The Dancing Fool Returns
- Apr 8
- 2 min read
For all Steve Martin’s long, impressive career as a comedian and comic actor – not to mention as a banjo player and composer of a Broadway musical – one of his overlooked or little-known talents are those rare occasions when he dances. I mean that seriously. It’s not just that he dances, but takes major, adventurous risks doing so, sometimes as comic risks and sometimes, for lack of a better word, artistic. Often putting himself up against seriously great career dancers.
I’ve posted several here over the years. His best known is probably when he and Gilda Radner did their wonderful, elaborate and goofy dance on Saturday Night Live to the song “Dancing in the Dark,” which I posted here. Then, there was his utterly joyous dance with Lily Tomlin during the end credits of the movie All of Me, I posted here. But his most impressive of them (and riskiest, for how he could have been ridiculed and lambasted if it fell flat, which it had every right to, but didn’t) and probably least known, was for the 1981 "lip-synching movie musical Pennies from Heaven that I posted here. That’s when he and Bernadette Peters teamed up to dance to the song, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” -- while footage of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers performing the same number from their 1936 movie, Follow the Fleet, fills the screen behind them. Which Martin and Peters copy step-for-step…and then they take over the number themselves. (Risky, too, for Peters, though she was at least a trained Broadway performer.) As well as this trio dance here also from Pennies from Heaven.
If you haven’t seen any of the videos linked to above, check them out. They are seriously impressive.
But I just came across a fourth that falls into this same category, passed along to me by my pal Myles Berkowitz. And it competes with Pennies from Heaven for Steven Martin’s most risky dance – and one of his most impressive. (I leave that choice to others, since it’s so subjective.) That’s when he had a 1981 TV special, Steve Martin’s Best Show Ever and went toe-to-toe (no pun intended) with the great Gregory Hines in a tap-dance number, to the song “Fit as a Fiddle.” For Steve Martin to do it side-by-side with Gregory Hines is just pure guts. But that's something he seems to like challenging himself to take on.
I should add that when Myles sent me the video, it was 90 seconds and seriously dazzling. However, the clip cut off early, so I went to see if there was a full version. And found one. The video quality isn’t as good, but this is the one we’ll go with – that’s because rather than just 90 seconds, it’s the two of them bowling over the audience for four minutes!!! It’s sort of remarkable.
By the way, what's almost as impressive in the dance he and Gregory Hines do -- and which I'm sure most people who watched that at the time totally ignored -- is that after that the first part of that very physical, long, exhausting dance, when they should be out of breath...they then sing. But I shall say no more, and let their feet do the talking
Comments