Come and listen to my story 'bout a hoofer named Buddy...
January 8, 2015 8:28 AM   Subscribe

Before he was folksy detective Barnaby Jones, before he was folksy hillbilly-millionaire Jed Clampett, before he was folksy hubby Doc Golightly, and before he was folksy frontiersman George Russell (Davy Crocket's sidekick), Buddy Ebsen sang and danced his way to stardom. Yeah, he was folksy back then too, even in white tie and tails. His original dance partner was his sister Vilma...

But during his film career he went toe-to-toe with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including:

Shirley Temple

Judy Garland

Joan Davis

Eleanor Powell and Jimmy Stewart

Eleanor Powell and George Murphy

And, if not for disastrous aluminum makeup, he'd have been the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz."
posted by Longtime Listener (11 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ebsen's Wizard of Oz fiasco is one of the better "What might have been" stories.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:49 AM on January 8, 2015


Buddy Ebsen's dancing provided the motion capture that made Walt Disney's first human audio-animatronic figures possible.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:53 AM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


I happened to pick up Buddy's "Buddy Ebsen Says Howdy" album several years back. It's actually pretty great.
posted by downtohisturtles at 9:00 AM on January 8, 2015


The Shirley Temple number is actually pretty charming.
posted by Quasirandom at 9:06 AM on January 8, 2015


Oh wow. That's the source for the song "Sing Before Breakfast."

I'd only ever heard it before on the album of the same name, which is full of great "forgotten" songs of that era.

Based on the Amazon link, it appear to be no longer in circulation, which is too bad.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:10 AM on January 8, 2015




Here's Buddy dancing with Yvonne King in the 1942 film Dance Your Worries Away, accompanied by the King Sisters and the Alvino Rey Orchestra.

Yvonne King was one of the King Sisters, a member of the King Family, sister-in-law to Alvino Rey and hmm . . . great-auntie to Win and Will Butler of The Arcade Fire.

More.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:30 AM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


He's all knees and shoulders, gangly embodied. Makes him seem like a beatnik avant la letter. Shaggy in tap-dancing form.
posted by Diablevert at 9:55 AM on January 8, 2015 [2 favorites]


Tap dancing seems to be the only form of dance where a gangly, goofy guy can flourish.

Also, I forgot how tiny Shirley Temple was. I wonder if any of her grownup co-dancers ever accidently stepped on her? I could see that being a hazard.
posted by bibliowench at 10:59 AM on January 8, 2015


I look at young Buddy Ebsen in that Eleanor Powell and Jimmy Stewart link above and all I see is David Letterman. I've always thought that Dave was Buddy's secret son.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 2:10 PM on January 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


If anyone here knows a lot about Buddy Ebsen's dancing, maybe have a look at this cold case in AskMe... http://ask.metafilter.com/250108/Looking-for-an-amazingly-campy-dance-sequence-from-an-old-movie
posted by bink at 9:06 PM on January 8, 2015


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