If this documentary short was otherwise dull and a dud, it would be worth watching just for one thing. It shows and tells how MGM filmed the legendary dance routine of Fred Astaire dancing on the walls and ceiling of a room. Stanley Donen who directed "Royal Wedding" said they built the room in a wheel. So, the room would revolve, but the camera was outside of it, screwed to the floor and filming as they would turn the room from floor to one wall and stop, then again for the ceiling and stop. He said Fred Astaire then had to practice how he would dance from the floor to the wall as it came under. What he didn't say was that they had to then cut and edit the portions of the film to have Fred sideways when dancing on the wall, and upside down on the ceiling. A model with the room mockup shows how this was done.
Donen says it took a couple of weeks to rehearse that scene and an hour and a half to film it. And, while that's fascinating, there's more good information with interviews in this documentary short that was made in 2007 to go with the DVD release of the film. "Royal Wedding: June, Judy and Jane" was probably a good pitch to entire people to watch this video, and it does have the interesting details about the different female leads cast. There was actually one more planned - Vera Allen was the original intended female lead, but she went by the wayside before casting
Other information is about the writer Alan Jay Lerner and producer Arthur Freed, and how they met Two ideas sort of came together with the plot. The first was basing it loosely on Fred Astaire's real life in his early years when he got started dancing with his sister, Adele. They were a well-known and popular act. But she broke the team up when she met and married into the English nobility. So, the second aspect was the real 1947 marriage in November of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The plot has Astaire and Jane Powell, Tom and Ellen Bowen, winding up in London around the time of the royal wedding, and then both of them falling in love and marrying at the end. The film includes actual film footage of the Royal wedding form 1947. MGM paid a hefty price to use that from the British producers of that documentary.
All of this and more is covered very well in interviews and snippets with several people. Among them are three authors and historians - Richard Barrio, Miles Kreuger, and John Fricke. June Allyson and Jane Powell interviews are interesting. The only other live interviews are by Stanley Donen and writer Burton Lane. Some of those interviews were filmed years earlier and included in this short documentary. Maurice LaMarche narrates and film clips of movies, cast, crew and production include a couple dozen people.
Some of the interviews had interesting backgrounds and experiences. Sarah Churchill, who plays Anne Ashmond opposite Fred, was the actress daughter of Winston Churchill. Composer Burton Lane that he had been a fan of Fred and Adele Astaire and had seen them when he was young. "Their dancing was absolutely the best," he says. This film has an aerial view of MGM's Back Lot Two that shows the extensive array of different outdoor street sets. Jane Powell says, "It was like gong to a different country every time you went there." She says, "It was a magical time - it really was."
For background information and interesting insight on the great special effects MGM achieved with its feature film, this documentary is a couple of heads above the usual such shorts. When Fred Astaire told the producer about an experience he and Adele had on a ship crossing of the Atlantic to England, the studio put that scene in the film. It's another fantastic special effect that resembled the real experience. So, Fred and Jane and some furnishings slide back and forth as they dance and the stage imitates a ship's ups and downs during rough seas.
