Daddy Long Legs (1955 film)
| Daddy Long Legs | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Jean Negulesco |
| Produced by | Samuel G. Engel |
| Written by |
Henry Ephron Phoebe Ephron |
| Based on |
Daddy-Long-Legs 1912 novel 1914 play by Jean Webster |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Alex North (ballet music) |
| Cinematography | Leon Shamroy |
| Edited by | William H. Reynolds |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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May 5, 1955 |
|
Running time
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126 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.6 million |
| Box office | $2.5 million (US rentals) |
Daddy Long Legs (1955) is a Hollywood musical comedy film set in France, New York City, and the fictional college town of Walston, 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.
Daddy Long Legs was Fred Astaire's only movie musical at 20th Century-Fox. It was also the only time he co-starred with Leslie Caron (who, at the time, was still under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but was lent to Fox for this production). The film 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. A devastated 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 ), 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. Like The Band Wagon, Daddy Long Legs did only moderately well at the box office.
Wealthy American Jervis Pendleton III (Fred Astaire) has a chance encounter at a French orphanage with a cheerful 18-year-old resident, Julie Andre (Leslie Caron). He anonymously pays for her education at a New England college. She writes letters to her mysterious benefactor regularly, but he never writes back. Her nickname for him, "Daddy Long Legs", is taken from the description of him given to Andre by some of her fellow orphans who see his shadow as he leaves their building.
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