The Gay Divorcee Reviews

The best of the Fred and Ginger movies take place in an imaginary Art Deco world where the Great Depression takes place in an alternate reality, the champagne flows freely, and the ideal rich are charmingly bumbling their way through love and posh continental locations. The formula of their films hadn’t quite settled just yet as The Gay Divorcee was their second film together but the first as leads. The studio stuck them with proven commodities like Alice Brady, future sidekicks Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton, and plum songbook by Cole Porter.

If the studio didn’t have enough faith in them, and by all accounts they didn’t, then RKO was foolish in historical hindsight. While The Gay Divorcee isn’t one of my favorite outing from the pair, it’s still a uniformly strong one. It was proof-positive that the duo had something magical that could be exploited.

Fred Astaire’s sophistication needs Ginger Rogers’ bluntness, and Rogers’ sexuality needs Astaire’s elegance to balance everything out. He’s the weaker actor between the pair and she’s the weaker dancer, but it doesn’t matter when the music kicks in and they takeoff to the races with each other. Whatever individual strengths or weaknesses they had as performers was balanced out with the other and the whole thing becomes a glimpse at cinematic gods engaged in play.

To complain about the central thinness of the plot of a Fred and Ginger movie is a bit foolhardy, but I’m about to do it anyway. The romantic twists and turns are perfectly fine, as are the mistaken identities, but then there’s the variety of supporting players and one-offs eating up time with comedic bits or musical diversions. Sure, it’s cute to watch Betty Grable flirt out “Let’s K-nock K-nees” but what does it add to the primary plot of The Gay Divorcee? That’s where films like Top Hat and Swing Time shine. There’s not an ounce of fat on them as they move with precision through their setups and routines.

The Gay Divorcee is second shelf but still a very good time. After all, “The Continental” is an ever-expanding dance routine that eats up nearly 20 minutes of screen time by itself, and it’s one of the best sequences in any of their films. Same goes for the romantic interlude of “Night and Day.” The ingredients are all there, but the makers haven’t quite got the recipe right.