Royal Wedding (1951)

Early Stanley Donen directed work, 'Royal Wedding' is a lavishly colored musical set around the 1947 wedding of the current Queen Elizabeth. As was common for the whole genera at the time the plot is very lose, basically there as something to string together the musical numbers, some of which including the dancing on the ceiling bit (which Donen would later return to when directing a Lionel Richie music video in 1986), the dance on the ship rocking at sea, and even the simple Fred Astaire dancing with a hat rack number are memorably staged. The movie borrows a bit from Astaire's earlier career dancing with his sister Adele on stage, though brother/sister dancing duos are inherently kind of creepy this is mitigated some what by recasting his sister, in large part to make her decades younger, Jane Powell is a pretty darn good dancer and really cute. Powell is romanced by future Kennedy brother-in-law Peter Lawford, Sarah (daughter of Winston) Churchill is Astaire's love interest and Keenan Wynn plays Astaire and Powell's agent. You really don't have to pay close attention when watching this, it's the kind of thing that would make for great video wallpaper. A co-worker of mine from nearly 20 years ago had encouraged me to see this, finally got to it. ***