The Dancing Cavalier
- Eloi Honorable Mention
- by Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown, and Kathy Selden, directed by Roscoe Dexter
- Feature Film
- Fantasy, Music and Musicals
- Adults
- Debatable Time Travel
- English
- The Dancing Cavalier by Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown, and Kathy Selden, directed by Roscoe Dexter (premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California early May 1928).
Of course, this early talkie shouldn't be in our list because the writer himself—as Cosmo Brown—says it’s all just a dream, but when one of our correspondents pointed out that none other than Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont starred in The Dancing Cavalier (née The Dueling Cavalier), we couldn’t resist. Note: Lina Lamont’s voice was dubbed over by writer Kathy Selden, but due to Lamont’s underhanded ploys, Selden went uncredited in the original release.
—Dora Bailey
How’s this? We throw a modern section into the picture. The hero’s a young hoofer in a Broadway show, right? Now he sings and he dances, right? But one night backstage, he’s reading A Tale of Two Cities, in between numbers, see? And a sandbag falls and hits him on the head, and he dreams he’s back during the French Revolution, right? Well, this way we get in the modern dancing numbers—♫Charleston, Charleston♫—but in the dream part, we can still use the costume stuff!
Tags
(5)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1700 to 1799: during the French Revolution
- Circa AD 1900 to 1929
- Time Travel Methods
- Possible Dream, Hallucination, et al.
- Timeslips: Cosmo initially says that it’s a dream, but we are still holding out hope that it’s a timeslip from the bump on the head.
- Real-World Tags
Variants
(2)
- The Dancing Cavalier by Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown, and Kathy Selden, directed by Roscoe Dexter (premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California early May 1928).
- working title.
The Dueling Cavalier by Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown, and Kathy Selden, directed by Roscoe Dexter.
Betty Comden (other contribution)
Adolph Green (other contribution)
Stanley Donen (other contribution)
Gene Kelly (other contribution)
Betty Comden (other contribution)
Adolph Green (other contribution)
Stanley Donen (other contribution)
Gene Kelly (other contribution)
Indexer Notes
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- Credits—If you haven’t seen Singin’ in the Rain, by all means get thee to a theater and do so now, so you can meet Don Lockwood, Cosmo Brown, Kathy Seldon, and Rosco Dexter who created The Dancing Cavalier. We also record the original writers (Betty Comden and Adolph Green) and directors (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly) of Singin’ in the Rain as hidden creators of The Dancing Cavalier.
- Release—According to Singin’ in the Rain, production of The Dueling Cavalier was underway during the October 1927 release of The Jazz Singer, and it had a disasterous preview on March 23 (presumably of 1928). At that point, they had just six weeks to finish the film, so we’ve marked the release date of The Dancing Cavalier as being in early May 1928 (which also matches https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/JustForFun/TheDancingCavalier]TV Tropes’ note that this is a 1928 film).