Daddy Long Legs (1955 Film)
Daddy Long Legs (1955) is a Hollywood musical comedy film set in France, New York City, and the fictional college town of "Walston" in Massachusetts. The film was directed by Jean Negulesco, and stars Fred Astaire, Leslie Caron, Terry Moore, Fred Clark, and Thelma Ritter, with music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The screenplay was written by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron, loosely based on the 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster.
It was one of Astaire's personal favorites, largely due to the script which, for once, directly addresses the complications inherent in a love affair between a young woman and a man thirty years her senior. However, the making of it was marred by his wife's death from lung cancer. Deeply traumatized, Astaire offered to pay the production expenses already incurred in order to quit the project, but then changed his mind.
This was the first of three consecutive Astaire films set in France or with a French theme (the others being Funny Face and Silk Stockings), following the fashion for French-themed musicals established by ardent Francophile Gene Kelly with An American in Paris (1951), which also featured Kelly's protégée Caron.
Read more about Daddy Long Legs (1955 Film): Plot Summary, Key Songs/dance Routines, Award Nominations
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and daddy was there,
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like a field or a shawl.”
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“But I am here,
And they are far, and time is old.
Within my dream the grass is cold;
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—Mark Van Doren (1894–1973)