The Band Wagon is a 1953 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Vincente Minnelli, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.

Some of the songs in the film had been created for the original 1931 Broadway musical by Schwartz and Dietz, also titled The Band Wagon, with a book by George S. Kaufman and starring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele.

Astaire's early number in the film, "A Shine on Your Shoes", was written for a 1932 Broadway revue with music and lyrics by Dietz and Schwartz titled Flying Colors.

In the film version of The Band Wagon, the song was reworked as a specialty number by jazz arranger Skip Martin to showcase all of Astaire's musical talents.

However, he is greeted enthusiastically by his good friends Lester and Lily Marton, and they tell him they have written a stage show, a light musical comedy, that will be a perfect comeback for Tony.

Jeffrey does succeed in arranging for the beautiful and talented ballerina Gabrielle "Gaby" Gerard to join the production, along with Paul Byrd, who is her boyfriend, choreographer, and manager—even though he always insisted that a musical play would be beneath her.

Uncredited Source:[5] One musical number shot for the film, but dropped from the final release, was a seductive dance routine featuring Charisse performing "Two-Faced Woman".

[1] In a 1999 Guardian article about the importance of the film, Derek Desmond wrote: "But the whole point about The Band Wagon, and one which sometimes makes people underrate it, was the way everything seems to mesh so seamlessly—almost effortlessly, in fact.

[13] A musical stage adaptation, titled Dancing in the Dark, ran at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego from March 4 to April 20, 2008, with plans to bring the show to Broadway.

The cast included Patrick Page as the "deliciously pretentious" director-actor-producer Jeffrey Cordova, Mara Davi playing Gabrielle Gerard, and Scott Bakula as "song-and-dance man" Tony Hunter.

[14][15][16][17] In the Variety review of the musical, Bob Verini wrote: "There's no reason this reconstituted Band Wagon can't soar once it jettisons its extraneous and self-contradictory elements.

The cast starred Brian Stokes Mitchell, Tracey Ullman, Michael McKean, Tony Sheldon, and Laura Osnes, with direction and choreography by Kathleen Marshall.