As the song goes, "it takes two to make a thing go right." Or for something closer to the romanticism of the Fred and Ginger movies, "we two can have a party all alone." No one made falling in and out of love look like quite the party as Fred and Ginger. Even saying their names conjures up images of tap dancing in unison, of him twirling her around in a flowy gown, of the faces of Helen Broderick, Eric Blore, and Edward Everett Horton giving colorful commentary and witty barbs from the sidelines.
They were enjoyable solo but better together. In celebration of one of the screen's best partnerships, I will be looking at all of the films that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared in together. Or, you could say, "I'm puttin' on my top hat/Tyin' up my white tie/Brushin' off my tails."
In fact, Flying Down to Rio has the pair billed fourth and fifth behind star Dolores del Rio and her two romantic suitors. They are the sidekicks here. Astaire (assistant bandleader and accordion player) and Rogers (vocalist) are part of Gene Raymond’s band. Frankly, the major plot is a bit of snooze. No offense to del Rio, who looks positively luminous and glamorous, but Raymond is a bit of a limp noodle. She’s a wealthy heiress who catches the eye of the bandleader while engaged to another man (Raul Roulien). Raymond’s band follows her down to Rio, hence the title, and boy tries to woo girl away from her fiancé.
By the time we get to “The Carioca” the energy it blasts into the film is a welcome respite. Astaire and Rogers start the number off by singing and dancing it together before it evolves into numerous women singing bits and an ever-expanding group of dancers. But things are never more electrifying than when Astaire and Rogers dance forehead-to-forehead and look like they are having the time of their lives while doing it.
Even here in their first pairing that is the magic thing that made them so watchable together. The joy they seemed to experience as individuals and together in performing these extraordinary stunts is quite something. Magnetic, charismatic, and joyous in equal measure, it is no wonder that the Depression Era audiences went wild for them and wanted more. All I wanted was more Fred and Ginger. Although, the musical number featuring showgirls dancing on the wings of airplanes was quite the sight. It is almost enough to overcome how perfunctory the rest of the film is.
If the studio did not have enough faith in them, and by all accounts they did not, then RKO was foolish in historical hindsight. While The Gay Divorcee is not one of my favorite outings from the pair, it is still a uniformly strong one. It was proof-positive that the duo had something magical that could be exploited.
Fred Astaire’s sophistication needs Ginger Rogers’ bluntness, and Rogers’ sexuality needs Astaire’s elegance to balance everything out. He is the weaker actor between the pair, and she is the weaker dancer, but it does not matter when the music kicks in and they takeoff to the races with each other. Whatever individual strengths or weaknesses they had as performers was balanced out with the other and the whole thing becomes a glimpse at cinematic gods engaged in play.
To complain about the central thinness of the plot of a Fred and Ginger movie is a bit foolhardy, but I am about to do it anyway. The romantic twists and turns are perfectly fine, as are the mistaken identities, and then there are the variety of supporting players and one-offs eating up time with comedic bits or musical diversions. Sure, it is cute to watch Betty Grable flirtatiously wiggle out “Let’s K-nock K-nees” but what does it add to the primary plot of The Gay Divorcee? This is where films like Top Hat and Swing Time shine. There is not an ounce of fat on them as they move with precision through their setups and routines.
The Gay Divorcee is second shelf but still a very good time. After all, “The Continental” is an ever-expanding dance routine that eats up nearly 20 minutes of screen time by itself, and it is one of the best sequences in any of their films. Same goes for the romantic interlude of “Night and Day.” The ingredients are all there, but the makers haven’t quite got the recipe right.
The story is yet another little trifle of love triangles, transcontinental locations, and built-in breaks for song-and-dance. It is not that Dunne couldn’t lead a musical successfully, she is beyond charming and radiant in Show Boat, or that she couldn’t do screwball comedy (The Awful Truth, Theodora Goes Wild, My Favorite Wife all say “hello”), but that Roberta has her singing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” like an aria and being the sophisticated lady far too often. Rogers as a phony accented singer makes a bigger impression because she gets to tap into her ebullience, something that Dunne does not get to do here.
Scott, for his part, made a name for himself as a western leading man, and is so ingrained in the genre that seeing him in something contemporaneous and lush can feel like an odd fit. Much like Gary Cooper, he could take “naturalism” to a point where it just became a pastiche of folksy sturdiness and limited vocabulary. Astaire’s spinning around and doing bits of physical comedy wipes him off the screen. We want to spend more time with this guy scheming and clawing to get his band a prime gig. When we finally get to see Astaire’s big solo number, “I Won’t Dance,” it feels like a pressure valve has been released as Astaire’s protestations give way to eruptions of his clean lines and precision-timed tap dancing.
Even better are the scenes where Astaire and Rogers get to play off of each other, whether poking fun at their European artiste personas and reminiscing about the old days or performing together in scenes like “I’ll Be Hard to Handle,” their magic is strong enough to turn the film into Technicolor. “I’ll Be Hard to Handle” has the pair breaking out into giggles while tap dancing before collapsing in chairs in exhaustion only to spring back up to bow to their audience of club servers and custodial workers. The whole thing plays like a meta moment, Astaire and Rogers performing dynamic feats then taking a well-earned bow for their efforts.
The climatic “Lovely to Look At” features a whole fashion show with a quick appearance from a very young Lucille Ball. She would quickly go on to become a contract player at the studio and make bit and featured appearances in the next several Astaire and Rogers films. If you’re wondering why she had bleached blonde hair here, it was because she was working as a Goldwyn Girl where they decided Ball would look best as a blonde.
Why is that you ask? Well, by now their pairings were settling into a formula and they were toplining the films. This provides more room for dissection and analyzing why their pairing worked so well. To put it bluntly, they were a study in contrasts that on paper should not have come off as well as they did.
Top Hat, to wit, it is the purest distillation of a Fred and Ginger movie. What makes Top Hat such a definitive example of the Astaire/Rogers films is how effortless it all appears, how much energy it projects, the strength of the Irving Berlin songs, and a dreamy, tender world unlike any other before or since. Of course, they were also directed by their prominent partner, Mark Sandrich, and their most recognizable sidekicks and second bananas, such as Eric Blore, Helen Broderick, and Edward Everett Horton, all appeared.
Astaire is smooth as glass while dancing; no, he glides, yes, he glides across the screen. His entire body continuing and elongating his fluid movements, typically dressed in a tuxedo, and doing much of his best work solo. This was a through line in all his films. Astaire was a one-man-band who occasionally had a partner who matched his work and sophisticated appeal. He also was not the handsomest song-and-dance man around, looking a little bit bulgy eyed and projecting an air of sexlessness.
Rogers, by contrast, was an earthy pistol, a gum-smacking chorus girl who made good. Her career trajectory during the 30s and 40s was not unlike any of her numerous parts in films like 42nd Street. She was brassy, a competent dancer, but nowhere near the expert technique of Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, or Cyd Charisse. But she was a skilled comedienne, something she still has not received the proper acclaim for, and a strong dramatic actress proving her versatility in a variety of roles. Often within the same calendar year. Yet together they are one of the most romantic, magical pairings in the history of cinema.
Everything here works, including the plot's easygoing machinations. No one goes into a Fred and Ginger film looking for narrative complexity and depth, and this one is smart enough to tackle the situation of mistaken identity with a screwball verve. Outside of her films with Astaire, Rogers was a gifted comedic performer with a way with a wry one-liner, a withering look, and an unflappable demeanor. So many of the heavy-lifting moments are handed to her while Astaire gets the lion’s share of complicated dance routines. They even each other out, he covers for her weaknesses as a dancer, and she makes their romance’s ups and downs believable.
The plot of Top Hat is simple: Fred and Ginger are staying at the same continental hotel, she mistakes him for her friend’s husband, they fall in love, Fred loses Ginger, the confusion gets cleared up, Fred gets Ginger back. Fade to black as they chastely kiss and twirl off to a happily ever after. We stop every so often for a musical number, a comedic interlude, or a bit of dialog that propels the incident of the plot forward. If you keep a keen eye out you can spot Lucille Ball as a flower shop girl early on.
Yet the two most memorable moments in the film are their shared dance routines. “Isn’t This a Lovely Day (to be Caught in the Rain)” communicates a softening of her resolve to him, at first antagonistic to him, as he sings to her back, we can see her quicksilver thoughts and changing emotions. Once they begin to dance, forget it, this is the magical stuff that we go to the movies for. The dancing changes throughout, first with her mocking him, then they engage in a playful duel, before finally working together. Their ebullience is potent. It is the stages of courtship set to a tap-dancing beat.
Greater still is “Cheek to Cheek,” the consummation of their romance. There is no athletic, flirtatious choreography here as in “Isn’t it a Lovely Day,” just a quiet, delicate passionate entanglement between the two. Rogers wears the infamous feathered gown that makes her twirls, bends, and fluid movements seem ever continuing. Her dress provides a visual underline to the movements, culminating in a deep backbend that looks positively dreamy. Out of all the various dance sequences in the Astaire/Rogers films, “Cheek to Cheek” is probably the most famous having appeared in The Purple Rose of Cairo and The Green Mile, to name just two of the major ones.
Top Hat is perfection, the type of escapism that is wholly alluring in its simplistic structure. Much like later day musical sensations like Esther Williams, Doris Day, or Mickey Rooney, all their films follow a basic series of events, types of dances, and supporting players. Sometimes it is nice to escape into a cinematic world where heaven looks an awful lot like two people dancing cheek to cheek.
Like many of these films, Follow the Fleet has a dull plot that merely exists to provide incident between song-and-dance numbers. Randolph Scott and Harriet Nelson make for a cute and diverting subplot while the main one finds Astaire and Rogers as a reunited performing duo who rekindle their latent romantic feelings for each other. It is all wrapped up in a gorgeous Irving Berlin score and some of the best sequences in their collective body of work.
Follow the Fleet also gives us the all too rare sight of a solo Rogers number (“Let Yourself Go”), not only vocally but a tap dance routine while backed by a young Betty Grable. In fact, this one operates more comfortably in Rogers’ Pre-Code sauciness and bawdy humor than it is in the dignified textures of Astaire. Long gone are the Art Deco wonderlands and in their place are rundown dancehalls and kitchenettes. Astaire is completely unconvincing as a sailor and the sight of him chewing gum crassly looks completely disingenuous but it also plays at a meta-textural level. It is if Astaire knows he is play acting this ill-fitting part so who not just go broad strokes with it?
We do get the sight of his solo number (“I’d Rather Lead a Band”) turning into the whole group of seaman tapping in unison with him, which is one for the record books with its tight precision and push-and-pull dynamics. But, of course, we come to these movies for their duets, and this movie has some great ones. They save them both for the end, but they are worth the wait.
“I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket,” which involves a great putdown by Ball to an amorous sailor (“Tell me little boy, did you get a whistle or a baseball bat with that suit?”) in the run-up to the eventual number. This one is the more comedic of the two with Astaire and Rogers essentially doing vaudevillian slapstick as they struggle to keep on beat with each other. But it all is merely prelude to the final number.
“Let’s Face the Music and Dance” is a nearly three-minute-long continuous take which finds Astaire and Rogers flowing elegantly together. She allegedly wore a thirty-five-pound dress to demonstrate the controlled twirling the choreography demanded, but you would not know it from how fluid and easy their movements are. After so much brassiness (films about sailors lend themselves to rowdy behavior, see also Anchors Aweigh and On the Town), we end on something of a minor key, filled with bitter-sweetness and melancholy. This Art Deco heaven sequence was also repurposed in 1981’s Pennies from Heaven as a duet between Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters.
I suppose we should openly discuss that sequence, which occurs late in the film and nearly derails the entire fragile enterprise. “Bonejangles of Harlem” finds Astaire appearing in blackface, the only time this happened during his film career, and engaging in some of the most inventive visual tricks and choreography of his entire body of work. The vision of Astaire done up like this is horrid. The sheer demonstrative skill and cleverness of him dancing alongside three looming silhouettes makes for complicated and conflicted viewing. Such sheer imaginative staging and technical skill given in service of something so dark, ugly, strange, and emotionally complex. It is nearly too much for such a flimsy little bubble as a Fred and Ginger movie.
Having said that, everything up to this point and everything after it remains some of the best and strongest work in their partnership. It helps that Stevens invests the between scenes with some actual emotional heft and the comedy with some oomph. He lets Victor Moore, Eric Blore, and Helen Broderick deliver their various types of comedy from the sidelines, never pulling focus but essentially functioning as a Greek chorus commenting upon or reflecting the central duo’s dynamics.
Swing Time does not immediately deliver what we came to see. No, it makes us wait for them to unite and dance for nearly thirty minutes before giving us what we came to see. The lead up to this sequence finds Astaire’s gambler immediately falling for Rogers’ dance instructor. He pretends to be a pitiful dancer in one of his greatest comedic bits. Watching Astaire pretend to have two left feet is a wondrous feat of physical comedy right before the pair launch into “Pick Yourself Up.”
“Pick Yourself Up” is one of those moments when the duo flips from mere humans to graceful-yet-athletic cinematic gods in one of their greatest fast dances. They twirl and tap across the dance floor but the real feat is the ending of the number. They spin and lift each other over the railing around the dance floor before leaping over the railing and casually walking out the door. The amount of skill, athleticism, and hard work on display here is amazing and they make it all seem so simple.
Following this is “The Way You Look Tonight.” Astaire plays it on the piano in Rogers’ apartment. His casual serenade of this achingly romantic song is splendid, but the film punctures it with a final gag of Astaire turning to find Rogers with shampoo in her hair. She is so lost in the seduction that she has forgotten to rinse it before coming into the living room to watch and listen. Discordant moments like this reoccur throughout Swing Time.
The elegance of Stevens direction makes “A Fine Romance” one of these discordant moments. Out in the snow, Rogers looks positively radiant while complaining about the lack of heat in her courtship with Astaire. They trade verses and he does some light physical comedy, essentially doing an impression of Stan Laurel. Throughout Swing Time, we are threatened with Fred and Ginger busting up instead of winding up together. This is a fine romance? Indeed.
“Waltz in Swing Time” is one of the slow dances between the pair where they wordlessly move through the conflicting feelings separately and together. It is romantic yet tinged with a bittersweet aftertaste. But nowhere near as contradictory as their climatic number, “Never Gonna Dance.” This final scene has the pair coming together, breaking apart, doing solo spins, reuniting, before it ends with Astaire twirling Rogers right out the door and standing alone and dejected. It is simply the apotheosis of their consummate magic and cinematic partnership. Everything after this sequence, both in this film and in their subsequent films togethers, is practically an epilogue.
For a split second we wonder if a Fred and Ginger movie is going to end with the pair not winding up happily ever after, but all is made right in this world. Despite the fact that they were technically involved with other people before the narrative begins, but don’t worry about that as the plots in these things never really matter, we know that they are destined to be together. They do reunite and sing reprises of “A Fine Romance” and “The Way You Look Tonight” with altered lyrics and melodies to make the two songs function as a singular duet. It works.
The reason that Swing Time is so beloved and widely considered one of their best pairings is because by this point, their sixth film together, they knew what worked, what didn’t, how best to utilize their skills both as individuals and as a duo, and went about making an incredibly sturdy vehicle for them. The songs by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields are uniformly witty and good, the Hermes Pan choreography is always great, and it has some truly great comedic bits. It is such a damn shame about that troubling “Bonejangles of Harlem” segment clouding over everything.
Something like the Russian ballet feels too highbrow for the spun sugar delicate world of Fred and Ginger. They are best in parts where they are either recognizably in an approximation of the real world, or in complete glitterati mode where their concerns and bank accounts are fantasies for the rest of us. Shall We Dance finds them caught somewhere in-between those two modes here, and the film feels unsettled as the pair’s courtship is built around forced publicity. Fred and Ginger are flimsy baubles, and this feels too cynical for their world.
Where Shall We Dance excels at though is in its variety of song and dance sequences. From the “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” where they flirt and spar on roller skates to the “Shall We Dance/Finale Coda” where background dancers wear Rogers’ face as a mask in a kind of hallucinatory dream, this is one of the best choreographed films ever, let alone for the duo. “Rehearsal Fragments” displays Astaire performing ballet and tap in a hybrid style that reminds me of how his flailing is still more graceful and elegant than my ability to sit still. The only thing missing is the romantic duet between the stars, which I guess you could argue is what happens during the finale but by that point the central romance has not developed with the naturalness of prior films.
If this was, as originally intended, to be the swan song of their pairing, then they could have done much worse. They had opulent sets, lovely costumes, key supporting players, and one of their strongest songbooks here. The overly convoluted script and stiff portions are a problem, but there is still some magic to be found here. Who else could make falling in roller skates look so tony?
In fact, prior to Carefree, Astaire had negotiated with RKO to move out from under the looming shadow of “Fred and Ginger.” He made A Damsel in Distress with Joan Fontaine, another dramatic actress with hitherto limited dancing skills, and it was a bomb. Turns out that Rogers’ charms and skills as an actress, her intuitive sense that acting and dancing were part of a continuum in their films, was not easy to replicate with another partner. With she lacked in skill in their earliest pairings, she made up for with natural talent and ability that only improved and strengthened as she went on.
For her part, she got solid reviews for the likes of Stage Door, a drama about struggling actresses in a boarding house with Katharine Hepburn, and Vivacious Lady, a romantic comedy with James Stewart. It seemed like the public was warming up to her as a solo entity more so than Astaire, although that would change in the coming decade and his studio switch to MGM. RKO knew they had a winning team by pairing the two of them together, so why not do it again?
Carefree is a bonkers movie. Truly. Astaire plays a psychiatrist who agrees to help his friend (Ralph Bellamy) by taking his fiancée (Rogers) as one of his patients. From there, the plot involves Rogers’ character acting out her subconscious impulses, such as kicking a cop and acting like a wild child in public. There are, of course, numerous song and dance scenes such as “The Yam” and “I Used to Be Color Blind,” and a happily ever after. It is a lot for what is their shortest film, clocking in at about 83 minutes.
What was once elided or briefly glimpsed is made explicit in this film. While other films featured mistaken identities and crisscross romantic pairings, this one openly has Astaire courting Rogers while she is technically engaged to another man. Poor Ralph Bellamy, eternally the cuck in all his screwball/musical comedies. Not only that, but none of their other films ended with the pair walking down the aisle. It truly feels like this was supposed to be their cinematic “goodbye.” One last spin around the dance floor before the party’s over.
At least this has some wonderful dances and the hilarious vision of Rogers aiming a rifle at a bunch of men. “I Used to Be Color Blind” is a dream sequence that finds the pair dancing in slow-motion. Rogers’ gown moves and flows like a sea creature in a way that is both hypnotic and beautiful. The pair hop across lily pads and twirl with all the grace of a music box ballerina. It is truly mesmerizing.
Even better is “The Yam” where the pair start off dancing before encouraging the entire dining hall patrons to join in. Astaire lifts her over the dining tables which are still covered with the usual suspects – candles, glasses, plates of food – and you cannot help but marvel at the ease he lifts and spins her over them. They truly could make the most physically taxing and complicated of maneuvers look like a simple one-two step as they transitioned from regular people to cinematic gods through dance.
For his part, Astaire expressed disappointment with the film for failing to capture the joie de vivre of the era it depicts. Indeed, the film presents a Code friendly version of its historical milieu. For her part, Irene Castle had in her contract approval over the screenplay and costumes, and when she tried to exercise her contractual rights, the studio simply gave her more money to shut up and go away. Well, at least someone involved in the production of this was passionate about getting it made.
Astaire was tired of his partnership with Rogers which was pigeonholing him once more like his stage partnership with his sister did, and asked that someone else be cast in the part. Meanwhile, Rogers was able to enjoy a varied and diverse film career when not meeting back up with Astaire for another song-and-dance exercise. By this point, she was treating these films as mere movie star vehicles – more concerned with pumping out glamorous images of herself and fashionable looks than investing in the acting required for the part. A general sense of staleness had settled in.
It does not help that Vernon and Irene Castle is just another ho-hum biopic about a great artist, or two in this case, from a begone era. Heavily sanitized, fast-and-loose with the historical record, this merely exists to get Fred and Ginger together yet again. I suppose there are worse reasons for making a movie, especially in the 1930s.
At least the various dance sequences are uniformly good. Given the nature of the film’s subject matter, there are also a lot of them, and I do mean a lot. At times, this is just a threadbare plot that pauses long enough to get the duo spinning around once more. Think of it as a Fred and Ginger revue. The sheer variety of them is impressive – tango, ballroom, tap, just to name a few – as is the consummate skill and ease which they continue to deliver them. Madonna was right: they really did dance on air.
And that seemed like a wrap for the pair. By the 1940s, Astaire had moved on to MGM where he got the solo career he longed for. Astaire went on to appear in such minor classics and enjoyable films such as You Were Never Lovelier, Easter Parade, Ziegfeld Follies, and Yolanda and the Thief during this time. His greatest films as a leading man would not appear until the 1950s (The Band Wagon, Funny Face, Royal Wedding).
For her part, Rogers had a remarkably solid run in the 1940s. She would go to appear in highly enjoyable films during this period like The Major and the Minor, Roxie Hart, and I'll Be Seeing You. These films contain some of the best and most varied work of her career, especially the too little seen Roxie Hart which displays her crassest, darkest performance as a merry murderess dreaming of infamy while dancing all over social propriety and the Constitution. No one was anticipating a reunion for the duo given the circumstances.
It had been ten years since their last film, and there were rumors that their working relationship was closely related to the one depicted in this one. The truth of the matter was probably too complicated for us to boil down to a few sentences. She wanted and tried to escape the song-and-dance routine with deeper dramatic parts and won an Oscar for her efforts with 1940’s Kitty Foyle. She won over some incredible competition: Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story), Joan Fontaine (Rebecca), Bette Davis (The Letter). While I might not have voted for her that year (Fontaine in Rebecca is enticing), I have seen her work in that film and she is tender, heartbreaking, poignant, and always finds the dignity and strength in this working girl.
Astaire was infamously hesitant to even partner up with Rogers in the first place but was smart enough to see it as a chance to get his foot in the door and go from there. I am sure they had they had their share of creative fights. I mean, he asked her to trust him enough to carry her from a desk to a chair with no safety net between. Would she have presented him with his Honorary Oscar if they hated each other? Maybe, but I doubt she would have readily rejoined him during a decade that saw some of her most acclaimed work up to that point, including Roxie Hart and The Major and the Minor, if there was truly any bad blood.
Why am I spending so much time exploring the behind-the-scenes drama of this movie? Because it is possibly more interesting than the movie itself.
Their one pairing outside of the Depression, The Barkleys of Broadway substitutes the breezy formulas for MGM’s mechanics. Frankly, I miss the dizzy lovesick heights of the RKO years and would gladly trade the glossy banalities found here for it. The Barkleys are a squabbling theatrical duo that breaks up before they inevitably reunite and twirl off to happily ever after. It takes nearly two hours to tell this story.
There is a noticeable lack of laughs for Astaire and Rogers to play, but there is plenty of room for Oscar Levant to mug for the camera and deliver sardonic barbs. While Astaire had already managed to acclimate himself to MGM’s gloss and glamour, frankly, he seemed to the studio born, Rogers feels a bit too saucy and working class for it. She built her name and reputation playing recognizably real female characters that worked low-income jobs and were not perpetually draped in furs.
There is a tremendous amount of room to play the whole scenario for a farce, but the script keeps things too straight. Which is a damn shame when you have two excellent comic actors at your disposal, but their chemistry has not dimmed in the intervening years which ends up balancing things out a bit. Same goes for the overall feeling that this is somehow the most fitting of goodbyes in the final scenes knowing that this would be the last time they worked together.
The Barkleys of Broadway ends their union with a bit of an anticlimactic bang, but it is still Astaire and Rogers doing their thing. There is a greater satire poking through here and there that never fully materializes, but seeing Fred and Ginger do one last spin together is at least something of value.
Inevitably when we meet them, and in any scenes that are not them dancing and singing together, they are merely Fred and Ginger, ordinary folks about to embark a little romantic comedy adventure. Once the music swells and they start swaying to the music, they become Astaire and Rogers, untouchable, perfect cinematic titans gliding across the celluloid. Even in their thinnest star vehicles they managed to spin magic out of very little.
Whether you watch their masterpieces, Top Hat and Swing
Time, or some of their enjoyable second-tier films (Follow the Fleet, Shall We
Dance, The Gay Divorcee, and Carefree), or even watching specific sequences on
YouTube, their magic still comes through loud and clear. Yes, she did
everything he did backwards and in heels, but what you notice the most is their
mutual trust in each other. Two stars shining brightly in the dark as we bask
in their warm glow. That’s the magic of the movies right there.
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