Shall We Dance? (1937)

And speaking of Fred Astaire...

Well, actually I could entitle this post On Ginger, because I intend to use it to talk about Ginger Rogers, who is probably my all-time favorite movie actress.

When I start to write about Rogers, one of the first things that pops into my head is that an old feminist quip from the 1960s/1970s that went, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels."

What a crock! There are so many things wrong with this statement on so many levels, it makes me angry to think about it.

First off, as a statement of fact, it is flat-out false. Rogers did not do everything Astaire did. That would be nearly impossible. Among the reasons is the difference between the male and female bodies and how they move while dancing. Even my super-feminist ex-wife, who introduced me to dancing lessons twenty years ago, would have admitted that in a second. Moreover, Astaire is not just any male dancer but arguably the most uniquely talented of all time. His signature moves, of swinging his legs pendulum-like while the rest of body undergoes seemingly independent motion, is something that Gene Kelly wouldn't even be able to pull off with the same grace. And Kelly was really, really good, of course.

The quip actually refers to the fact that in traditional ballroom dance, the man is the lead. The lead (the man) steps forward with his left foot on the first beat, while the woman steps back on her right foot. It's just convention. Anyone can dance anyway they want to, and either partner can lead if they want, but well, somehow people often like it the traditional way, no matter how much others may not like it.

But Astaire and Rogers rarely danced like that. Most of their dancing screen time together is spent dancing side-by-side, facing camera. Also Rogers wore heels on screen only when the plot called for her character to be wearing heels. She often wears flats in many of the complicated numbers (and roller skates).

Rogers never tried to do most of the things Astaire did on screen. She did her own thing. Yeah, her own thing, with moves that Astaire never could have pulled off. How terribly patriarchal and retrograde!

And what was her thing? If Astaire's signature was his pendulum legs, then Rogers true genius was in her twirl.  Better than any other dancer in the history of Hollywood, Rogers was the master of circular motion, the adaptation of the pirouette into fluid motion on a sound state, often moving back and forth to Astaire like a yo-yo, but of her own free will, not his. The twirl is not something that a male dancer could pull off in the same way. Kelly could do it with power, but it is Rogers to capture something that seems to be lost on current audiences: feminine grace. I love how she seems to know exactly where her dress is, and how to make it slow at the end of the swirl and reverse direction right in time with the music.

One of the reasons that Shall We Dance? is probably my favorite pairing of the two great dancers is that specifically because it calls attention to Rogers' twirl. Actually in the movie, Astaire calls it her "tweeeeest" (as in twist). He character at that point is pretending to be a Russian dancer, but of course Rogers has already learned that he is faking the accent. When I saw that scene I smiled, because I'd already developed my theory of Rogers' twirl, and I knew immediately that this was something recognized by people at the time, although it seems lost to today's audiences.

Rogers' ability to somewhat cynically dismiss Astaire's corny humor, all the while falling for him, is what makes a lot of their movies have spark and life. Shall We Dance? is almost a primer in in the ins-and-outs of misunderstandings that crop up in a love affair, and the necessity for the man to be persistent and patient in pursuing his True Love. These are lessons of classical romance that were once the common wisdom of our society but which were rarely told to my generation.

Rogers always gets me when he starts to sing to. By no means could she match, say, Garland, in terms of vocal solo performance, but like in her dancing, Rogers' great skill was in how she used her voice and her body in character. She has an unmatched ability in my book to seamlessly go from talking/walking to singing/dancing as if there were no line between them. If (post)modern audiences lack a full appreciation for Rogers, I think it because they don't like her characters, who are very traditional in how they interact with men on screen.

I love the scene with her walking the dog, and the little story that is told in complete silence, moving the story along without a word of dialogue. My favorite musical number in this movie is when Rogers launches into her nasal drone, "The odds were a hundred to one against me..."

Bonus video: Rogers at age 92, doing the salsa.