Miss Rogers, facing the music - Ginger Rogers (and Fred Astaire), publicity for "Follow the Fleet", 1936

 

"Let's Face the Music and Dance", music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Gown by Bernard Newman. Set design by Carroll Clark under the direction of Van Nest Polglase.

The smiles are additional proof that these were staged images; there was decidedly no smiling in the sublimely poignant "Let's Face the Music and Dance."

The final eleven images are screen shots from the actual film.

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.