How Astaire beat gravity
QUESTION In the 1951 film, Royal Wedding, Fred Astaire dances on the walls and the ceiling. How was this special effect achieved? Royal Wedding featured Fred astaire and Jane Powell as a brother-and- sister american dancing team performing in England on the occasion of the Royal Wedding of Elizabeth and Philip in 1947.
From a technical standpoint, it may not be as renowned as director Stanley Donen’s more famous musicals on The Town, Singin’ In The Rain or Funny Face, but it includes one of his finest pieces of work, a show-stopping song-and-dance sequence in which Fred astaire appears to defy the laws of physics.
at first, the sequence looks like a typical nimble astaire as he glides around a sumptuous yet sparsely furnished room, clambering on and off furniture to Burton lane and alan Jay lerner’s twinkly you’re all The World To Me.
But then, gradually, astaire begins to perform miracles — dancing all the way up the walls until he’s tapping his toes around the light fixtures on the ceiling.
The entire sequence lasts for almost four minutes, and the behind-the-scenes reality is almost as magical; the entire film set was built inside a reinforced steel cylindrical chamber, which rotated to give the impression that astaire was dancing his way around gravity itself.
To pull off the sequence perfectly, astaire had to not only memorise all his dance moves but time everything to coincide with the rotation of the room. The slightest error would have left him staggering around, sliding to a heap in one corner of the room or worse, suddenly taking a hefty drop and seriously injuring himself.
‘The way he did it, you never knew he was fighting gravity,’ Donen said years later. ‘The furniture and fixtures were nailed down and the room was placed in the middle of a rotating barrel. Cameraman Robert Planck was strapped to a large ironing board, along with his camera, so he could rotate with the room.’
one of Hollywood’s most respected directors, Donen has been responsible for some of the best musicals, as well as the Cary Grant movies Indiscreet (1958), The Grass Is Greener (1960) and Charade (1963).
Ever the perfectionist, another famous sequence Donen came up with, where Gene Kelly dances with Jerry the cartoon mouse in 1945’s anchors aweigh, took two months of filming the dancing and another year perfecting the scene frame by frame.
Steven Pope, Burwash, E. Sussex.
QUESTION At 9ft wide, British railway carriages are the narrowest in the world running on standard gauge. Are HS1 trains wider? And what is the proposed width for HS2? a RaIlWay line’s loading gauge defines the maximum height and width at which railway vehicles can have safe passage through its bridges, tunnels and other structures.
Britain has one of the most restrictive loading gauges in the world. Standard gauge, designated W6a, is 9ft wide by 11ft high on the sides, rising to 13ft 6in at the centre.
This is a legacy of the British rail network being the world’s oldest, having been built by several private companies, each with different loading gauge standards.
Higher loading gauges are available for dedicated trains on certain lines, for i nstance, the West Coast main l i ne operated W10, which allows 9ft 6in ‘hi-cube’ shipping containers to be carried on standard wagons.
HS1, the Channel Tunnel Rail link, runs on standard gauge (4ft 8½ in) track, but is cleared for the larger modern European loading gauge, designated GC, enabling GC gauge freight as far as the yards at Barking, Essex. These allow a width of 10ft 1in and a height of 15ft 5in.
HS2 will also use GC loading. The more generous dimensions should allow dedicated HS2 trains to provide levels of passenger comfort not yet seen on our railways and may open up the possibility of double-deck trains. However, two-thirds of stage one HS2 trains would have to be built to the smaller British measurements to provide through services on existing lines.
Jeremy Blunt, Coventry.
QUESTION My mother was born in Newcastle, and when I was young she sang Blaydon Races, the song loved by Newcastle FC. I was told many years ago that it was written after the Battle at Bladensburg in 1812. Is there any truth in this? FuRTHER to the earlier answer, while Blaydon Races clearly describes a journey through Tyneside to the racecourse, the original idea, for at least the song’s title, may have come from the Battle of Bladensburg.
This battle, in Maryland, was a key action in the War of 1812. on august 24, 1814, British forces routed an inexperienced american militia sent to defend Washington. The British entered the capital and set fire to its public buildings.
The battle became derisively known as The Bladensburg Races, owing to the unseemly manner in which u.S. troops left the field, and because President James Madison who, along with the rest of his Cabinet had been present at the battle, was forced to flee for his life and liberty.
The event was satirised in a poem, which appeared in 1816 titled The Bladensburg Races, an extract of which reads: ‘So like an arrow swift he flew, Shot from an archer’s bow; So did he fly — so after him As swift did fly Monroe. Six gentlemen upon the road Beheld our General ride — Monroe behind — the chapeau gone; The broadsword by his side.’ The possibility that Geordie Ridley (who wrote Blaydon Races) took his ideas from america is reinforced by recent research that suggests the tune of his song, and to some extent the lyrics, are based on an american folk tune called on The Road to Brighton (that’s Brighton near Boston).
The latter also tells the tale of a raucous journey, this time by three yankees, and the scrapes they get into — but is nowhere near as well constructed as Ridley’s famous song.
James Rey, Liverpool.