(Flying Down to Rio / The Gay Divorcee / Roberta / Carefree / The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle)

Reviewed by Gary Geyer

If you are a Fred and Ginger fan you probably have realized that many of their films involve misunderstandings, mistaken identities and follow the standard ‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl’ formula. Hey, who cares?

Flying Down to Rio was Fred & Ginger’s first film together-they are not even the stars. (No one realized their potential at that point-in fact they weren’t even a team yet.) They actually only have one dance and that comes about half way into the film. The best scene (if you ask me) is the ‘even seeing is not believing’ dance routine on the wings of an in-flight bi-plane.

The Gay Divorcee includes “Looking for a Needle in a Haystack,” “Let’s K-nock K-nees,” “Night and Day (my favorite),” and “The Continental.” Interesting trivia: The original title of the movie was “The Gay Divorce.” The censors argued that divorces could never be gay, but divorcees could be. So, The Gay divorce became The Gay Divorcee.’
Roberta. Amazingly, Fred & Ginger did not get star billing-Irene Dunne did. A disappointment is that even though the best song in the film is Smoke Gets in your Eyes, Fred & Ginger did not dance to it. The film has some nice moments but is not one their best.

Carefree won’t go down as Fred & Ginger’s best musical, but it is certainly one of their best comedies. Ginger steals the show.

More trivia: Fred & Ginger never had a romantic kiss in any of their films. The one kiss in this film at the end of a dance number, was shot in slow motion. It was actually just a normal-time- peck-type kiss, but when slowed down looked romantic.

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle had Fred & Ginger recreate the dance routines of another famous dance team. It was the last film they did together for the RKO studio, and looked like it would be their last film together, period! As fate would have it, ten years later, Judy Garland was set to star with Fred in The Barkleys of Broadway. When Judy had to bow out, they hired Ginger to take her place.

Gary Geyer is Editor-in-Chief of LetLifeIn.com (Editor@LetLifeIn.com) as well as editor of the People & Entertainment section and the Fun Stuff section. Reach him at Gary@LetLifeIn.com