On this day, in 1936, Swing Time opened in theaters!
If you know me, you know Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers have a very special place in my classic-film-loving heart. Swing Time is one of my absolute favorites of theirs, along with Top Hat.
There's just something magical about these two together. The minute Fred and Ginger start dancing, everything else disappears. They were elegant, romantic, funny, playful... and somehow made the most ridiculously difficult dancing look like they just decided to get up and do it.
And Swing Time, for me, is where everything came together perfectly.
My favorite number has always been "Pick Yourself Up." I LOVE the whole setup—Ginger thinks Fred is this hopeless, bumbling dance student, and then suddenly... off they go! The chemistry, the tapping, the way they play off one another—I could watch that number a hundred times and still smile.
Then there's "Never Gonna Dance," which may be one of the most beautiful things they ever put on film. What amazes me is knowing how grueling it actually was to create. They reportedly went through dozens of takes filming that climactic routine, leaving Ginger's feet battered and bleeding. Yet watch the finished scene. Not one hint of how difficult it was. They simply float.
And of course, Swing Time gave us "The Way You Look Tonight." Fred sitting at that piano singing while Ginger listens nearby... Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields deservedly won the Oscar for it.
I love ALL the Fred & Ginger films for different reasons, but if someone asked me to show them one movie that explains why these two were so special together, this would probably be it.
Ninety years later, we're still watching them dance, still falling in love with them, and still wondering how on earth they made it all look so easy.
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