Fred and Ginger: Making It Look Easy With Work and Worry

Fred: I’d like to try this thing, just once. Come on, honey.
Ginger: We’ll show them a thing or three!
‘Flying Down to Rio.’ (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers hit the dance floor in their first film together)

I recently watched a couple of documentaries about the legendary dance partners, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. (I’d particularly recommend episode 2 of ‘The RKO Story: Tales from Hollywood.’)

Between 1933 and 1939 Astaire and Rogers appeared together in nine RKO musical films – classics like ‘The Gay Divorcee’, ‘Top Hat’ and ‘Follow the Fleet’; ‘Swing Time’, ‘Shall We Dance’ and ‘Carefree’. They sparred and swooned, quipped and crooned; shimmied and span, twisted and turned. They defined a thrilling dance style that fused tap and ballroom with a dash of ballet. And they gave cinemagoers some welcome respite from the gloom of the Depression. 

'Part of the joy of dancing is conversation. Trouble is, some men can't talk and dance at the same time.’
Ginger Rogers

People working in creative industries today could learn a good deal from Fred and Ginger’s approach to their craft; from their robust mentality and rigorous process.

'Well, I thought I knew what concentrated work was before I met Fred, but he's the limit. Never satisfied until every detail is right, and he will not compromise. No sir! What's more, if he thinks of something better after you've finished a routine, you do it over.'
Ginger Rogers

 1. Get Taught and Trained

'Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained.’
Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire was born in 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska. As a young boy his mother encouraged him and his older sister Adele to form a song and dance act, and during the 1920s they had considerable success on Broadway and in London. They split in 1932 when Adele married and settled down. 

Like many stage performers of the day, Astaire determined to try his luck in Hollywood. But his first screen test was not encouraging:

‘Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.’

Nonetheless producer David O Selznick  thought Astaire had something.

'I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test.’

Astaire made his film debut in 1933 and that same year RKO Pictures proposed a small role, dancing with Ginger Rogers in ‘Flying Down to Rio.’

Rogers, born in 1911 in Independence, Missouri, was by then an established Broadway actress who had been performing in movies since 1929.

'My mother told me I was dancing before I was born. She could feel my toes tapping wildly inside her for months.'
Ginger Rogers

Astaire and Rogers were offered fifth and forth billing respectively on ‘Flying Down to Rio.’ But Astaire was initially reluctant to become part of another dance double act. He wrote to his agent:

'What's all this talk about me being teamed with Ginger Rogers? I will not have it - I did not go into pictures to be teamed with her or anyone else.’

 2. In an Era of Drabness, Make Things Glamorous

Astaire and Rogers’ performance in ‘Flying Down to Rio’ was considered its highlight. RKO, keen to capitalize on the success, commissioned them to appear together in more pictures. And they secured Astaire’s commitment to the partnership by giving him a percentage of the films' profits, a contractual rarity at that time.

'Do it big, do it right and do it with style.'
Fred Astaire

The couple danced so well together. They had an instinctive understanding, a natural chemistry. And their personalities complemented each other. While he was stylish and sophisticated, she was smart and sassy.  

'He gives her class and she gives him sex appeal.’
Katharine Hepburn

Astaire-Rogers movies told sentimental stories of glamorous people in fabulous locations. Astaire was consistently decked out in top hat and tails, and Rogers wore the most elegant dresses. The films had wit and style, luxury and romance, music and dancing. They offered welcome escape from the realities of recession-hit daily life.

‘It was [Producer Pan Berman’s] idea to make things glamorous in an era of drabness.’
Hermes Pan, Choreographer

3. Be a Team at All Times

RKO surrounded Astaire and Rogers with a team of talented practitioners across a range of disciplines.

First there was choreographer Hermes Pan, one of the few people Astaire would allow into his creative process.

‘We were always seeking ideas. Fred hated to repeat himself in anything.’
Hermes Pan, Choreographer

By contrast with the set-piece spectaculars of Busby Berkeley musicals, Astaire and Pan designed dance routines that were elegantly integrated with the plotlines of the films. 

‘To go from reality to fantasy is a difficult thing. Dialogue is reality. Dance is fantasy, and song. So you have to slide into it before the people are conscious that you are doing it.’
Hal Borne, Accompanist

Writer Allan Scott crafted light comedy dialogue to propel the drama gently forward.

‘The thing uppermost in my mind always was sentiment and absurdity. In other words, combine the two with a sort of rippling kind of dialogue without too many obvious jokes.’
Allan Scott

RKO employed a company of seasoned actors to play alongside Astaire and Rogers: including Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick and Erik Rhodes. And the music was composed by America’s greatest songwriters: Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, and Irving Berlin.

‘Berlin came in one afternoon, and he was a terrible pianist, just awful…He played ‘Cheek to Cheek’ and sang it. Of course he had an awful voice too. ‘Heaven, I’m in heaven…’ When he got through it, we looked at each other and said: ‘Oh yes, very good.’ ‘Is it?’ ‘Must be. He wrote it.’’
Hermes Pan, Choreographer

The set designers adapted the fashionable art deco styles of the day, and generally worked in white so as best to show off the dancing. The cinematographers learned to follow Astaire and Rogers’ every move, employing a close-tracking dolly camera.

Finally RKO producers ensured consistency by scheduling the same technicians to work on each new movie.

‘We worked as a team at all times. So when Mark [Sandrich, Director] got ready to do a picture, he said we’re going to go on such-and-such a date, everybody in the studio knew that, every department knew that. When he got ready to go, he had his crew.’
Joseph Biroc, Camera Operator

‘Heaven... I'm in heaven,
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.
And I seem to find the happiness I seek,
When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.
Heaven... I'm in heaven,
And the cares that hung around me through the week,
Seem to vanish like a gambler's lucky streak,
When we're out together dancing cheek to cheek.’
Fred Astaire, ‘Cheek to Cheek’ (I Berlin)

 4. If It Doesn’t Feel Right, Do It Over

'What counts more than luck is determination and perseverance. If the talent is there, it will come through. Don't be too impatient. Stick at it. That's my advice. You have to plug away, keep thinking up new ideas. If one doesn't work, try another.’
Fred Astaire

Astaire was hard working and obsessive, an absolute stickler for detail. 

‘Fred Astaire was such a perfectionist, and if a thing didn’t feel right they did it over.’
Maurice Zuberano, Set Designer

Rogers shared Astaire’s uncompromising standards

'The only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it first.'
Ginger Rogers

The creative process began with Astaire and Pan working out routines together, and then Rogers was introduced to the steps a few weeks later. The duo had daily rehearsals for five to six weeks until they were ready for principal photography. 

‘We would dance all day, every day in a rehearsal hall at RKO Studios. And we had a great deal of fun. There’s something about rehearsals that’s really very exciting. When you actually got to the shooting and doing the scene, the fun has kind of gone out of it to some extent.’
Ginger Rogers

Only when Astaire, Rogers and Pan were entirely confident in a routine would they expose it to the broader team.

‘I never wanted to show numbers that we were doing until we had them pretty well finished, and invited them to come and take a look …. Usually they loved what they saw, because we knew what we were doing by that time.’

Astaire insisted that dance routines be filmed in as few shots as possible, typically with just four to eight cuts, while holding the dancers in full view at all times. This proved incredibly challenging. One sequence in ‘Swing Time,’ which required the duo to dance while climbing stairs, took 47 takes to perfect. By the end of the shoot, Rogers' feet were bleeding.

‘I can only get the job done if I beat myself to a pulp. You rehearse and get to know it so well, you don’t look as if you’re wondering what the next step is.’
Fred Astaire

5. Employ Constructive Anxiety

In his youth Astaire’s sister had branded him Moaning Mini. He fretted before, during and after a production.

‘I worried about things 10 years after I did them.’

Such was Astaire’s apprehension around the work that he couldn’t stand to review the rushes himself, and so sent Pan in his place.

‘He said: How was it?
I said: Oh, it was great.
He said: I don’t like the way you said great.’
Hermes Pan, Choreographer

Conventionally we consider worry a corrosive condition. But Astaire’s was a constructive anxiety. It produced better work.

'Things have come to a pretty pass,
Our romance is growing flat,
For you like this and the other
While I go for this and that.
Goodness knows what the end will be,
Oh, I don't know where I'm at...
It looks as if we two will never be one,
Something must be done.
You say eether and I say eyether,
You say neether and I say nyther,
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther,
Let's call the whole thing off!’
Fred Astaire, ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ (G &I Gershwin)

6. Argue, Don’t Quarrel

There were longstanding rumours, possibly started by the studio to drum up publicity, that Astaire and Rogers didn’t actually get on with each other. They spent many years setting the record straight.

'We had fun and it shows. True, we were never bosom buddies off the screen. We were different people with different interests. We were only a couple on film.’
Ginger Rogers

There were certainly a few occasions when Rogers’ dramatic costume choices frustrated Astaire. In one routine in ‘Follow the Fleet’ her heavily beaded, bell-shaped sleeves slapped Astaire every time she took a turn. 

'The world needs strong women. There are a lot of strong women you do not see... It's kind of nice to be able to play a strong woman who is seen.'
Ginger Rogers

In ‘Top Hat’ the ostrich feathers in her blue gown flew off in all directions when she span, and all over his tuxedo. Astaire argued repeatedly for Rogers to change her costume. But she held her ground. And she was right: the cascading feathers enhance the graceful fluidity of the dance.

‘I guess I couldn’t blame him. But I had designed the dress and I was going to wear it. And I did.’
Ginger Rogers

Astaire explained afterwards that robust arguments are critical to successful working relationships.

‘We never quarrelled. We argued about something, which you do with anybody you’re working a routine or dances with.’
Fred Astaire

By the end of the ‘30s the partnership had run its course. Rogers wanted more challenging dramatic roles and Astaire was keen to work with other dancers. What’s more, musicals were expensive to produce and RKO was facing financial difficulties.

And so that was more or less it. Astaire went on to make movies with Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse and Judy Garland. Rogers won the 1941 Academy Award for her performance in ‘Kitty Foyle,’ and by the mid-1940s she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. 

'This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.'
Fred Astaire

Astaire and Rogers made one last movie together (their first in colour) when Rogers stepped in for a sick Judy Garland for 1949’s 'The Barkleys of Broadway'. When they filmed the last dance, a large crowd of crew members from productions past and present gathered to bid them farewell.

'I did everything Fred did, only backwards and in high heels.'
Ginger Rogers

Astaire and Rogers had revolutionised dance on film. They had set new standards for performance and artistry. They had given joy to millions of people all over the world. And they had made it all look easy.

'I suppose I made it look easy, but gee whiz, did I work and worry.’
Fred Astaire

'The weather is frightening,
The thunder and lightning
Seem to be having their way.
But as far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely day.
The turn in the weather will keep us together.
So I can honestly say
That as far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely day.
And everything's okay.
Isn't this a lovely day to be caught in the rain?
You were going on your way, now you've got to remain.
Just as you were going, leaving me all at sea,
The clouds broke, they broke and oh, what a break for me.’
Fred Astaire, ‘Isn’t This a Lovely Day’ (I Berlin)

No. 378

Stick Or Twist? Learning When To Change

‘Oh, I’ve got news for you, Baby,
That I’ve made plans for two.
I guess I’m just a stubborn kind of fellow.
Got my mind made up to love you.’

Stubborn Kind of Fellow/ Marvin Gaye (Stevenson/Gaye/Gordy)

I recently saw an excellent production of the August Wilson play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which runs at The National Theatre in London until 18 May). Through a ten-play cycle Wilson, who passed away in 2005, sought to document the African American experience. He wrote one play for each decade of the twentieth century. It’s a titanic achievement and surely one day a major British theatre company will stage all ten.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is set in Chicago in 1927.  It considers the lives of a group of black musicians for whom slavery is a recent memory and discrimination is a current reality. Ma Rainey, the ‘Mother of the Blues,’ is booked into a studio to record, amongst other material, her signature tune, Black Bottom. Rainey is tough, imperious, defiant. Through years of bitter experience she has learned to stand up to the threats and enticements of corporate white America. Her manager and producer are eager for her to evolve her blues sound to accommodate the growing public enthusiasm for jazz rhythms. And they have an ally in the ambitious young dandy of a trumpet player, Levee, who has written a more jazz-inflected arrangement of Rainey’s tune.

Our sympathies are naturally with Rainey. We applaud her dogged determination, her inflexible insistence on doing her song her way. We want her to win.

Maybe we always side with the stubborn ones. We admire the independent voice, the tenacious spirit. Our cultural history is crammed with heroic tales of single-minded artists taking on the reactionary establishment, the carping critics, the fickle public.

So we applaud Ginger Rogers when she insists on wearing her ostrich feather dress for Cheek to Cheek, despite the protestations of Fred Astaire, who found the wayward plumes distracting.

We delight in the rigidity of Samuel Beckett’s stage directions, which preclude any new director’s interpretations of his work. 

We cheer when we hear how Shostakovitch responded to critics’ comments as he was finalising his Leningrad Symphony:

‘I take them under consideration, but not into practice.’

But are we right to side with Rainey? Perhaps her producer and manager are just thinking about money. But Levee clearly has artistic, as well as selfish motives, to adapt her piece. And why not sympathise with the audience’s appetite for change, freshness and innovation?

Is the accommodation of public opinion and preference inherently wrong? Shouldn’t any creative endeavour evolve and transform in tune with times and tastes?

I suspect that, whilst we celebrate romantic yarns of artistic integrity and defiance in the face of feedback, most of us in the commercial sector are engaged in more nuanced, calibrated calculations. Indeed the navigation of different dynamics and tensions is at the heart of commercial creativity. We’re not pursuing ‘art for art’s sake.’ We have attitudinal, behavioural and financial goals. For us creativity is not an end in itself. It is a strategy for achieving effectiveness.

In my experience the best Creative Directors and Strategists know when to be stubborn with an idea; when to stay with it, despite dissenting opinion and challenging research. But they can also judge when to back off; when cumulative evidence or circumstances prevent progress. Sometimes they evolve and adapt a concept to accommodate the external point of view. And sometimes they can switch effortlessly from single-minded passion to starting all over again.

Fundamentally we need to learn when to stick and when to twist.  It’s not a science. It’s a skill.

‘You notice how in winter-floods the trees which bend before the storm preserve their twigs. The ones which stand against it are destroyed, root and branch.’

 Haemon to his father Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone

In many ways Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a joyous, funny, inspiring play. But there’s also a note of sadness hanging over proceedings, as the whole cast variously reflect on their experiences of prejudice, failure and loss.  As the wise pianist, Toledo, says of his own disappointments:

‘Gonna be foolish again. But I ain’t never been the same fool twice.’

No. 72