Focus Features

Fred and Ginger's first screen
pairing in Flying Down to Rio

On 22 December 1933, RKO released Flying Down to Rio and introduced the world to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They only danced together for a couple of minutes. But audiences instantly recognized their unique chemistry and, 75 years later, they are still the most iconic dance team in screen history.

The musical genre was as much in the doldrums as the United States in 1933. A couple of Busby Berkeley choreographed backstagers, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, had given it a fresh impetus. But when did you hear a judge on Dancing With the Stars describe a quickstep, foxtrot or American Smooth as 'very Bebe Daniels' or 'so Ruby Keeler'? Both were big stars in their day, but Astaire and Rogers so seized the public imagination that their names are still shorthand for the romance, glamour and panache of Hollywood's golden age.

With current economic prospects looking as potentially bleak as they did 75 years ago, could it be that Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Mamma Mia! are the opening salvoes in another musical revival that will see expert escapist entertainment again sustain the nation's spirits through some dark days? Yet even if musicals do return to drown out the sound of the credit crunch, no one will be able to duplicate the chic and sophistication of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But who needs imitations when the sublime genius of the originals is available on DVD?

Watching numbers like “Cheek to Cheek” and “They Can't Take That Away From Me,” it's hard to imagine a screen couple more perfectly in tune. But, in fact, “Let's Call the Whole Thing Off” and “Change Partners” would be better signature tunes for Rogers and Astaire, as not only did their magical partnership nearly not happen, but it was always likely to fall apart throughout its six-year existence. However, the pair were not allowed to go their separate ways until it suited the studio that had created them. So, for all their elegance and ethereality, Fred`n'Ginger were as much a product of the Hollywood film factory as serial episodes, horse operas and slapstick two-reelers.

Fred Astaire was 34 when he entered movies. He had been dancing since the age of six, when his mother, Anna Geilus Austerlitz, paired him in a vaudeville act with his older sister, Adele. They reached Broadway in 1917 and he began choreographing their routines in the early 1920s. But while they were the toast of New York and London, the Astaires failed to impress the Paramount scout who screen tested them with a view to adapting their 1927 hit, Funny Face. The unnamed menial famously dismissed Fred with the verdict, “Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little.” Always in Adele's shadow, these words must have played on Fred's mind five years later, when she announced plans to retire and marry Lord Charles Cavendish and he was faced with the prospect of starting all over again.

Despite being 12 years his junior, Ginger Rogers was already more of a showbiz all-rounder than Astaire. Guided by mother Lela McMath, she had made her vaudeville bow at 14 and arrived on Broadway four years later. The same year, she ventured into talkies with the short A Day of a Man of Affairs and had made 19 features before being paired with Astaire.

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Fred and Ginger's first screen
pairing in Flying Down to Rio

On 22 December 1933, RKO released Flying Down to Rio and introduced the world to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They only danced together for a couple of minutes. But audiences instantly recognized their unique chemistry and, 75 years later, they are still the most iconic dance team in screen history.

The musical genre was as much in the doldrums as the United States in 1933. A couple of Busby Berkeley choreographed backstagers, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, had given it a fresh impetus. But when did you hear a judge on Dancing With the Stars describe a quickstep, foxtrot or American Smooth as 'very Bebe Daniels' or 'so Ruby Keeler'? Both were big stars in their day, but Astaire and Rogers so seized the public imagination that their names are still shorthand for the romance, glamour and panache of Hollywood's golden age.

With current economic prospects looking as potentially bleak as they did 75 years ago, could it be that Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Mamma Mia! are the opening salvoes in another musical revival that will see expert escapist entertainment again sustain the nation's spirits through some dark days? Yet even if musicals do return to drown out the sound of the credit crunch, no one will be able to duplicate the chic and sophistication of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But who needs imitations when the sublime genius of the originals is available on DVD?

Watching numbers like “Cheek to Cheek” and “They Can't Take That Away From Me,” it's hard to imagine a screen couple more perfectly in tune. But, in fact, “Let's Call the Whole Thing Off” and “Change Partners” would be better signature tunes for Rogers and Astaire, as not only did their magical partnership nearly not happen, but it was always likely to fall apart throughout its six-year existence. However, the pair were not allowed to go their separate ways until it suited the studio that had created them. So, for all their elegance and ethereality, Fred`n'Ginger were as much a product of the Hollywood film factory as serial episodes, horse operas and slapstick two-reelers.

Fred Astaire was 34 when he entered movies. He had been dancing since the age of six, when his mother, Anna Geilus Austerlitz, paired him in a vaudeville act with his older sister, Adele. They reached Broadway in 1917 and he began choreographing their routines in the early 1920s. But while they were the toast of New York and London, the Astaires failed to impress the Paramount scout who screen tested them with a view to adapting their 1927 hit, Funny Face. The unnamed menial famously dismissed Fred with the verdict, “Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little.” Always in Adele's shadow, these words must have played on Fred's mind five years later, when she announced plans to retire and marry Lord Charles Cavendish and he was faced with the prospect of starting all over again.

Despite being 12 years his junior, Ginger Rogers was already more of a showbiz all-rounder than Astaire. Guided by mother Lela McMath, she had made her vaudeville bow at 14 and arrived on Broadway four years later. The same year, she ventured into talkies with the short A Day of a Man of Affairs and had made 19 features before being paired with Astaire.

Astaire and Rogers go aerial

They had worked together before, however, when Fred was summoned to the Alvin Theatre in the summer of 1930 to assist with the dance numbers for the new Gershwin musical, Girl Crazy. Rogers played down the significance of this “Embraceable You” encounter in her autobiography: “He was easy to follow and I fell right in step with him. But to me he was just a man summoned to polish a few rough spots. There was no reason to be particularly impressed. I honestly didn't think of him again.” But, in fact, they dated a few times, with bandleader Eddy Duchin commenting on what a handsome couple they made on the dance floor of the Casino in the Park and Ginger herself admitted that their first kiss would have been banned by the Hays Office.

Fred had written to Ginger after she left for Hollywood, but she had failed to keep in touch. There was no thought of a reunion, therefore, when Astaire went west in early 1933. Indeed, after 27 years with Adele, he had no intention of forming a permanent partnership ever again.

Aware that any review would open with a lament for Adele's absence, Fred had decided to limit the critical scope by giving Hollywood another try. No doubt he also viewed motion pictures as a source of quicker cash for less effort and risk than a stage show, as his finances had suffered somewhat following the Wall Street crash. So, he contracted to RKO and, as the star of Flying Down to Rio, was given complete control over the staging and cutting of his own numbers. However, the studio's slide into receivership and production chief David O. Selznick's defection to MGM disrupted the schedule and, rather than leave Astaire idle, he was loaned to Metro to cameo as himself in Dancing Lady, opposite Clark Gable and Joan Crawford.

It was hardly a propitious debut, as an attempt to show Crawford a few steps ended with her getting cramp, while one of Astaire's two contributions to the finale saw him kitted out in unsuitable lederhosen. There was clearly a problem of what to do with Broadway's premier male dancer. Although he had undertaken the odd solo number, Fred was very much a team man. However, he had always danced with his sister and was much more used to showcasing his unique blend of ballroom, ballet and tap in ebullient entertainments than in exhibitions of emotion. Consequently, he slipped down the pecking order as Flying Down to Rio was reworked to focus on a love triangle involving Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond and Raul Roulien. Astaire was assigned vocal duties on the title number, a duet with Del Rio and a solo dance to a tune sung by his nominal co-star, Dorothy Jordan.

They were also to participate in an 11-minute group dance entitled, “The Carioca.” But, at the eleventh hour, Jordan withdrew to go on honeymoon with RKO executive Merian C. Cooper and Ginger Rogers was cast in her place.

Although she had just figured prominently in 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 - the Warner musicals whose Busby Berkeley dance spectacles had revived the genre after novelty overkill had rendered it box-office poison - Rogers still lacked a fixed screen persona. Her dependable adaptability got her work. But Honey Hale was just another brassy blonde doing whatever it took to make a living in a hardknock world. Astaire, however, was a fully formed star and he was essentially again playing himself as Fred Ayres, the dapper hoofer having too much fun with his music to worry about romance.

Their comic skills were on show in Shall
We Dance

The shoot was completed with little incident. Ginger noticed that Fred seemed more reserved than he had been in New York and put it down to the antipathy towards her of his new wife, divorced socialite Phyllis Potter, while Astaire felt that Rogers was keen to finish her scenes quickly and get on with making her name in `straight' films. Indeed, when Astaire left for London to open his new show, Gay Divorce, he bade producer Pandro S. Berman the sort of cheery farewell that implied he knew he wouldn't be returning to the studio.

But, while Fred was enchanting the West End and Ginger was making more mediocre movies, preview audiences began to enthuse about Flying Down to Rio. Everything about it proclaimed modernity, with the aeroplanes, motor cars, telegrams and big white Art Deco sets seeming to suggest that the Depression wouldn't last forever and that good times were just around the corner.

Fred and Ginger's turn in “The Carioca” was singled out for special praise. Within days of the film's release, dance studios across America were teaching the craze, complete with the eccentric pressed forehead roll that choreographer Hermes Pan had devised almost as an afterthought in imitation of Vernon Castle's Brazilian tango, “The Mexixe.” RKO realized it had a star team on its hands and refused to loan Astaire to British-Gaumont to squire Jessie Matthews in an adaptation of the Rodgers and Hart hit, Evergreen. Indeed, it called him home to begin preparations for a screen version of Gay Divorce, with Ginger Rogers as his co-star.

Astaire, however, couldn't understand the clamor. He had seen Dancing Lady in London and winced through his scenes and only caught Rio in a third-run cinema in Augusta while on a golfing holiday. Rogers had also been underwhelmed and paid little heed to stories that “The King and Queen of The Carioca” would be reuniting in either Radio City Revels or Down to Their Last Yacht. She was mildly surprised, therefore, when she was hired to play Mimi Glossop in The Gay Divorcee, but gamely accepted, as she had the other six features she made in 1934.

Astaire always denied that he tried to veto Rogers's casting on the grounds she lacked the sophistication to play an English aristocrat. However, he was dismayed at being pressured into another partnership and must have been daunted by having to change his jaunty dance style to convey sensuality, even though he had performed romantic duets with Tilly Losch on “Dancing in the Dark” in The Band Wagon and Claire Luce on “Night and Day” in Gay Divorce.

Perhaps he was also conscious of the age gap. But, he needn't have worried. Ginger brought out a new masculinity in Fred that turned his pathos into passion and his gaucherie into gallantry. Their teaming seemed made in screen heaven and few disputed Katharine Hepburn's observation: “She gives him sex and he gives her class.”

Smiles for the camera in a
publicity shot for Follow
the Fleet

RKO was particularly pleased with the couple's popularity, as Roberta, Top Hat (both 1935), Follow the Fleet, Swing Time (both 1936) and Shall We Dance (1937) helped keep the studio in the black. But there were tensions behind the scenes. Ginger detested the favoritism of their regular director, Mark Sandrich, and never enjoyed having Phyllis sitting in the wings, keeping one eye on her knitting and the other on her man. Rogers also resented Astaire's tendency to let Hermes Pan and accompanist Hal Borne teach her the routines before they began rehearsing together in earnest. Fred, on the other hand, was frustrated by the front office's failure to incorporate sequences that proved he could excel at something other than dancing and he famously lost his temper as Ginger's dress shed ostrich feathers during the filming of Irving Berlin's Oscar-winning gem “Cheek to Cheek.” But Astaire regularly accepted Ginger's suggestions for steps and pieces of comic business and, thus, she put up with bleeding feet until her perfectionist partner was finally satisfied with the 48th take of “Never Gonna Dance.”

However, while Astaire was content to stay with the project while it turned a profit, Rogers was always planning for the future. Restless while waiting for the maestro to choreograph their next routines and keen to keep her dramatic eye in, she had co-starred with William Powell in Star of Midnight and George Brent in In Person (both 1935). But neither came close to replicating her success with Astaire and there may even have been a little irony in her casting in the latter, as she played an actress who flees to the mountains to escape the trials of stardom, only to become peeved when no one recognizes her.

Indeed, their entire situation had begun to resemble a backstage musical plot. Fred had agreed to dance with Ginger in order to persuade people to forget about Adele and now he was even more indelibly linked with his new partner than he was with his sibling. Similarly, Rogers had vastly improved as a dancer and now wanted some fame in her own right. But each venture away from Astaire served only to confirm her fear that she was half the star solo that she was in tandem. She could be chirpy and charming on her own, but she could be only be chic and sophisticated with Astaire.

It seemed as though the more compatible they became as a duo, the more professional pride dictated that they should part. But things finally came to a head in 1936. Astaire sensed a sea change in critical opinion while filming Follow the Fleet and this was confirmed when the couple slipped from No.3 to No.7 in the annual box-office charts and then out of the top ten altogether the following year. Meanwhile, Rogers had discovered the sizeable disparity in their salaries and she carried the spirit of independence acquired during her separation from husband Lew Ayres into her contract negotiations. However, the studio exacted its revenge by announcing that Carole Lombard, Margo, Ruby Keeler and Jessie Matthews were being lined up as possible replacements if she failed to put pen to paper. Eventually, Rogers did sign, but not before she had inserted a clause entitling her to a sabbatical.

Fred`n'Ginger didn't release a film for 15 months, during which time Rogers boosted her reputation as a comedienne in Stage Door (1937), Vivacious Lady and Having Wonderful Time (both 1938). Astaire, however, endured his first flop with A Damsel in Distress (1937), in which he teamed with the non-dancing Joan Fontaine and those inveterate scene-stealers, Gracie Allen and George Burns. Consequently, when she returned for Carefree (1938), Rogers wasn't prepared simply to be Astaire's dance partner and the screenplay was reshaped into a screwball with songs to show off her newly honed comic skills. Reduced to being a straight man and disappointed by the late decision not to shoot in Technicolor, Astaire proposed that The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) should be the couple's last picture and no one dissented.

Fred and Ginger in Carefree

The Astaire-Rogers musicals had become increasingly expensive to make and, with receipts dipping and bankruptcy again seeming a real possibility, RKO could no longer afford to keep producing their pictures on the same, lavish scale. Fred's contract was due to expire and it made economic sense to let him go and invest instead in a string of cheaper and potentially more lucrative vehicles for Rogers. And it appeared as though the studio had made the right decision when Ginger won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Kitty Foyle (1940). But her career faltered badly after she headlined Lady in the Dark (1944) for Mitchell Leisen at Paramount and she was firmly on the way down when she took over from the ailing Judy Garland to partner Fred for the last time (and finally in color) in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949). Indeed, rather like Dinah Barkley with her Sarah Bernhardt aspirations, Rogers had begun to take herself too seriously and she drifted into increasingly mediocre screwballs and maudlin melodramas.

Conversely, Astaire was returning to form after a rocky post-Ginger period and a premature retirement. He never entered into another full-time partnership and while he danced twice each with Rita Hayworth, Lucille Bremer, Cyd Charisse and Vera-Ellen, he never recaptured the chemistry he had with Rogers. She presented his Honorary Oscar in 1950, but they rarely appeared together in their later years. However, this owed more to their differing personalities and lifestyles than any lingering animosity from their heyday.

Despite keeping up appearances in interviews, they grumbled about each other in their memoirs, with Ginger testily asserting, “The general public thought he was a Svengali, who snapped his fingers for his little Trilby to obey; in their eyes, my career was his creation.” She was also fond of quoting the caption to a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon: “Sure he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards...and in high heels.”

However, this is a simplification of their artistic dynamic. Fred Astaire was a dancer, whose purest form of expression was movement. Ginger Rogers was an actress who could dance. Her technique improved immeasurably under his tutelage, but her status as his dancing soulmate rests primarily on her unsurpassed ability to act out the storyline of their 22 duets between “Night and Day” and “Change Partners.” In many ways, therefore, she resembles a celebrity partnering a professional in a televised ballroom dancing contest. Dancing to her was a means to an end and she rarely took to the floor in her solo outings. To Astaire, however, dance was life itself. He may never have become a star of comparable magnitude without Ginger, but he would always have possessed a timeless elegance and élan that will almost certainly never be surpassed.

But this isn't a dissection, it's a celebration. Fred`n'Ginger may have been one of cinema's more felicitous accidents. Yet their 10 features remain jewels of the genre and their luster will undoubtedly remain undiminished on the centenary of their first dance in 2033.