The Continental is a song written by Con Conrad with Lyrics by Herb Magidson for the 1934 Movie “The Gay Divorcee” starring the little known, oops sorry make that big stars, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Their dance in the Movie can be found here for comparison’s sake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjv6nmF7wdk The Song won the very first Best Original Song Oscar to be awarded. The Stage Show on which the Movie was based had many more Cole Porter songs but lots of these were cut from the Movie and due to the censorship of the time the title was changed from Gay Divorce to Gay Divorcee as it was felt that a happy divorce was not to be condoned. Interesting that the “Gay” thing completely escaped them. Actually the couple was heterosexual I believe and the term still largely had its original meaning back then. Anyway Maureen McGovern’s cover version did fairly well too and the lady herself made something of a career of disaster film themes singing the theme for the Poseidon Adventure and one of the songs in the Towering Inferno (how many were there I hear you ask). One of her other claims to fame was a cameo role in the comedy Airplane as a singing nun (also heterosexual although this didn’t matter to the plot or to this review really)
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THE CONTINENTAL - Maureen McGovern June 10th 1976
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DANCERS: Phil, Lulu
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LINK:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26amj9_ruby-flipper-the-continental-totp-tx-10-06-1976_creation _______________________________________________________________________________________________
This is a very appealing Dance starting with Phil pouring a seriously under-age Lulu way more bubbly than he gives himself but resulting in a smooth and graceful performance by both dancers. Phil proves to be a really fine dancer and very light on his feet here and Lulu is as sweet as can be and holds up her end of the bargain extremely well. They really look every bit as good as Fred and Ginger to me and that would be high praise if only my opinion carried any weight at all. Of course there’s no DotD here as I'm disabling this feature for duets (although I think Phil would take it honestly) but I do like this performance very much and would award
9/10 and for once Edmonds’ posh voice was just right for the piece. Please do tell me what you think friends
Some Dancers who gave a good time, broke all the rules, played all the fools, yeah yeah yeah they blew our minds