And it begins by setting up the reliable "professor meets showgirl" scenario that Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder would polish to perfection with Ball of Fire (1941).īotany professor Peter Morgan Jr. There's certainly nothing anomalous about the film's plot it hits several tried-and-true tropes of screwball comedy during its brisk 90-minute runtime. (Rogers was by far the bigger star at the time.) It certainly never makes the top tier of lists of great screwball comedies, which is why fifty years passed after learning about the picture before I finally sat down and watched it. Perhaps some of us remember it as a lesser film in Jimmy Stewart's filmography, made when he was just emerging from second billing. Probably the best example of this is Vivacious Lady (1938), the kind of comedy George Stevens was known for until World War Two turned him into a more ponderous director. Rogers' persona allowed her to wisecrack and play hard to get as much as any other screwball heroine, but our collective memories of her as the fated conquest at the end of Fred Astaire's light-footed pursuit somehow overshadow this essential fact about Rogers onscreen. Perhaps not as perfect as, say, Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert, but at least as good as Irene Dunne or Jean Arthur. Or would, if those RKO musicals hadn't been so utterly iconic, then and now.Īnd because Rogers did such a fine job as a screwball comedy heroine. But it's with a slight sense of shame that you realize that she was always far more than the second half of an onscreen entity known as "Fred and Ginger".īecause her filmography provides so much evidence of her star power at a glance: Stage Door, Bachelor Mother, Primrose Path, Kitty Foyle, Roxie Hart, The Major and the Minor, I'll Be Seeing You, Storm Warning and Monkey Business taken together are evidence of a career that makes her few years as half of a dance partnership more like a footnote. You never, of course, diminished her talent, especially as Fred Astaire's dance partner over their nine or so RKO musicals in the '30s. There comes a point in every classic film fan's life when you realize you underestimated Ginger Rogers.
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