The Gay Divorcee dvd movie.|
The Gay Divorcee buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
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List Price: $19.98 Our Price: $17.99 You Save: $1.99 Features • Black & White • DVD-Video • Original recording remastered • Subtitled • NTSC In Theaters : 12 October, 1934 DVD Release : 24 October, 2006 |
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The Gay Divorcee description The year before, in 1933, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had grabbed America's attention in Flying Down to Rio, even though they were the second bananas in that film. The duo had a certain chemistry--Fred with his lighter-than-air elegance, Ginger with her moxie--and studio heads gambled that they could carry a starring vehicle of their own. Nobody guessed there would be another eight movies together after The Gay Divorcee, which turned into a huge success for RKO Pictures. The plot is the usual silliness, with Ginger a divorce-minded gal in England, Fred a dancer whose sincere interest in her is mistaken for something else. But plots never mattered much in these affairs, and this one achieves a kind of free-floating bliss. Astaire had starred in the stage version of the story, titled The Gay Divorce. The censors forced the extra e to be added to the title because surely no divorce could be portrayed as a happy one (this frothy movie's evidence notwithstanding). Only one song was carried over from the stage show, Cole Porter's smash hit "Night and Day," which forms the basis for a sublime pas de deux between Fred and Ginger. A tune, "The Continental," written for this film won the first Oscar ever awarded in the best-song category. --Robert Horton |
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| ♥♥♥♥♥ | The Film That Started It All, More or Less |
| "The Gay Divorcee," (1934) was the first RKO studio pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as stars, after they unexpectedly stole the previous year's "Flying Down to Rio." It received five Academy Award nominations: one for Best Picture, and won one, the first ever awarded in that category, for best original song,"The Continental." It set the look and sound of the Astaire-Rogers pictures for this studio, and brought together most of the onscreen, and offscreen, talent that would make them. And it was a great hit: nobody ever invented a better way for depression era audiences to forget their cares.
It was based on a stage play in which Astaire starred, "The Gay Divorce." Screenwriter Dwight Taylor, producer Pandro S. Berman, director Mark Sandrich, cinematographer David Abel, Oscar-nominated art directors Carroll Clark and Van Nest Polglase, and costumier Walter Plunkett gave us a magically elegant looking film, all creamy black and white art deco. The romantic comedy plot was silly, and forgettable,(all mistaken identities, something to do with divorce), just as all future Astaire/Rogers movie plots for this studio would be. The acting company established here would show up in future films, too: Edward Everett Horton as Astaire's befuddled best friend, lawyer Egbert (Pinky) Fitzgerald; Erik Rhodes as the ethnic Italian, (co-respondent Rodolo Tonetti); Eric Blore as the funny working class bloke, sometimes a valet, here a waiter. Only one member of the usual company is missing here, the priceless rubber faced Helen Broderick, always Marge, or Madge, Rogers' female sidekick. That part is here played by Alice Brady, as Rogers' ditsy Aunt Hortense. There are fewer dance numbers, and great songs by brand name composers, than future movies would boast. Horton's character gets to dance; Blore's seems to get more lines than usual; Rhodes' actually gets to sing, and play his concertina. A very young Betty Grable is given a novelty song and dance number. A repeated gag, "Chance is the fool's name for fate," is funny enough. The movie kept only one song from the stage play on which it was based, Cole Porter's everlasting "Night and Day." When first written, it was considered unsingable, but, as Astaire does it, it's unforgettable, imbued with love and longing. The Astaire/Rogers dance to it wins many votes as most romantic and sexy movie dance ever: Rogers could actually act, while, to quote the feminist Gloria Steinem, dancing backwards and in heels. The duo concludes, wrung out; Astaire offers Rogers a cigarette, perhaps the second sexiest in cinema, after that shared by Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in "Now Voyager." Then there's "The Continental," seventeen minutes( the movie's only 105!) of sheer black and white musical bliss. Lots of dancing up and down staircases, revolving doors, and chorus boys and girls. That cute bit with the cutout dancers on the revolving record player turntable. And a brief instrumental reprise a bit later, to wrap things up. What a way to go. |
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