Vivacious Lady (1938)

Some reasons I love this movie:

1. When Professor Peter Morgan (Jimmy Stewart) falls in love at first sight with night club singer/dancer Francey (Ginger Rogers), I believe it.
2. So many crazy scenarios are made possible by Peter's decision to wait before telling his very conservative university president father that he has married the unknown Francey during a trip to New York. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't manage to tell his family about Francey for a long long time.

3. Although Peter's cousin Keith shows early signs of wanting Francey for himself, when Peter and Francey are forced to spend their first night apart, Keith brings them each one of the toppers from their wedding cake to keep them company.

4. Ginger Rogers is tough. As Francey, she takes the woman who wants to be Peter's fiance and flips her right over her shoulder. She was provoked. A very funny scene.
5. The dance scene...
Three stars because the acting was great and the plot was really very funny. It think it lost that fourth star just for being a little too long. There were just a few too many crazy hijinks keeping the couple apart. Apparently TCM agrees. They called it "everlong." But I would definitely see this again.

Monkey Business (1952)

Despite what the box might make you think, this movie is not about Marilyn Monroe's character at all. This is a movie about Barnaby (Cary Grant), who thinks he has created some magical formula that makes you act and feel much younger than you are, and his wife Edwina (Ginger Rogers). Marilyn Monroe plays a secretary at the chemical lab where Barnaby works, and she goes along with him on his day of feeling 20. They roller skate, go to the pool, crash a car... But Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers are the fun parts of this not-so-wonderful movie.

If I could ignore the fact that the plot is touched off by a chimpanzee getting loose, accidentally creating a brilliant chemical formula, and then dumping the formula in the water cooler so it can begin to confuse and alter everyone, I could concentrate on the fact that I would like to see more of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. "Tell me, is anyone giving a party tonight we can stay home from?" Grant and Rogers have some good lines together. And she dances, and he even does a cartwheel. And he sings. Just leave out the chimps, and put them in a different movie together. Two stars, because this movie was so much better than Thank Your Lucky Stars, which I also just wrote about, but I am ready to search out other Grant/Rogers films.

Top Hat (1935)

Ahhhh. This is a four star movie and near perfect Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Zany and fun plot, great lines, lovely (and insane) dresses, and fancy footwork. The only reason I call it "near perfect" and not "perfect" is that Astaire and Rogers kept their feet mostly on the ground in this movie. No unusual dancing up and over furniture or on walls to make it extra exciting. But I can't always expect dancing on walls.

The movie opens beautifully with Jerry Travers (Astaire) trying to silently fold his paper in a "silent" club while waiting for Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton), the producer of a show in which he's about to star. Horace sets Jerry up staying with him in his hotel and then tells Jerry that he wants Jerry to fly to Italy with him after the show to meet up with his wife Madge (Helen Broderick) and some girl Madge wants to fix Jerry up with. Jerry doesn't really want to go.

Jerry: "Is she expecting me for a weekend or a wedding?"

Horace: "You know how wives are..."

Jerry: "No I don't. How are they?"

Horace: "...always have a scheme... It's time you found out for yourself."

Jerry especially doesn't want to go anywhere after he meets the beautiful Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers), another hotel guest. Jerry meets Dale when he tap dances in the room above her while she's trying to sleep, and she has to come upstairs and give him a piece of her mind. Jerry tells Dale that she can help cure him of the dancing with a good hug, to which she replies, "Well I'll call the house detective and tell him to put his arms around you." I'm choosing to think of the whole thing as a meet cute... Jerry woos Dale with flowers and then by paying off a hansom cab driver to give him the cab so that Jerry can drive Dale to the stables the next day. Dale discovers Jerry is her driver only when he starts to tap dance above her.

Dale starts to fall for Jerry at the stables when he dances with her in the rain.

Jerry: "May I rescue you?"

Dale: "...I prefer being in distress."

The thunder drives Dale to seek out Jerry for comfort in the gazebo in which they are both waiting out the storm, and pretty soon they are dancing and in love.

Happiness leads to mistaken identity and anger, though, when it turns out that Dale is Madge's friend. And Dale, never having met Madge's husband, thinks that Jerry is really Horace. She is suddenly horrified by his advances, slaps him, and gives him the motivation he needs to fly off to Italy to continue to woo her. He has no idea what he did to make her so mad.

The rest of the movie is all about mistaken identity and is, in my opinion, hilarious. It also seems to have pretty much the same cast as my other favorite mistaken identity movie, The Gay Divorcee, also a must-see.

Dale tells Madge that Madge's husband is chasing her:

"Really, I didn't know he was capable of that much activity... Did he catch you?"

Jerry wants to propose to the still confused Dale:

"Alright, you go find all about her past, and I'll go find out about her future."

Jerry and Dale dance with a crazy dress Dale is being payed to model:

And Dale receives nutty advice from Madge about how to protect herself from further advances:

"Here or there, as long as you remain a spinster you're fair game for any philandering male... You know um, what you really should have is a husband you can call your own."

Ahhh, what a movie. I will definitely see this again someday.

Swing Time (1936)

To cuff or not to cuff? Another silly, but fun, film. I found it was best not to think too much about the plot.

Lucky (Fred Astaire) is about to get married, but his band members are concerned marriage will get in the way of the band's future. The film opens with Lucky's band members very skillfully tricking him out of getting to his wedding on time just by drawing cuffs onto the pant legs of a man in a magazine and telling Lucky that cuffed pants are in. Lucky has to go off and get his pants cuffed (minutes before the wedding, we are led to believe), discovers his pants are un-cuffable, and misses his wedding. He is then told that he has to raise a whole lot of money before he can be allowed to try to marry his spurned fiance again. So Lucky goes off to New York with the band to play and gamble, and he meets Penny (Ginger Rogers).

Penny is a dance instructor and wants nothing to do with Lucky after he annoys her on the street. Lucky pretends to need dance lessons, though, messes with her for a while, and then before you know it, they are an amazing team.

Lucky starts to think that maybe he doesn't want to raise all that money to marry his old fiance. I appreciated that Astaire and Rogers sang and danced to "A Fine Romance," a song that I love, during a snowy getaway together. Not the most exciting dance ever, but fun. And they got to wear fantastic hats.
Then suddenly, over an hour into the film, blackface? Why? Apparently the scene is some loved tribute to Mr. Bojangles, and we're supposed to be really excited that Astaire can dance with shadow selves. Hmmm... It's just always a bit hard to forgive these moments. I know the film is old, but people still could have had more sense.

Fun film, but two stars. Not my favorite Astaire and Rogers plot.

Follow the Fleet (1936)

Oh, I hope I never run out of Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers movies. In this movie they play Bake and Sherry. Bake is in the Navy, Sherry is a dancer who once rejected Bake's marriage proposal. When Bake comes into town on shore leave, he runs into Sherry, and they both rethink their separation. Bake messes up Sherry's very important audition, though, and all bets are off. How do you say sorry? Give someone a monkey and screw with their next big audition, not necessarily in that order.
There was also a bizarre side-story involving Bake's friend Bilge, played by Randolph Scott. After having one great date with Sherry's sister Connie, he felt that he was still free to play the field, and she felt that they had made an amazing connection and were getting married. Bilge's thoughts on Connie's thoughts? "She's a swell kid, but she's serious... She's sappy like you [Bake] - she wants to get married." And oddly none of Connie's friends told her that she was being a bit silly fixing up her father's giant boat just for Bilge and waiting for his proposal after just one date. There wasn't even any word from him while he was back at sea, and still she waited. She was told oh, he's just being silly... He'll figure it all out in time. She is told to fight for her man. But she practically imagined him! Nonetheless... do you think she got him in the end?
While watching the movie, my dad was busy looking up information about it. Apparently the dress worn by Ginger Rogers when she and Fred Astaire danced to "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (above) was so heavily weighted that she had to learn how to move while wearing it. And apparently she bonked Fred Astaire in the face. It was weighted so it could then effortlessly do things like this:
...which is of course a very important part of a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie.

Despite my love of the actors, I really want to give this movie one star. But I'm going to give it two stars due to the scene where they navy guys are all practicing for a benefit show on the ship deck, and some of the men have to be "dames." I really don't want to see it again, though. There were entertaining moments, but I think the whole buzz behind this movie is that it has what is considered to be one of Astaire and Rogers's best dance numbers (with the 25 pound dress). But that was not enough for me. I still love them in general, though!

Roberta (1935)

Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers... of course I had to see this movie. Huck Haines (Astaire) travels with his band, The Wabash Indianians, and his friend John Kent (Randolph Scott) to Paris for a gig. Unfortunately, almost the second they step off the ocean liner, the owner of the club where they were supposed to play becomes horrified to learn that they are in fact Indianians and not Indians. The band tries to woo the club owner with a bizarre act in which they become a human piano...but to no avail.

With no more gig, John and Huck rush off to find John's aunt Roberta, who just happens to own a fashionable clothing store in Paris. Roberta is delighted to see her favorite nephew and says that she will try to help them find a new gig through her connections. It turns out that the band doesn't need Roberta's direct help, though, because out in the lobby they find the Comtesse Scharwenka (Ginger Rogers) complaining loudly and obnoxiously about a dress that has not come out quite right. The Comtesse is merely pretending to be Polish nobility to make her singing act more intriguing. Really she is from Indiana and happens to be the long lost close friend/next door neighbor of Huck. And she can get the band back into the very night club from which they were tossed for not being Indians. And I haven't even mentioned that Irene Dunne plays Stephanie, who works for Roberta. Stephanie and John fall in love at first sight, complications to follow. One of the largest complications seems to be that John is a "hick" with an attitude about fashion, and Stephanie is a Russian princess in exile. Hmmm.

The dancing was, as usual, exciting, especially a very cool tap dance pictured above and a dance to "I Won't Dance." And then there was the highly entertaining fashion show. My favorite quote from the fashion show is actually from my roommate Barbara: "Oh, a bird died." There were a lot of fur and feathers.

Other good fashion quotes from without the movie include:

"It's more stimulating to the imagination if clothes clothe." (John is VERY against skimpy dresses, and this fact leads to some of the plot twists of the movie.)

"[Women] can pack their own junk." (about a dress with pockets)

The movie also swung towards schmaltzy, though. Stephanie sings mournful songs, Roberta dies, everyone is tragically misunderstood. All except Huck and the Comtesse, that is. Two stars for my favorite dancers. Not sure I could watch again.

Flying Down to Rio (1933)

Ah, movies from the thirties. This is what I should be watching more of. Roger (Gene Raymond) is the conductor of a band and quite a player. When he spots Belinha (Delores Del Rio) winking at him from her table during a performance, it doesn't take him very long to leave the conducting to Fred (played by Fred Astaire) and sweep her up into his arms for a dance. News travels fast throughout the hotel. When the first comment, that Belinha, the niece of a wealthy Brazilian woman, is dancing with a musician, eventually reaches Belinha's aunt, the comment has run through the rumor mill and turned into "Belinha is dancing with a gigolo." The aunt rushes down to the dining room to put an end to the dance, and a romance/battle of words has begun. I was loving the movie... the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, funny banter, amazing hats...

I was so happy... until I got to the spanking and the racism, all of which happened within a span of about five minutes. I will explain:

The spanking: Belinha needs to get home to Brazil fast. Her father needs her. It just so happens that Roger is a pilot, and that he and the band already happen to be going to Rio to play at the opening of a new hotel there. Roger convinces Belinha to fly in his two person plane (although he at first doesn't tell her he is the pilot and disguises himself in his flying gear so her aunt will let her go with him). Belinha is perfectly happy to discover that Roger is the pilot, but when Roger has to make an emergency landing on what they believe to be a remote desert island, all turns sour between them. Roger makes his engine trouble last by purposely losing an essential hose. Then he plays romantic music to get Belinha to make out with him. And then... she says something along the lines of, "No no no...I cannot do this...My family has arranged a marriage for me...I am engaged...We must never see each other again." Roger doesn't take well to Belinha's protest, Belinha slaps him, and then he throws her over his knee and spanks her a whole bunch of times reprimanding her for telling him off. Needless to say, when they have to spend the night on the island, she stays far away from him.

The racism: The morning after the spanking, Belinha looks into the trees and sees four or five black men looking back at her. She runs into Roger's arms screaming about wild men and cannibals. When Roger goes back to investigate, he finds out that she was not seeing cannibals, she was just seeing resort employees. They are in Haiti right next to a golf resort. This was supposed to be a funny joke.

The rest of the movie did have more entertaining moments, though. The hotel happens to be owned by Belinha's father, Roger happens to be friends with the fiance, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance, all while Roger and Belinha spar and can't take their eyes off of each other.

The best part of the movie was definitely when the band saves the hotel by creating the most spectacular opener ever: scantily clad girls dancing and doing acrobatics on the wings of planes in flight. At one point some of their clothes are even carried off by parachutes. At one point one girl almost plummets to her death and has to be caught by people on the plane below. Video below:

I also love the way in which Belinha's fiance finally gives her up...a parachute is involved. Two stars for silly acrobatics and fun. I could see myself watching this again, despite the horrifying parts.

Shall We Dance (1937)

This movie delivered all of the silliness that I have come to expect from a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie but oddly not all of the dancing. One of the "nearly" dance acts involved the two of them walking somewhat rhythmically back and forth on a ship.... But why did they not dance together more often?

"I haven't even met her... But I'd kinda like to marry her."
Petrov (Fred Astaire) is a ballet dancer (he can do anything!) who falls in love at first sight when he sees a flip book of the dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers).

"What? You do not want to dance with the great Petrov? Don't be a silly horse!"
Petrov's first attempt to woo Linda involves pretending to a be a crazy man: dancing about her apartment, speaking in a heavy Russian accent, and telling her that she is not good enough to ever dance with him. It turns out that Linda is sick and tired of silly dancers falling in love with her. She is about to return to America to marry her long-time admirer Jim and get out of the dancing business. Petrov, his manager, and the whole ballet then set sail from Paris to America on the same ship as Linda. Petrov's manager shakes a former member of the ballet who is interested in Petrov by telling her that Petrov has been secretly married for four years. The rumor festers...

"Oh, you've ruined your sweater. I'll have to fix it now."
Petrov finally gets Linda to pay attention to him when he stalks her in the dog walking area of the ship. He starts paying other passengers to let him walk their dogs. Finally one day he has so many dogs with him that Linda's dog excitedly follows him. Soon Linda and Petrov are walking together daily. In fact, they walk so much that Linda's little dog gets tangled in his sweater and has to sit down and watch.


"Do you realize that you're the father of my child?"
A rumor that Petrov and Linda are married reaches the ship. Linda is horrified and thinks that Petrov has started the rumor just to escape another woman. When Petrov's manager is shocked to hear the rumor, Petrov points out that the manager in fact was the one who started it.

"Who's got the last laugh now?"
Linda charters a plane to take her off of the ship. She in her plane and Petrov on the ship eventually make it to New York. When Linda is forced to dance with Petrov in a restaurant where they are both dining separately she realizes just how much fun dancing with him is. Yay! A dance number!


"I'll turn that dream stuff into a nightmare that will make history. Poor Lin."
Linda's manager wants to keep alive the rumors that she is married to Petrov so that she will not marry Jim and leave dancing. He comes up with a brilliant scheme to use a very realistic dummy of Linda that had been designed for some old promotion. He sneaks into Petrov's room at night, drapes the Linda model over him, and takes some new pictures for the press. Luckily, Petrov is such a heavy sleeper that he is not woken up by the flash bulbs.

"You like potatoes and I like potahtoes..."
In order to evade reporters, Petrov and Linda put on dark sunglasses and go rowing and roller skating in Central Park. This leads to song and roller skate dancing. A very good way to prove that you are in fact not a couple.


"Peter, you've got to marry me... If we can get married now, I can start divorce proceedings in the morning."
Again, another brilliant plan. Get married, so you can officially get divorced, thereby proving that you are not in fact married.

"I didn't realize getting married was so depressing."
After Linda puts on an amazing hat and marries Petrov, she begins to realize that she doesn't really want to divorce Petrov the next day. Until the original trouble-making lady appears in Petrov's room.

"All because of you and your practical dummy!"
Everything is a mess! Will Linda go through with the divorce? Will Petrov win her back with his crazy scheme to dance with dozens of women all wearing incredibly creepy Linda Keene masks? What will happen?

"If he couldn't dance with you, he'd dance with images of you!"
Awwww. And so on... I guess just two stars, as sad as that sounds, and I probably won't see this again. The Gay Divorcee is definitely my favorite so far.

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

Ohh, wonderful wonderful silly movie.
Guy meets girl...

Mimi (Rogers) gets the end of her dress stuck in her aunt's trunk as her aunt locks it. Guy (Astaire) comes by and saves her by quite shockingly ripping her dress. He is smitten. She runs away. He spends weeks in London standing on the sidewalks and starting at every woman's face to find her until he finally rear-ends her car by accident.

Girl runs from guy...

Every silly dance movie needs a high speed car chase.

Guy pursues girl...

Lucky thing that Guy thought to buy a "Road Closed" sign at a sporting goods store. What a good way to bring a high speed car chase with one's beloved to a halt.

Girl starts to fall in love...

After losing Mimi again, Guy happens to find her at an ocean resort. She is there to try to secure a divorce from the geologist husband she hasn't seen for years. He is there with his lawyer friend who is helping Mimi to secure the divorce. But of course Guy does not know Mimi is the woman his friend is helping. Guy is charming and sweeps Mimi off her feet.

Girl becomes convinced guy is a gigolo (rather, a correspondent)...

The plan that Mimi's lawyer has concocted to secure her divorce involves her spending the night with a hired male "correspondent" and then getting caught by some detectives. Guy unknowingly says the code phrase to Mimi that the correspondent is supposed to use to find her, and Mimi is furious that Guy is not really interested in her but is there for a job. One of many many similar jobs.

Everyone dances...

They even twirl up onto chairs and over tables.

Happy ending...

Dancing solves all problems, of course!

I hope I get to see this again. It's now my favorite Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire movie. Four stars!

Carefree (1938)

Watch this movie for the dancing. No matter the plot (which in this case is obnoxious but full of hilarity), Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire are worth watching. Fred Astaire can dance anywhere and while doing anything...

In Carefree Stephen (Ralph Bellamy) is dumped by his fiance Amanda (Ginger Rogers) and enlists the help of his good psychiatrist friend Tony (Fred Astaire) to convince her that she really does want to get married. Amanda dislikes Tony almost immediately after hearing his tape recorded diagnosis that she is a silly thoughtless female. While she eventually does agree to meet with him for analysis and help, she first spends some hilarious scenes insulting him while wearing great hats.

The fact that there is hypnosis involved in Amanda's treatments should be enough to draw even the non-dance lover to this movie.

Needless to say, much hilarity ensues, and Stephen does not necessarily get the help that he is looking for. Oh Ralph Bellamy.  Were you limited to a career in which you play the dopey guy who is left for a suave hero?  I have seen only three of your movies, so I just don't know.  But Irene Dunne preferred Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell preferred Cary Grant, and now Ginger Rogers prefers Fred Astaire.  To be fair, The Dunne and Russell characters had both been previously married to their Grant character co-stars, and you were a transition back to their marriages.  But Ginger Roger's Amanda treated you so poorly.  Wait... I have just learned (imdb.com) that Ralph Bellamy won a Tony for his 1958 portrayal of FDR.  I feel a little better.

Two stars for golf dancing and hypnosis by dancing. I'm sure I will find other Rogers & Astaire movies to entertain me in the future. And now for more dancing...