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The Bargain Nexus - The Gay Divorcee
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List Price: $14.98
Our Price: $2.87
Your Save: $ 12.11 ( 81% )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Turner Home Ent
Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes
Directed By: Mark Sandrich
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9780780625761
Format: Black & White
ISBN: 0780625765
Label: Turner Home Ent
Manufacturer: Turner Home Ent
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Turner Home Ent
Release Date: 1999-05-04
Running Time: 107
Studio: Turner Home Ent
Theatrical Release Date: 1934-10-12
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Astaire and Rogers at their best.
Comment: "The Gay Divorcee" is one of the great musicals of all time. It is also one of my favorite films, usually in my personal top five.
Guy (Fred Astaire) is a professional dancer touring Europe. Mimi (Ginger Rogers) is a married woman seeking a divorce from her husband. Her dizzy Aunt Hortense (Alice Brady) hires Guy's friend Egbert as Mimi's attorney.
After a misunderstanding at a customs hall in England, Mimi is resistant to Guy's attempts to woo her. At the hotel where they are both staying, Guy and Mimi dance to Cole Porter's "Night and Day". After the spectacular dance, we see that Mimi is finally coming around,becoming smitten with him.
Things become complicated when Egbert hires a paid correspondent,Tonetti
(the very funny Erik Rhodes) to help Mimi get her divorce. Mimi mistakes Guy for the correspodent, leading to many misunderstandings that have to be resolved before the happy ending can be acheived.
There is much to enjoy in this movie. Yes, the plot is the type that only happens in musicals. But it sophisticated and funny. The dancing is superb. The songs themselves are excellent too. Fred's rendition of "Night and Day" is the defintive performance of it."Let's Knock Knees", sung by the then unknown Betty Grable, is a charming moment. And the 17- minute production number "The Continental" is an eye-popping spectacle that won the first ever Oscar awarded for best song.
"The Gay Divorcee" was a big hit in its time, moving Fred And Ginger up to fourth position on the list of box office stars. It also received four other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
The supporting cast is outstanding. Brady's dizzy dame act is a riot. A subplot teams her romantically with Horton. Horton's fussy character is well matched with hers.Look for Eric Blore, who appears in five Astaire-Rogers muscials, as waiter who steals his scenes when he appears.
The DVD includes the theatrical trailer, and an audio-only presentation of an old radio show promoting the film. The radio show is okay. But two musical short subjects don't really add that much to the DVD. There is also a musical cartoon short.
The DVD offers excellent picture and sound quality, making it a "must own".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent musical comedy - perfectly balanced
Comment: "The Gay Divorcee" is the second film in the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers canon and the first to star them together as the leads. Based on Astaire's Broadway success, the film is a superbly mounted showcase and the precursor of what was to come. Here are some of the highlights:
- Cole Porter's "Night and Day" was the only song retained from the stage musical. It is justly famous for Astaire's seduction of Rogers to dance, worth seeing also for the look on her face at the end. Also, Astaire's superb ability with a song, his interpretation of the lyrics was never more obvious
- A 17 year old Betty Grable drops in, delivers the novelty number "Let's Knock Knees" with Edward Everett Horton, then drops out again, leaving an indelible impression of youth and beauty. She is a better singer too than Rogers.
- The film could stand alone as an hilarious comedy. Astaire has a very light touch and Alice Brady and Erik Rhodes are hysterical.
The print of the film is excellent and there are some entertaining extras, including a short film in odd technicolour set at the Cocoanut Grove, a famous night club in Hollywood. The musical acts are variable. The cartoon celebrates a song "Shake your Powder Puff", a song introduced by Ginger Rogers in one of her early RKO films and the radio promotion highlights the songs from the film. All in all, this is a good DVD and very good value if purchased as part of one of the Astaire/Rogers sets.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Makes you want to take dance lessons
Comment: This wasn't my favorite Astaire/Rogers movie, but it is entertaining and the choreography is never a disappointment. I enjoyed seeing the old character actors on screen once again. The storyline is typical of early Hollywood but seeing Fred and Ginger dance makes it worth a couple hours of your time.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A celebration!
Comment: This wonderful movie is a celebration of American song and dance, though there isn't much mystery over why the guy got a divorce.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Film That Started It All, More or Less
Comment: "The Gay Divorcee," (1934) was the first RKO studio pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as stars, after they unexpectedly stole the previous year's "Flying Down to Rio." It received five Academy Award nominations: one for Best Picture, and won one, the first ever awarded in that category, for best original song,"The Continental." It set the look and sound of the Astaire-Rogers pictures for this studio, and brought together most of the onscreen, and offscreen, talent that would make them. And it was a great hit: nobody ever invented a better way for depression era audiences to forget their cares.
It was based on a stage play in which Astaire starred, "The Gay Divorce." Screenwriter Dwight Taylor, producer Pandro S. Berman, director Mark Sandrich, cinematographer David Abel, Oscar-nominated art directors Carroll Clark and Van Nest Polglase, and costumier Walter Plunkett gave us a magically elegant looking film, all creamy black and white art deco. The romantic comedy plot was silly, and forgettable,(all mistaken identities, something to do with divorce), just as all future Astaire/Rogers movie plots for this studio would be. The acting company established here would show up in future films, too: Edward Everett Horton as Astaire's befuddled best friend, lawyer Egbert (Pinky) Fitzgerald; Erik Rhodes as the ethnic Italian, (co-respondent Rodolo Tonetti); Eric Blore as the funny working class bloke, sometimes a valet, here a waiter. Only one member of the usual company is missing here, the priceless rubber faced Helen Broderick, always Marge, or Madge, Rogers' female sidekick. That part is here played by Alice Brady, as Rogers' ditsy Aunt Hortense. There are fewer dance numbers, and great songs by brand name composers, than future movies would boast. Horton's character gets to dance; Blore's seems to get more lines than usual; Rhodes' actually gets to sing, and play his concertina. A very young Betty Grable is given a novelty song and dance number. A repeated gag, "Chance is the fool's name for fate," is funny enough.
The movie kept only one song from the stage play on which it was based, Cole Porter's everlasting "Night and Day." When first written, it was considered unsingable, but, as Astaire does it, it's unforgettable, imbued with love and longing. The Astaire/Rogers dance to it wins many votes as most romantic and sexy movie dance ever: Rogers could actually act, while, to quote the feminist Gloria Steinem, dancing backwards and in heels. The duo concludes, wrung out; Astaire offers Rogers a cigarette, perhaps the second sexiest in cinema, after that shared by Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in "Now Voyager."
Then there's "The Continental," seventeen minutes( the movie's only 105!) of sheer black and white musical bliss. Lots of dancing up and down staircases, revolving doors, and chorus boys and girls. That cute bit with the cutout dancers on the revolving record player turntable. And a brief instrumental reprise a bit later, to wrap things up. What a way to go.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The year before, in 1933, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had grabbed America's attention in Flying Down to Rio, even though they were the second bananas in that film. The duo had a certain chemistry--Fred with his lighter-than-air elegance, Ginger with her moxie--and studio heads gambled that they could carry a starring vehicle of their own. Nobody guessed there would be another eight movies together after The Gay Divorcee, which turned into a huge success for RKO Pictures. The plot is the usual silliness, with Ginger a divorce-minded gal in England, Fred a dancer whose sincere interest in her is mistaken for something else. But plots never mattered much in these affairs, and this one achieves a kind of free-floating bliss. Astaire had starred in the stage version of the story, titled The Gay Divorce. The censors forced the extra e to be added to the title because surely no divorce could be portrayed as a happy one (this frothy movie's evidence notwithstanding). Only one song was carried over from the stage show, Cole Porter's smash hit "Night and Day," which forms the basis for a sublime pas de deux between Fred and Ginger. A tune, "The Continental," written for this film won the first Oscar ever awarded in the best-song category. --Robert Horton
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