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it’s really disorienting in terms of ‘film space,’” says Freed Unit scholar Matthew Tinkcom:
    You’re moving through all of these different kinds of dream-like layers and smoke and camera movement. As you’re watching, there comes a moment when you say to yourself, “I’m not in any kind of space of realism . . .” because in that sequence, we’re moving through psychological space. We’re into a landscape of the mind and fantasy and desire. What’s amazing about it is that it’s very atypical of Hollywood continuity. The thought about continuity was always “Do not disorient the spectator . . .” but here it’s done in a really powerful way. It’s about the Astaire character’s shock and grief over the loss of his own fantasy and being forced to leave the realm of the fantastic. . . . It’s really the same thing with Minnelli, who always wants to get back into the mental landscape because that’s so much richer and more interesting. 3
    Although Norman Taurog or Robert Z. Leonard could have directed these Follies episodes in a more than capable manner, Minnelli managed to invest even the most stylistically fixated material with an unusual power and an undercurrent of emotionality that other directors on the studio payroll wouldn’t have considered. In other hands, Astaire and Bremer’s unrequited romance in old Chinatown would have been tossed off as cutesy pastiche, whereas Vincente takes his fantasy very seriously. Or as William Fadiman once observed, Minnelli “was a man who could honestly believe in make-believe.” 4
    “Limehouse Blues” introduced a theme that would resurface time and again in Minnelli’s movies. A protagonist in search of romance, a more
adventurous way of life, or an authentic self must go within in order to find it. While the outside world will inevitably disappoint, the inner world will uplift, heal, and complete.

    George Murphy, Minnelli, Fred Astaire, Arthur Freed, and Lucille Bremer welcome gossip columnist Louella Parsons to the set of Ziegfeld Follies . Astaire and Bremer are in costume for the extraordinary “Limehouse Blues” sequence. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST
    Fred Astaire had performed “The Babbit and the Bromide” on Broadway, but for the version of the number included in Ziegfeld Follies , he was paired with Metro’s other dancing virtuoso, Gene Kelly. “They were completely different,” Minnelli would say of his two stars. “Fred Astaire is very elegant, high up in the air. . . . Gene is very athletic and down-to-earth. . . . In Ziegfeld Follies , when they worked together, we thought they’d never finish, because they would upstage each other. One would say, ‘Well, now, suppose we try this step. . . .’ They Alphonse’d and Gaston’ed each step because they had so much respect for each other.” 5 “The Babbit and the Bromide” serves as something of an extended “Coming Attraction,” as later in his career, Vincente would bounce back and forth between Astaire and Kelly vehicles.

    At one point, Judy Garland had been scheduled for “The Babbit and the Bromide,” along with virtually every other Follies sequence. “I Love You More in Technicolor Than I Did in Black and White” was to have reunited Garland with her frequent costar Mickey Rooney. When Rooney was drafted into the army, the sketch was shelved, and his reteaming with Garland would have to wait until 1948’s Words and Music . Judy ultimately ended up in a dynamite Follies sequence—one that had been cast aside by another star. The Freed Unit’s wunderkinds, Kay Thompson and Roger Edens, had conceived “The Great Lady Has an Interview” as a sort of self-parody for Greer Garson. The devastatingly witty number would offer Metro’s Oscar-winning grand dame an opportunity to let her hair down and spoof her own noble image.
    The irresistible sketch concerns a self-adoring star who comes complete with a butler named Fribbins and a prominently displayed portrait depicting