COVER GIRL (Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Phil Silvers 1944)

   Jerome Kern and George Gershwin provided the songs for this dance vehicle for Kelly and Hayworth, and comic input is provided by Phil Silvers, a relative newcomer to Broadway at the time.  In an interview I read (at Mark Evanier's site at povonline.com), Silvers considered this his finest dance performance, having been coached by Kelly to keep up with, basically, two professional hoofers (Silvers was only an actor and comedian in vaudeville and burlesque).  The alleyway number with the wino hanging on the lamppost is one of the hottest three-person dance routines ever committed to film.  It's exhausting but exiting to watch, and difficult to think that anybody could have been that good.

5/15/2009