Some movies just knock us for a loop. This first official starring vehicle for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers is delightful entertainment, the kind of psychological medicine that makes the world seem right again. The cast is so good, the guy playing the waiter deserves star billing. All that and a giant musical number — plus one of the top romantic melodies of the 20th century, Night and Day. Fred and Ginger’s dancing duets are pieces of heaven guaranteed to cheer up most anybody. A new digital restoration makes the images look as if they were filmed yesterday. Includes a battery of surprise extras.

The Gay Divorcee
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1934 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 105 min. / Street Date March 31, 2026 / Available at MovieZyng / 24.98
Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, Lillian Miles, Charles Coleman, William Austin, Betty Grable, E.E. Clive, Paul Porcasi.
Cinematography: David Abel
Art Directors: Carroll Clark, Van Nest Polglase
Costumes: Walter Plunkett
Film Editor: William Hamilton
Visual Effects: Vernon L. Walker
Choreographer: Hermes Pan
Music Composer: Max Steiner
Songs by Cole Porter, Con Conrad & Herb Magidson, Mack Gordon & Harry Revel
Screenplay by George Marion, Jr., Dorothy Yost, Edward Kaufmann Musical Adaptation by Kenneth S. Webb, Samuel Hoffenstein from the musical play by Dwight Taylor
Produced by Pandro S. Berman
Directed by Mark Sandrich

It’s old news that the dancing-singing-acting team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was the pinnacle of 1930s Hollywood romanticism … and as movies become less magical, their accomplishment seems all the more miraculous. The duo made their debut as a dancing team in Flying Down to Rio, all but stealing the movie away from its billed stars. RKO hadn’t had too many big hits, and their series of pictures gave the ‘little studio of quality’ a massive boost. Astaire and Rogers set a new
standard for Hollywood glamour. He was a Broadway star known for dancing with his sister Adele. She was only being given supporting roles at Warners, but made a splash anyway. In  Gold Diggers of 1933 Ginger introduced the iconic pop song “We’re in the Money”, singing in Pig Latin and wearing a giant coin for a costume.

RKO didn’t hesitate to launch Astaire and Rogers in a musical of their own — a picture with music, singing and dance, but also a strong romantic thread. 1934’s The Gay Divorcee invents the basic Astaire-Rogers vehicle. Three writers drafted a screenplay from a musical adapted by two other writers. Professional dancer Guy Holden (Fred) and divorce-seeker Mimi Glossop (Ginger) are given an ideal meet-cute: she catches her dress in a steamer trunk and he rips it when he tries to pull it free.

Each lead is given a comedy sidekick complete with funny name: Edward Everett Horton excels as the ditzy attorney Egbert Fitzgerald, aka ‘Pinky.’  He’s allowed to run the family company for a couple of weeks, under strict orders not to do anything. Alice Brady is Mimi’s even ditzier Aunt Hortense Ditherwell. She’s a total scatterbrain, given some of the best jokes. A terrible flirt, Hortense loves to marry so she can get divorced again. She giggles at Pinky for ‘playing with dolls’ yet pursues him anyway.

The Gay Divorcee takes place in Hollywood’s version of the international set, those financially secure, accomplished and carefree people that can take an ocean liner to Europe on a whim. Depression audiences largely rejected naturalism and social comment — but ate up stories with swells in top hats and beautiful women in evening gowns and lingerie. The fantasy offers pure romantic escapism, shying away from political references (just one joke about union work). Fred and Ginger’s dancing was, and still is, the Hollywood equivalent of a super-power. Talented, glamorous and charming, they were like Gods come down from the sky.

The storyline comes with a plot hook that — don’t be surprised — hangs on a crazy Big Misunderstanding. Mimi and Guy don’t realize that they’re each one friend away from knowing each other. Mimi needs a divorce from William Austin’s stubborn cad, so Pinky sets her up with a professional ‘co-respondent’ Rodolfo Tonetti (Erik Rhodes). The (Code-enforced) gag is that Rodolfo is actually a sweet family man whose métier is pretending to be an adulterer as an aid to divorce cases. Mimi has been avoiding Guy because a) she’s still married and b) it’s fun to frustrate him. Thanks to some crossed messages, just as Mimi starts to warm up to Guy, she gets the idea that he is the professional divorce operative hired by Pinky. The three-way confusion begins.

The Big Misunderstanding is not drawn out to the very end, a flaw indulged by too many Doris Day movies. Partway into Act III, the fun moves on to extended relationship humor, when both Guy and Rodolfo struggle to help Mimi win her divorce and keep her sanity.

Astaire and Rogers’ chemical charm is immediately evident. Each has a novelty number followed by Guy’s lovesick pursuit, which of course is broken off just before Mimi becomes interested. Triggering the serious romance is Cole Porter’s signature tune, the timeless  Night and Day. Ginger and Fred both sing; Astaire never got enough credit for his sweet, sincere singing voice. After crooning that song, an oath of unbreakable love, Guy has Mimi in a trance.

Astaire and Rogers’ musicals would debut more than one romantic standard. The Gay Divorcee won an Oscar for best song, but the winning tune wasn’t Night and Day, which originated with the earlier musical. The ‘big’ musical dance number at the beach resort is The Continental, a nearly seven-minute set piece almost twice as long as Flying Down to Rio’s The Carioca. It’s broken up into several sections. Mimi and Guy use a trick with a paper doll to keep Rodolfo busy while they slip downstairs to make musical history. The happy couple take turns singing, and then turn the vocal spotlight over to two additional singers. Erik Rhodes had played the role of Rodolfo on stage and has a great voice; he returned for a second A&R musical, Top Hat. Singer-actress Lillian Miles puts plenty of enthusiasm into a fourth vocal. This standout appearance was apparently the peak of her film career.

The Continental expands into a mass dance number. RKO’s Van Nest Polglase designed a multi-leveled Art Deco hotel set that includes a balcony with Mimi’s room, and a half-acre of shimmering dance space. Over sixty dancers take to the floor, making moves that copy Busby Berkeley’s drill team gyrations. Unlike Berkeley’s triumphs over at Warners, these dance chorus formations don’t develop or evolve: choreographer Hermes Pan just connects them with dissolves. Precise editing joins mass dancing activity that could have been performed to a metronome.

Yet The Gay Divorcee does seem more advanced than the Busby Berkeley extravaganzas, which emphasized design spectacle for its own sake. Audiences might ooh and aah at Berkeley’s geometric drill patterns, but Fred & Ginger’s winning romance was more fulfilling.

The dialogue here is a total delight. We wonder how much new material was added to the ‘book’ of the stage musical. The characters are defined with witty dialogue and jokes that haven’t dated. There are few topical references and no race-oriented slurs, at a time when any Hollywood screenplay could come out with patter like, “That’s mighty white of ya!”  Astaire and Rogers are cute, funny and thoroughly sentimental under their sophisticated jokes about divorce. They wear evening clothes that verge on Utopian fantasy. We’re behind them all the way. The chemistry is in every step of their dancing. If these stars didn’t get along in private life, we don’t want to hear about it.

Edward Everett Horton and Alice Brady provide plenty of laughs. Her Hortense Ditherwell has more memory problems than Gracie Allen, but that doesn’t stop her from flirting with every man she sees. Horton retains his dignity despite the constant humiliations. He proves he’s a good sport in his musical dance number Let’s K-nock K-nees, making the most of an awkward bathing suit. His dance partner and vocalist for the novelty piece is none other than Betty Grable. She’s 17 years old; her star breakthrough wouldn’t come for another 6 years.

Both Eric Blore’s infinitely accommodating waiter and Erik Rhodes’s not-a-gigolo are afforded ‘special’ moments as well. A phone call home suggests that Rodolfo is being cuckolded, and he’s the only one that doesn’t know. Instead of being the butt of jokes, their characters are afforded a full measure of respect, something that makes the show all the more endearing.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of The Gay Divorcee is also a knockout on the visual level. Did the archivists come into possession of excellent pre-print film material, or is the glowing picture on view partly the result of digital clean-up?  We may be getting spoiled by WAC’s fine restorations. It doesn’t have to be this good. A different corporate attitude might be to just let ‘those old movies’ sit and rot.

Suffice to say that the picture looks immaculate throughout, even across optical transitions. The audio is punchy as well — The Continental may be a relic of a different time, yet it still feels fresh. The Night and Day sequence is simply timeless. It sounds and feels too beautiful to have been composed, performed and filmed by human hands.

A technical flub was allowed to remain in the middle of the Night and Day dance number. The dancing is perfect on the wide master, but watch the rear-projection screen with the view of the beach. In the middle of the shot, there’s a jump cut with a slight contrast flash. It’s the splice where the background plate of the beach was made into a film loop. But this must have been the ‘perfect’ take for performance.  With those two dancing, who would be watching the scenery?

The disc extras this time are real winners. The two Vitaphone short subjects are interesting in themselves. The two-reeler comedy Art Trouble pairs Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges with top-billed comedian Harry Gribbon as house painters who go to Paris and become the new art rage. The shocker is that the little show has the film debut of James Stewart (!!). His lame bit does little more than show that he looks good on the screen.

The second short film feels like a feature project that got downsized in mid-production. Masks and Memories is just over half an hour in duration and has several musical numbers. It’s clearly derivative of the musical Show Boat, with older and younger singers (star Lillian Roth and Queenie Smith) and a character named Uncle Andy. Ms. Smith would end up with a major role in James Whale’s movie of  Show Boat.

The encoding of Masks and Memories has a serious technical flaw. Could this be the best copy available?  I seem to remember this short on TCM long ago, looking halfway decent.

Two demented Merrie Melodie musical cartoons are included. I Like Mountain Music is one of those things where magazine covers come to life. Animals put on a variety show in Shake Your Powder Puff. Animator Robert Clampett is credited and numerous gags suggest his influence.

Two radio items are a surprise as well. A 15-minute promotional broadcast for the movie is nothing less than an extended ad … we wonder if it was performed live or distributed on transcription discs. It was on the earlier DVD, unlike the final extra, a 1944 radio version of The Gay Divorcee. It stars Frank Sinatra (!!) opposite Gloria DeHaven and Edward Everett Horton. The things one never expected to hear …

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Gay Divorcee
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Short subjects Art Trouble and Masks and Memories
Cartoons I Like Mountain Music and Shake Your Powder Puff
Radio Promotional audio Broadcast
Screen Guild Playhouse with Frank Sinatra, Edward Everett Horton, and Gloria DeHaven (3/6/1944)
Original Theatrical Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: April 12, 2026
(7500gay)

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