Hollywood the Golden Years: The RKO Story (1987) 1.02

Let's Face the Music and Dance

This episode is focused entirely on the team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The people who were interviewed for this episode include

• Fred Astaire
• Ginger Rogers
• Hermes Pan, choreographer
• Pandro S. Berman, producer
• Hal Borne, Astaire/Rogers Accompanist
• Allan Scott, writer
• Erik Rhodes, actor
• Maurice Zuberano, set designer
• Joseph Birox, Camera Operator

Clips are shown in this episode from the following movies

• Flying Down to Rio (1933)
• The Gay Divorcee (1934)
• Shall We Dance (1937)
• Top Hat (1935)
• Swing Time (1936)
• Follow the Fleet (1936)
• A Damsel in Distress (1937)
• Carefree (1938)
• The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)

Fred Astaire danced with his sister Adele on Broadway before breaking into movies. He needed a new dance partner after his sister left the team to get married. This is how he came to be paired with Ginger Rogers.

Astaire and choreographer Hermes Pan sometimes took inspiration from mundane things, like a cement mixer in one case. 

Mark Sandrich was the director of many of the Astaire/Rogers films.

Astaire and Rogers would frequently work until they were thoroughly exhausted to get the scene right.

Did Fred and Ginger get along? There is some dispute as to how well they got along but neither one had anything negative to say about the other in their interview segments. They were not interviewed together for this episode. Rogers did seem to take issue with the fact that he got more credit than he did.

Astaire was not paired with Rogers in A Damsel in Distress because Pandro Berman had promised him a movie without Rogers. It was one of Astaire's worst performing films at the box office.

There were no kissing scenes in most of Astaire and Rogers movies together despite the fact that they were usually romantically involved in the movies.

Their last film together at RKO was the only one at RKO in which they played a married couple. They only reunited on screen once after their run at RKO was over. They made The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) at MGM, ten years after their last movie at RKO together.

There is one film, Roberta (1935), which was not mentioned but all of Astaire and Rogers other movies at RKO were mentioned in this episode. There are a couple other documentaries out there which I found about the pair.

Fred Astaire: Puttin’ on His Top Hat (1980) - Astaire and Rogers were both alive when this was made. I’m not sure if this is included as an extra on any DVDs or where it can be found today.

Astaire and Rogers: Partners in Rhythm (2006) - available on DVD but I’m not sure if this goes into any depth. My impression from what I’ve read about it is that it is mostly a collection of clips of their song and dance numbers together.

I looked but was unable to find any documentaries that focused solely on Ginger Rogers. although she  was included in numerous documentary features that focused on either musical films or women of Hollywood.