Russ Tamblyn's Dance Moves still Astonish almost 70 Years Later

 

Sometimes, you just have to sit back, chin down and mouth open, while you watch somebody do something that the vast  majority of humanity could never do even if given a hundred years in which to try.  So it is with Russ Tamblyn's dancing.  Tamblyn's star rose in the 1950s with performances in blockbusters such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and West Side Story - although he has always seen himself as an actor who danced rather than the other way around.  True enough - I have vivid memories of watching him in The Long Ships  - one of Hollywood's many forays into viking myth - and loving his performance in that film.

This clip, however, shows Tamblyn's moves off to perfection.  It is from his 1956 movie The Fastest Gun in the West.  He does almost everything with them except use them as shovels!  His energy is seemingly unlimited, his joie de vivre contagious.  Little wonder that some people of a certain age say they don't make them like they used to!  That applies as equally to Tamblyn as to his dance moves.