Shall We Dance 2: Shall We Dancer



Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ("Fred & Ginger") made nine films together for RKO between 1933 and 1939. They were an incredibly popular and beloved duo and they helped pull America through the very difficult years of the Great Depression. You probably didn't need me to tell you any of that.


This week's film is more about what happened next.

Fred & Ginger went their separate ways after 1939; not because they had any kind of "falling out" but because their careers were on different trajectories. If anything, Ginger Rogers had been the more famous of the two of them when they were first teamed up; she was already an established Hollywood actress with a number of films to her credit, while Fred had never made a movie before and was known primarily for his Broadway partnership with his sister Adele (who was widely regarded as the more talented of the pair).



Fred hoped to prove that he could be a box office draw without an "&" attached to his name (Fred & Adele; Fred & Ginger) while Ginger Rogers herself spent the 1940s going from strength to strength. After winning an Oscar for her performance in Kitty Foyle, she appeared in a number of very successful (non-musical) roles over the next decade; lending her name and talent to such films as Bachelor Mother, The Major and the Minor and Tales of Manhattan (to name a few).


Fred Astaire, after making a number of musicals with various dance partners including Rita Hayworth and Eleanor Powell, surprised everyone by announcing his retirement in 1946. No longer the young dance prodigy (he was 47) and feeling that his career was beginning to stagnate, he decided that retiring while he was still on top was the correct move.



Then Gene Kelly broke his ankle.

Kelly was in preparations to make the film Easter Parade with Judy Garland when he was injured and had to withdraw from the production. MGM started to look for a suitable replacement, and it was Kelly himself who suggested coaxing Fred Astaire out of his "retirement".

The pairing of Astaire with Judy Garland proved to be a popular and successful one, and the studio was impressed enough to commission another vehicle for the two of them. Unfortunately, Judy Garland was battling her own personal demons. Her lifelong struggle with drug addiction came to a bit of a head, and she was unable to participate in the planned second film with Astaire.

Fred Astaire (who had stepped in to replace Gene Kelly) needed someone to step in to replace Judy Garland.

And so, in 1949, ten years after their previous film together, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were reunited on screen for The Barkleys of Broadway. 


In all their years of working together, Fred and Ginger had never made a sequel. But The Barkleys of Broadway comes close.


In most of their films, Ginger Rogers is there to be the love interest of Fred Astaire's character (and to dance with him, of course). Shall We Dance was a notable exception. In that film, Rogers had played Linda Keene, a famous (and very successful) international musical performer. Fred had played a classical ballet star (known professionally as "Petrov") but it's made very clear in the film that Linda Keene had the bigger career. 



When they (inevitably) get together at the end of the story, it's equally clear that Linda Keene is going to carry on working. Under no circumstances is she going to become a housewife.

That was in 1937. 

In The Barkleys of Broadway, Fred & Ginger play Josh & Dinah Barclay, a husband-and-wife musical duo who have been going from strength to strength over the last decade. 


Unfortunately, Josh tends to take his wife for granted, and Dinah feels that she is capable of more than musical comedy. A chance meeting with Jacques Barredout, a young and vaguely pretentious playwright who is looking for an actress to play Sarah Bernhardt in his new (very) serious drama provides Dinah with a chance to show her husband and the world that she is so much more than simply "the one who comes after the &".


The Barkleys of Broadway proved to be Fred & Ginger's final film together, and was their only film in colour. It is also notable in that it's very much about her.


This is a story about a fiercely talented woman who is no longer in her very first flush of youth, and who needs to stand on her own after a decade in her husband's shadow. Whether she does that or not is a matter of some debate, but the film provides a fascinating coda to the on-screen pairing of Fred & Ginger (or vice versa).


We are screening The Barkleys of Broadway at the Victora Park Baptist Church on Thursday, the 16th of June at 7.30.




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