This is one of the best Fred Astaire’s movies, the fight scenes with Ginger Rogers were very good and funny (funny because you know the Barkleys love each other and those are just love fights :-D)
Josh (Astaire) and Dinah (Rogers) Barkley are a couple both on and off stage. They are married and they work together in Broadway musical comedies, and they love each other very much, but they keep bickering all the time because he always finds something wrong in her performances and she gets offended. Of course. They always make peace though.
At a party she meets Jacques (Jacques Francois), a playwriter who admires her very much and tells her that she’s wasted in musical comedy, that she could be a great dramatic actress!
When he hears this, Josh is angry, tells her she’d be nothing without him, that he moulded her… they fight but make peace again.
They meet Jacques again when they visit some friends in the country, and Jacques tells Dinah that he’s wrote a new play about Sarah Bernard called “the young Sarah”, her life and how she became famous. He wants her to play the leading role, and she’s very very tempted but refuses because of her husband (who is such a stubborn baby, like when he waited on the golf course even if it was raining because “she said she’d meet me here” and he wanted her to come to him!)
She can’t stop thinking about the part, and when he finds her reading the script they fight again, because he thinks she can only do well with him, while she thinks he doesn’t appreciate her enough, always criticizing her.
This time she walks away, tells him to use her understudy Shirlene (Gale Robbins) in the musical because she won’t do it anymore.
They split up, both personally and professionally, and she starts rehearsing the play.
Here there is a long but funny enough dance number, the “shoes with wings on”, where some shoes start dancing on their own so he puts a pair on and can’t keep still, he has to tip-tap around, first alone and then with other shoes, until he shoots them to stop them.
Josh goes spying on her rehearsing, which is not going very good because she doesn’t understand Jacques instruction. Josh feels bad about it and wants to help her, so he calls her and helps her understand the part, imitating Jacques’ voice. She improves, so he keeps calling her.
Their friend Ezra Millar (Oscar Levant) tricks them both into attending a benefit event, where he has them dance together, for quite a long dance - that is, after he has played the piano for five minutes! with just a small interruption half way to show us Josh and Dinah meeting).
Dinah tells Josh that she wants to find her way without him, because he took her for granted and she wants to do something she’s always wanted to do by herself.
They go their separate ways, but she cries.
At the opening night, Dinah’s play is a success, everybody says she was terrific, and he’s glad about it, but also worried that she might now be in love with Jacques, so to be sure he calls her again imitating Jacques.
He asks her who does she love now between the two of them, and when Jacques walk in on her on the phone, she understands everything, that it’s Josh on the phone and that it was always him helping her with the part.
She plays with him, saying she doesn’t love her husband anymore but only him, Jacques, and then she changes (of course, this movies are always a lovely fashion show), and goes to their house to meet him.
When he arrives he tells her she’ll get her divorce, for all he cares, because now he and Shirlene are mad about each other (sigh, why are men like this? were? are?…) so she confesses that she knew it was him on the phone and they make peace and kiss and talk of love again….
And the ending sees the two of them dancing together again in their musical shows… I mean, love prevails and that’s good, but does that mean she won’t play Sarah anymore? She only did one night, she can’t leave like that, what will they do? That’s not fair…
ITA I Barkleys di Broadway
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