Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger's final film at RKO, "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle" is so atypical of their other films that it is usually seen as a curiosity or to complete a personal goal of seeing all ten. By no means should it be the first as it's a historical biopic where the characters and dances are based on historic originals. It is, of course, a good picture on its own merits. I was originally disappointed when I first saw this film years ago, that Fred and Ginger were unable to be the characters they had developed over the years and could not dance in their usual way. This was only because it was their last film of their legendary run at RKO and I would have preferred that it be more typical. Had it been made somewhere in the middle there would have been no issue at all. Seeing it several times since then I find that they aren't too far from their usual personas and their joy and perfection when dancing even in historic styles is as wonderful as ever. In fact, it's really interesting to see them dance differently. Ginger's comic solo "Clown Dance" is remarkably athletic with its high kicks., deep bends and cartwheels. The usual romantic dance is made up for by an exquisite dance at the Cafe de Paris with Fred in a military uniform and Ginger in a flowing dress.
After six spectacular successes beginning with 1933's "Flying Down to Rio ", the duo's films began to stumble after "Swing Time". I don't believe, as some do, that the public was tired of them, though that may be a partial factor. The times were changing, and sophisticated dance orchestras were giving way to brassy BIg Bands. "Shall We Dance" made only half the usual profit, but it had replaced the traditional exquisite romantic dance with a muddled and overcrowded finale in which the two danced together for less than two minutes. "Carefree " tried them as a screwball comedy team, but Astaire was no Cary Grant in this respect, and the psychiatric theme and dream sequence seemed kooky to many fans. Among their films, it alone actually lost money. Thus RKO decided to try them in a period picture to give the public something different.
The natural subject was the great dance team before Fred and Ginger, Vernon and Irene Castle, who were an absolute sensation in the 1911-1918 era that saw the peak of Ragtime and the beginning of the Jazz Age. The Castles helped popularize both styles and also styles of and dress. As a happily married and respectable couple, they popularized close dancing with the Two-step, Turkey Trot, Tango and most notably the Fox Trot, which was still being danced in the 1950s. They appeared in silent films and wrote a wildly popular dance instruction book, "Modern Dancing". Irene became a fashion icon in Vogue and introduced more flowing dresses and in 1913, "The Bob", a short, almost boyish hairstyle that caught on until it became all the rage of the Twenties. Goodbye to stiff brocades, tight corsets and long hair worn with large and elaborate hats. They had their own dancing school and nightclub and, as shown in a clever montage, gave their names to everything from Cigars to cosmetics and clothes. They were also early "Moderns" with both in favor of women's suffrage.
RKO went all out for the picture giving it a lavish production which shows in every scene which is fully mounted with elaborate sets, full of extras. This puts it in a different world than the usual Astaire/Rogers pictures, which operates more like a fantasy world. Here the world portrayed is the one we normally inhabit. The plot is more important as well. Usually the plot is some delightfully silly thing to fill in time between dances. Here it is the story of ballroom dancing's first superstar couple and it requires sincere acting which both Astaire and Rogers deliver. They had already agreed that this would be their last film and Rogers was looking forward to an acting career which would start with a bang the following year with "Kitty Foyle", her Academy Award winning role.
RKO gave the film not to Mark Sandrich, the usual director of the Astaire/Rogers films, but to H. C. Potter, who had been a successful director on Broadway who had only begun directing films in 1936. He did a good job managing the often crowded scenes and keeping everything moving along briskly (almost too briskly - the film seemed a bit short to me, as I didn't feel I knew the Castles that well). All the dancing was in the actual style of the Castles so there's no jumping out of the era to dance in a more current style. (This was popular in biopics of the 40s and 50s where period and dancing rarely match). The script is more faithful than usual to the actual events of the Castles' lives and careers with some leeway given for a cute meeting and a rougher time in Paris than they actually had. As a movie not a book, it requires a certain amount of drama. The central cast is Astaire and Rogers assisted by Edna May Oliver and Walter Brennan. Oliver plays the Castles' agent-manager, Maggie Sutton in her usual authoritative and commanding way, but here she gets to play nice, a change from Miss Prost or Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Her character is based on actual manager Elisabeth Marbury, an important literary and theatrical agent who opened the way for women in this area and whose clients included Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. The film simplifies her as simply a strong and determined woman, notably changing the character name so as not to portray an actual person.
Walter Brennan is the Castles' friend and manservant, Walter. This early in his career he was less identified with Westerns but still is Walter Brennan, a bit countryish and cantankerous in a comic role. He doesn't lay it on too thick here as he did in later days. In a neat bit of casting, Lew Fields, famous comic and theater producer plays his younger self. He had been one of the biggest names in vaudeville teamed with Joe Weber. Age 72 when the film was made, he gave Vernon Castle his first break, a small role on stage which Castle built into an act. Irene Castle herself was brought onboard as a consultant for the film and she rivals the situation Disney had with P. L. Travers consulting on "Mary Poppins". She made the naive assumption that the film, based on her book, was about her, a natural mistake. This was Hollywood. The film was a vehicle for Fred and Ginger, not a documentary. Once Hollywood gets ahold of a property, it can turn it into anything. In this case RKO was very accurate in most respects, but she wanted every detail to be accurate. She approved of Astaire but not of Rogers.
Ginger, an actress, knew what she needed, which most of all was to be recognizable. She refused to dye her hair brunette like Castle's or to truly bob it (they restyled her hair to a mass of curls in back, not really a bob). Irene hated the costumes worn in the non-dance segments, which Ginger had insisted be updated to look more Thirties, while the dance costumes were recreations of costumes actually worn by Irene. She also objected to Ginger not wearing a hat in one scene where she had actually worn one and seriously wanted it reshot. She took a larger paycheck in compensation but disowned the film. The film was very popular in the end, but the production costs, which included scenes with biplanes, ate up much of what would have been profits in the usual Astaire/Rogers film. Despite that it did make a profit. A historical picture made an odd swan song for cinema's great dance partnership, but it wasn't the very end. They would make a final film together for MGM in 1949.
After six spectacular successes beginning with 1933's "Flying Down to Rio ", the duo's films began to stumble after "Swing Time". I don't believe, as some do, that the public was tired of them, though that may be a partial factor. The times were changing, and sophisticated dance orchestras were giving way to brassy BIg Bands. "Shall We Dance" made only half the usual profit, but it had replaced the traditional exquisite romantic dance with a muddled and overcrowded finale in which the two danced together for less than two minutes. "Carefree " tried them as a screwball comedy team, but Astaire was no Cary Grant in this respect, and the psychiatric theme and dream sequence seemed kooky to many fans. Among their films, it alone actually lost money. Thus RKO decided to try them in a period picture to give the public something different.
The natural subject was the great dance team before Fred and Ginger, Vernon and Irene Castle, who were an absolute sensation in the 1911-1918 era that saw the peak of Ragtime and the beginning of the Jazz Age. The Castles helped popularize both styles and also styles of and dress. As a happily married and respectable couple, they popularized close dancing with the Two-step, Turkey Trot, Tango and most notably the Fox Trot, which was still being danced in the 1950s. They appeared in silent films and wrote a wildly popular dance instruction book, "Modern Dancing". Irene became a fashion icon in Vogue and introduced more flowing dresses and in 1913, "The Bob", a short, almost boyish hairstyle that caught on until it became all the rage of the Twenties. Goodbye to stiff brocades, tight corsets and long hair worn with large and elaborate hats. They had their own dancing school and nightclub and, as shown in a clever montage, gave their names to everything from Cigars to cosmetics and clothes. They were also early "Moderns" with both in favor of women's suffrage.
RKO went all out for the picture giving it a lavish production which shows in every scene which is fully mounted with elaborate sets, full of extras. This puts it in a different world than the usual Astaire/Rogers pictures, which operates more like a fantasy world. Here the world portrayed is the one we normally inhabit. The plot is more important as well. Usually the plot is some delightfully silly thing to fill in time between dances. Here it is the story of ballroom dancing's first superstar couple and it requires sincere acting which both Astaire and Rogers deliver. They had already agreed that this would be their last film and Rogers was looking forward to an acting career which would start with a bang the following year with "Kitty Foyle", her Academy Award winning role.
RKO gave the film not to Mark Sandrich, the usual director of the Astaire/Rogers films, but to H. C. Potter, who had been a successful director on Broadway who had only begun directing films in 1936. He did a good job managing the often crowded scenes and keeping everything moving along briskly (almost too briskly - the film seemed a bit short to me, as I didn't feel I knew the Castles that well). All the dancing was in the actual style of the Castles so there's no jumping out of the era to dance in a more current style. (This was popular in biopics of the 40s and 50s where period and dancing rarely match). The script is more faithful than usual to the actual events of the Castles' lives and careers with some leeway given for a cute meeting and a rougher time in Paris than they actually had. As a movie not a book, it requires a certain amount of drama. The central cast is Astaire and Rogers assisted by Edna May Oliver and Walter Brennan. Oliver plays the Castles' agent-manager, Maggie Sutton in her usual authoritative and commanding way, but here she gets to play nice, a change from Miss Prost or Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Her character is based on actual manager Elisabeth Marbury, an important literary and theatrical agent who opened the way for women in this area and whose clients included Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. The film simplifies her as simply a strong and determined woman, notably changing the character name so as not to portray an actual person.
Walter Brennan is the Castles' friend and manservant, Walter. This early in his career he was less identified with Westerns but still is Walter Brennan, a bit countryish and cantankerous in a comic role. He doesn't lay it on too thick here as he did in later days. In a neat bit of casting, Lew Fields, famous comic and theater producer plays his younger self. He had been one of the biggest names in vaudeville teamed with Joe Weber. Age 72 when the film was made, he gave Vernon Castle his first break, a small role on stage which Castle built into an act. Irene Castle herself was brought onboard as a consultant for the film and she rivals the situation Disney had with P. L. Travers consulting on "Mary Poppins". She made the naive assumption that the film, based on her book, was about her, a natural mistake. This was Hollywood. The film was a vehicle for Fred and Ginger, not a documentary. Once Hollywood gets ahold of a property, it can turn it into anything. In this case RKO was very accurate in most respects, but she wanted every detail to be accurate. She approved of Astaire but not of Rogers.
Ginger, an actress, knew what she needed, which most of all was to be recognizable. She refused to dye her hair brunette like Castle's or to truly bob it (they restyled her hair to a mass of curls in back, not really a bob). Irene hated the costumes worn in the non-dance segments, which Ginger had insisted be updated to look more Thirties, while the dance costumes were recreations of costumes actually worn by Irene. She also objected to Ginger not wearing a hat in one scene where she had actually worn one and seriously wanted it reshot. She took a larger paycheck in compensation but disowned the film. The film was very popular in the end, but the production costs, which included scenes with biplanes, ate up much of what would have been profits in the usual Astaire/Rogers film. Despite that it did make a profit. A historical picture made an odd swan song for cinema's great dance partnership, but it wasn't the very end. They would make a final film together for MGM in 1949.