In 1933, the RKO film “Flying Down to Rio” featured a role for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as dancers. Up to this point, Fred had been known for being half a brother and sister dancing act on Broadway, and Ginger was known as an actress. Learning to dance with Fred wasn’t easy, and Ginger wore her feet bloody in rehearsal.
Following the success of that film, producer Pandro Berman got in touch with Cole Porter, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin to write for a series of movie musicals that would feature Fred and Ginger as the leads. The composers would be in charge of writing the songs. Incidental music would be written by five in-house composers supervised by Max Steiner, who would later become one of the most prolific movie composers in the business, to include “Gone With the Wind.” The director would be Mark Sandrich, whose son Jay would become a highly successful TV director. Irving would end up writing songs for three of Berman’s musicals.
This was the movie where Irving and Fred became close friends. Fred loved and was highly supportive of Irving’s work, and Irving found it easy to write for him.
This 1935 entry would become the most successful of the Astaire-Rogers films, both in terms of money and critical success. Irving got a 10% share of the net, and the movie was one of his greatest earners.
This musical number from the film comes out of a conversation where Edward Everett Horton urges Fred to marry. He taps his way through the song, disturbing Ginger, who is downstairs trying to sleep. This sets up a “cute meet.”
