You're Easy To Dance With in Holiday Inn, but this solo marks his first clear departure from a carefully crafted screen image of urbane charm. Astaire has sometimes been criticised by other choreographers for exploring a carefully limited range of emotions in his dancing, and it is possible that this routine was his response. However, he avoids any sense of vulgarity, and it would be nearly ten years before he would throw caution to the wind with the studied comic crudeness of the How could you believe me... routine in Royal Wedding. See also: Fred Astaire's Solo and Partnered Dances.
