Mick Hartley

Well, this is a bit of fun dancing for a bright spring morning. Hal and Honey Abbott, to Woody Herman and His Orchestra, from 1938:

It's noticeable how determinedly unsexy this is. These are basically kids dancing, showing off…and doing it fantastically well, of course. Those back kicks that the girl does, they're like the kind of flicks that tango dancers do, but – what a difference! The erotic battle of the tango between two mature sexually alert adults, compared to this playground messing around. There's even that moment just past the minute mark when it looks as though he's about to put his hands on her breasts, and pulls away in mock horror. None of that kind of thing here, please!

Which isn't to say I don't like it. I think they're fabulous.

No doubt there's a whole thesis there about (white) American attitudes to sex. Looking at some other Woody Herman clips you get the same feeling. Here's Eleanor Powell from the film "Sensations of 1945". She's got all the gear: slit skirt, garter on thigh which she spends time adjusting, and a fine boogie-woogie backing, and of course she can dance, and yet….she's somehow too wholesome, too girl-next-door, to be sensual. That dame with the gun on the balcony doesn't seem too much of a fan either.

Now this is how you dance to the boogie-woogie.