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Honestly, most people who think they know Fred Astaire have never even heard of the 1945 musical Yolanda and the Thief. It's this weird, Technicolor fever dream that basically ended a career, cost MGM a small fortune, and left audiences in the 40s scratching their heads. You’ve probably seen Top Hat or The Band Wagon, but this thing? It’s on a completely different planet.
It was a total disaster at the box office. We're talking a $1.5 million loss when a million bucks actually meant something. But if you look past the "flop" label, you’ll find one of the most visually insane movies ever made. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it’s basically what happens when a studio gives a visionary director a blank check and he decides to turn a movie into a surrealist painting.
The Plot is... Well, It's Something
The story is kind of skeevy if you think about it too hard. Fred Astaire plays Johnny Riggs, a con man hiding out in a fictional South American country called Patria. He crosses paths with Yolanda Aquaviva (Lucille Bremer), a naive heiress who just left a convent.
She’s so sheltered she actually prays for a guardian angel to help her manage her money. Johnny overhears this and—because he’s a lowlife—decides to pretend he's that angel. He literally tries to gaslight a girl into giving him her inheritance by pretending to be a celestial being.
It’s dark. It's weirdly cynical for a mid-40s musical. Usually, Fred is the charming guy-next-door, but here he’s playing a mercenary. Even the critics at the time, like the folks over at The New York Times, found the premise a bit hard to swallow.
Why the Dream Ballet is Total Madness
If there is one reason to watch Yolanda and the Thief, it’s the sixteen-minute dream ballet. This was way before An American in Paris made long dance sequences cool.
Minnelli went full Salvador Dalí here.
There are guys with three arms. There are women wrapped in enough veils to cover a small house. At one point, Yolanda rises out of a pond like some sort of swamp ghost, and the landscape looks like a desert from a fever dream. It’s supposed to represent Johnny’s internal struggle—his greed versus his growing feelings for Yolanda—but mostly it just looks like the art department was doing some very 1940s version of LSD.
- The Colors: Minnelli used "crude prism colors" inspired by children's books (specifically Ludwig Bemelmans, the guy who created Madeline).
- The Costumes: Saffron yellows, deep browns, and weird mauves that shouldn't work together but somehow do.
- The Movement: It’s not just "tap dancing." It’s expressive, moody, and honestly a bit unsettling.
The Lucille Bremer Problem
Let's be real: Lucille Bremer was supposed to be the next big thing. MGM producer Arthur Freed was obsessed with making her a star. He put her in Meet Me in St. Louis and then shoved her into this lead role next to Astaire.
She was a fantastic dancer. Her footwork in the "Coffee Time" number—which is arguably the best non-dream part of the movie—is incredible. But as an actress? Critics were brutal. They called her "frosty" and "too old" (even though she was only 28). The public just didn't connect with her, and after Yolanda and the Thief tanked, her career never really recovered. It’s a bit of a tragedy because, in the right light, she’s mesmerizing.
A Guardian Angel Named Mr. Candle?
The movie takes a hard turn into the supernatural when a guy named Mr. Candle (Leon Ames) shows up. Throughout the film, you think he’s just another con man or a nosy bystander.
Then things get spooky. He flips a coin that magically turns itself over. He causes a bridge to collapse to keep the train from leaving. It turns out he's the actual guardian angel.
It’s this weird mix of a gritty con-man story and a literal religious fantasy. This "mishmash," as some historians call it, is exactly why people stayed away in droves. Was it a romance? A heist movie? A religious allegory? It couldn't decide.
The Legacy of a "Failed" Experiment
Despite losing $1.5 million, the DNA of Yolanda and the Thief is all over the later, more successful MGM musicals.
You can’t get the "Broadway Melody" sequence in Singin' in the Rain without this movie failing first. It was a laboratory for Technicolor. It proved that you could use dance to tell a psychological story, even if the audience wasn't quite ready for it in 1945.
If you're a film student or just someone who loves weird cinema, you have to track this down. It’s currently available through the Warner Archive, and seeing it in a restored high-definition format is a trip. The colors alone will make your eyes bleed in the best way possible.
How to Experience Yolanda and the Thief Today
Don't go into this expecting a lighthearted Fred Astaire romp. You'll be disappointed. Instead, treat it like an avant-garde art film that happened to have a massive studio budget.
- Watch the "Coffee Time" sequence first. It’s a rhythmic, jazzy masterpiece that feels totally separate from the rest of the movie's sluggish pace.
- Pay attention to the production design. Look at the floors. The patterns are insane. Cedric Gibbons and Jack Martin Smith basically built a surrealist wonderland on a soundstage.
- Check out the "Dream Ballet" on a big screen if possible. The scale of the set pieces is something you just don't see anymore.
If you want to understand the history of Hollywood, you have to look at the failures. Sometimes the failures are more interesting than the hits. Yolanda and the Thief is definitely more interesting than Easter Parade. It’s a beautiful, broken, shimmering mess of a movie that reminds us that even the "Golden Age" of Hollywood wasn't afraid to get absolutely weird.
To truly appreciate the visual language of this era, compare the "Coffee Time" sequence with Astaire’s later work in The Band Wagon. You’ll notice how Minnelli refined the use of color and space that he first experimented with here. If you’re a collector, the Warner Archive Blu-ray is the only way to go, as it preserves the original Technicolor saturation that 1940s audiences found so overwhelming.
