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| 1938: Carefree | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 12 2010, 10:43 AM (360 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Jul 12 2010, 10:43 AM Post #1 |
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In the very early days of talkies, musicals were all the rage, but that genre turned out to be a fad that ended quickly as audiences lost interest during the early days of the Great Depression. Box-office returns for the wonderful 42nd Street showed, however, that audiences would still come and see musicals – if they were well done. RKO-Radio Pictures decided to jump on the swingin’ band wagon with a little picture called Flying Down to Rio starring Delores del Rio (no relation) and Gene Raymond; what people left the theatre talking about, however, were two things: showgirls dancing on the wings of an airplane, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who had one brief dance together but had waltzed off with the picture. The team almost hadn’t happened; Astaire – a Broadway star trying to break into movies – had been paired with Dorothy Jordan, but she’d recently gotten married (to RKO head Merian Cooper) and was unavailable, so contract player Rogers was assigned the task. When the reviews and receipts proved highly favorable, RKO assigned Astaire & Rogers starring roles in The Gay Divorcee, in which they danced “The Continental”. A team was born (reluctantly; Astaire agreed to do it for 10% of the profits, Rogers for a promise of dramatic parts in between musicals) and Fred & Ginger went on to make a total of 9 films for RKO, saving the studio from bankruptcy in 1935 with the returns from Top Hat (one of only two films to gross more than $3 million that year; the other was Mutiny on the Bounty) and Roberta. With the studio in trouble again by 1938, Astaire-Rogers returned to the screen for their first partnering in 15 months for Carefree, directed by Mark Sandrich, with songs by Irving Berlin and choreography by Hermes Pan. Psychiatrist Fred is seeing patient Ralph Bellamy, who is having a nervous breakdown because his fiancée refuses to marry him. Fred decides to meet the young lady in question, who turns out, of course, to be Ginger. She falls in love with Fred (after a pretty hot dream – well, post-Hays Office hot, anyway) so the psychiatrist, being a right guy, hypnotizes her into hating him and loving her fiancée. When Fred realizes that he loves HER, too, he tries to call the whole thing off. She’s got a gun, though, and still hypnotized, tries to shoot him. I love writing paragraphs like that. 1930s movies – ya gotta love ‘em. Pretty much all the Fred & Ginger movies are the same thing – he’s an asshole, she’s fiery and independent, they fall in love and she becomes more dependent on him and he becomes less of an asshole. They make love with their dancing; believe it or not, in this, their eighth film together, they finally share their first romantic on-screen kiss (legendarily, because Mrs. Astaire forbid his smoochin’ her on screen, until box-office returns demanded it). Unfortunately, this is… well, to put it delicately, this is a bad film. Whereas earlier films in the series gave us “Night and Day”, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “Cheek to Cheek”, “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”, “They Can’t Take that Away from Me”, and many, many other standards, here we get “The Yam”, a song so bad Fred refused to sing it and let Ginger have it. Sure the dancing is great, but we DO have to stay awake through the story to get to it! Carefree was, not surprisingly, the first Astaire-Rogers pairing to lose money. They did a swansong for the RKO, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, in 1939, which also did poorly. Fred went on to other dance partners at other studios; Rogers went on to an Oscar for Kitty Foyle (1940). A decade later, following their triumph with Easter Parade, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland were re-teamed for The Barkleys of Broadway; when Garland’s various problems caused her to drop out of that film, MGM decided to re-team Fred with Ginger for a reunion. The film was a popular and critical success, but turned out to be the tenth and final on-screen pairing of the greatest, most famous, classiest dance team in the history of motion pictures. Carefree is available on DVD as part of a massive boxed set from Warner Bros. that includes all ten of their films, a full-length documentary, a CD soundtrack of songs from the films, and press kits from some of the pictures, as well as a couple dozen bonus short subjects. The Carefree disc includes a musical short called Public Jitterbug #1, in which G-Men, under orders from J. Edgar Hoover, try to machine-gun swing dancers. Yes, really. When you see Hal Le Roy, you’ll wish the Feds had better aim. There’s also a cartoon, September in the Rain, that has a cartoon Fred dancing with a cartoon Ginger, and a cartoon Al Jolson singing a love song to Aunt Jemima. Hey, I don’t make this up, I just report it. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 12 2010, 11:21 AM Post #2 |
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Mouth Breather
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I agree that the movie's a dud, but isn't it the one with "Change Partners?" That's a great song, even in the truncated version used here. Fred's version of it on a Fifties album may be the best thing he ever recorded. "(I Used to Be) Color Blind" is a Berlin standard too, with good reason. "The Yam," as Mr. G points out, doesn't hold up, and whoever decided to adapt a musical from a Guy Endore novel shoulda had HIS head examined. It's also Ginger's dumbest performance, which is saying something. That business with the gun doesn't come off. Truth is, the idea of down to earth Ginger going to a shrink is preposterous. The idea of Fred being a shrink -- well -- Mantan Moreland would be as believable. First time I saw the picture I was like, "Are you people kidding?" But then a couple years later they came up with The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, the dud to end all duds, which made me see that the genre just ran out of steam. Ginger had 15 more years, and Fred 25, but they never again were at the very top of the heap -- not the way Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn were. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Jul 12 2010, 11:37 AM Post #3 |
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This IS the "Change Partners" film, and that is a fine song. I should also particularly mention the best sequence in the picture: Fred dances while he plays harmonica and hits golf balls. Ya gotta see it, folks. |
| "I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley | |
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| rodney | Jul 14 2015, 05:39 AM Post #4 |
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Charter Member
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I liked this one, partially at least because of all of the weaknesses. It's just too completely wacky and strange not to enjoy. I will say that I felt that it was pretty light on the "screwball" stuff, at least compared to what I was expecting. Still...bizarre escapist fun. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 15 2015, 05:51 PM Post #5 |
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Mouth Breather
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Yeah, I'm good with that. I'll probably watch it again. |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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