Review of The Swing of Things: Swing Time Step by Step

" . . . No Wonder It Seemed She Felt Kind of Blue," sums up this Warner Bros. expose about RKO Studio's human trafficking of Ginger Rogers in the 1930s. The whistle-blowers featured in THE SWING OF THINGS: "SWING TIME" STEP BY STEP testify about this tawdry True-Life tale in which an old geezer on his last legs exploited a fresh young thing, stealing the Best Years of Her Life. A witness who was there at the time things went down in 1936 (before Today's laws against the White Slave Trade existed)--SWING TIME choreographer Hermes Pan himself--relates how a fairly decrepit senior tour player named Fred took the title of this flick's final musical number ("Never Gonna Dance") LITERALLY, ruining take after take with his mistakes. While poor Ginger was exerting twice the quantum physical load on her RKO penny loafers as the strain the bumbling Fred placed upon his million dollar spats, the latter's clod-hoppers breezed through 47 takes none the worse for wear, while Ginger was enduring the Hell of a Real Life RED SHOES ordeal, her feet bloodied to the bone before Boss Pan noticed. It did not take many more "Romantic" films with Stumblefoot Fred for Ginger to wise up, get a double foot transplant, and find a new co-star.