A tribute to the dancing ladies: "Dancing Queen" - performed by ABBAwith clips of "Dancing Lady" (1933) - with Joan Crawford and "Blansky's Beauties"(1977) - with Caren Kaye & Nancy Walker
Joan Crawford:
Joan Crawford (March 23, c. 1904–1908 – May 10, 1977) was an American actress. Starting as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford began a campaign of self-publicity and became nationally known as a flapper by the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These "rags-to-riches" stories were well received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money and by the end of the 1930s she was labeled "box office poison".
Caren Kaye:
Caren Kaye (born March 12, 1951) is a retired American television and film actress who has appeared in dozens of films and guest-starred in many TV series. She attended Carnegie Mellon University and holds a Ph.D. in psychology. She is best known for her roles in the 1983 film My Tutor and the short-lived sitcoms The Betty White Show (1977-1978), Who's Watching the Kids? (1978), and It's Your Move (1984-1985).
Nancy Walker:
Nancy Walker (May 10, 1922 – March 25, 1992) was an American actress and comedian of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director (such as of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on which she also made several guest appearances). During her five-decade-long career, she may be best remembered for her long-running roles as Mildred on McMillan & Wife and Ida Morgenstern, who first appeared on several episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later became a prominent recurring character on the spinoff series Rhoda.
Dancing Queen:
"Dancing Queen" is a Europop song by the Swedish group ABBA, released as the lead single from their fourth studio album, Arrival. It was written by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson. Andersson and Ulvaeus also produced the song. "Dancing Queen" was released as a single in Sweden on 15 August 1976, followed by a UK release and the rest of Europe a few days later. It was a worldwide hit. It became ABBA's only number one hit in the United States, and topped the charts in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany and Rhodesia. "Dancing Queen" also reached the top five in many other countries.
Dancing Lady:
Dancing Lady is a 1933 American pre-Code musical film starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, and featuring Franchot Tone, Fred Astaire, Robert Benchley, and Ted Healy and His Stooges (who later became The Three Stooges with Curly, Moe and Larry). The picture was directed by Robert Z. Leonard, produced by John W. Considine Jr. and David O. Selznick, and was based on the novel of the same name by James Warner Bellah, published the previous year. The movie had a hit song in "Everything I Have Is Yours" by Burton Lane and Harold Adamson.
Blansky's Beauties:
Blansky's Beauties is an American sitcom television series and ostensible spin-off of Happy Days that aired on ABC from February 12 to June 27, 1977. The main character of the series was introduced on an episode of Happy Days, then set in the early 1960s, but the show is set in the present-day of 1977. The series was a ratings flop and was cancelled after only 13 episodes.
