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How to Make a Great Fred & Ginger Film
Aug. 5th, 2015 12:05 amThis post is for the Summer under the Stars Blogathon at Journeys in Classic Film (in honor of TCM's Summer under the Stars month).
The first thing I noticed when I saw the schedule for Fred Astaire's SUTS day, August 5, is that nine of the 13 films TCM chose to air were Fred's films with Ginger Rogers. (Only The Barkleys of Broadway -- the film that brought them together one last time, 10 years after they had ended their original partnership -- is missing.) Moreover, the Fred and Ginger films are running back-to-back all day long, from 6 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. Eastern; the other four are grouped together at the end of Astaire's day.
There's no reason that the TCM programmers had to do it that way. Astaire made plenty of films on his own, apart from Rogers; they could very easily have run just three or four of the duo's best films, interspersed with some of his other great movies. But they did it this way instead -- perhaps because, when you get right down to it, most people remember Astaire best with Rogers. So dawn to dusk will be filled with top hats, tails, and twirling feathered gowns in glamorous Art Deco ballrooms.
I'll grant you, I can see the appeal!
I will therefore dedicate this post to a quick breakdown of the elements of the best Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers films.
( Step this way . . . )
The first thing I noticed when I saw the schedule for Fred Astaire's SUTS day, August 5, is that nine of the 13 films TCM chose to air were Fred's films with Ginger Rogers. (Only The Barkleys of Broadway -- the film that brought them together one last time, 10 years after they had ended their original partnership -- is missing.) Moreover, the Fred and Ginger films are running back-to-back all day long, from 6 a.m. to 10:15 p.m. Eastern; the other four are grouped together at the end of Astaire's day.
There's no reason that the TCM programmers had to do it that way. Astaire made plenty of films on his own, apart from Rogers; they could very easily have run just three or four of the duo's best films, interspersed with some of his other great movies. But they did it this way instead -- perhaps because, when you get right down to it, most people remember Astaire best with Rogers. So dawn to dusk will be filled with top hats, tails, and twirling feathered gowns in glamorous Art Deco ballrooms.
I'll grant you, I can see the appeal!
I will therefore dedicate this post to a quick breakdown of the elements of the best Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers films.
( Step this way . . . )
