MovieChat Forums > Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) Discussion > Mistake at the end of the barn dance...

Mistake at the end of the barn dance...


I just noticed this recently,which is a bit surprising,as I've seen this movie several times over the years. We all know the couplings in the movie are as follows-Adam/Milly,Benjamin/Dorcas,Caleb/Ruth,Daniel/Martha,Ephraim/Liza,Frank/Sarah,and Gideon/Alice. At the end of the sequence,when the girls end the dance by jumping into the arms of the brothers,all of the couples are paired correctly,except Ephraim/Liza-Frank/Sarah,when it ends the pairings are Ehpraim/Sarah and Frank/Liza...Not that we'll really ever know,but I wonder why it was filmed that way? A few theories-maybe the original script had the pairings of E&S and F&L,and it was changed during filming,maybe it was a mistake that wasn't noticed until editing,and they figured it wasn't enough of an error to bother re-filming,or maybe they thought that Tommy Rall(Frank) and Virginia Gibson(Liza) were two of their strongest dancers,so they paired them together for the number.Again,we'll never know for sure,but it's fun to discuss. :)

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IIRC the boys changed partners several times during the dance; I'm not sure why. Maybe they were so focused on competing with the town boys that the grabbed whatever girl was available at any given moment. I loved the movie, but I thought that a lot of the pairings were pretty arbitrary. Gideon and Alice were an obvious couple, b/c they were both so young and innocent, and I think Benjamin and Dorcas were more mature and "worldly" than the others, so I can see why they were paired together, but I thought the others were more interchangeable.

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