"On the avenue... Fifth Avenue...." - Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in publicity for "Easter Parade", 1948

Freddie and Rita "rehearse" - publicity for "You Were Never Lovelier", 1942

The color photographs - taken on a studio roof - are credited to Earl Theisen.

The series of black and white photographs were taken by Johnny Florea.

Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth - both dancers from childhood - only made two pictures together, this was the second and final.

Astaire and Rogers in Never Gonna Dance, from Swing Time, 1936

Song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields; Choreography by Astaire and Hermes Pan; Set design by John Harkrider; Rogers' gown by Bernard Newman.

It's hard to believe that I've never done a post on this particular topic, the scene and dance generally regarded as the pinnacle of the Astaire and Rogers pairing. (And the set, with its twinkling, starry "sky", and Ginger's gown - which moves so beautifully that it actually becomes a key choreographic element - greatly support its ascent.) If you've never seen it, see it. If you have seen it - even seen it innumerable times, as I have - you know that there's no adequate way to describe or sufficiently applaud it. Only to acknowledge that, through an alchemy of pictorial design, music, and movement, a long length of celluloid film was produced - unspooling, a bit more than eight minutes in recorded time - that will forever continue to transfigure our dreaming.