RKO bought the rights to "In Person" as the basis for the next Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire musical following the massive 1934 hit "The Gay Divorcee."
In the event, 1935 saw the team produce "Roberta" and "Top Hat," two classics that still stand at the peak of movie history. Ginger brought out another film in between, the all-time essential "Star of Midnight" with William Powell. So it was that by the end of the year, it appeared the studio was facing a write-off with "In Person." But Rogers and producer Pandro Berman saw a way to make money with it - by turning it into a Ginger solo movie. They brought in George Brent, favorite leading man of Ginger's lifelong friend Bette Davis, a fine cast of supporting actors, lined up William Seiter, director of "Roberta" to run the film, and set down to work.
People familiar with Rogers' catalog of films with Astaire can see that "In Person" would not have been a good vehicle for Fred. The George Brent character, Emory Muir, is far too masculine and outdoorsmanlike for the rather petite city-dweller Fred Astaire. Fred was, from first to last, very range-bound in his roles. George Brent's screen presence is much closer to John Wayne or Joel McCrea than to Fred Astaire, and Brent is much the better choice for this role.
On the other hand it is a terrific vehicle for Ginger. She was able to indulge some of her various passions - for disguises, and multiple characters, complex situational comedy, and for the great outdoors, not to mention her amazing quadruple threat acting/singing/comedy/dancing abilities and that famous in-your-face combativeness towards her love interest. Her enthusiasm really jumps off the screen. The film is filled with incongruities; Carol Corliss is traumatized by crowds, yet for the intro she takes off for a supremely confident, extroverted stroll through crowded streets; Emory acts like a complete chauvinist, yet he's perfectly happy to do anything Carol asks of him, even to climbing a tree and waiting for her to call. There are also some belittling points about rural society: the people around the two stars in the city simply shrug knowingly at man and woman taking off for a week in a cabin by the lake, while the rural people are so scandalized that they demand a shotgun wedding. Alan Mowbray: "How charming..." This movie was the only chance Ginger had to play across from George Brent, and they both loved it. Although they tried several times to work on another film, their schedules never lined up. They only worked together one other time, in a 1939 radio version of "She Married Her Boss."
It's clear that the picture didn't get the kind of budget that it would have received if Ginger had been playing across from Astaire; the two dances in the film show this very plainly.
The first, astonishing, dance, which might be called 'Showing Off for Emory,' has a tiny set, in the cabin; there's no way to move the camera back, and the result is a very restricted setting, far too small for the thermonuclear Ginger Rogers at the peak of her powers. Ginger by herself completely overwhelms the set - it would have been impossible to add a dancing Fred Astaire into that tiny space. The scene is only saved from chaos, quite oddly, by the perfect stillness of a thoroughly dumbstruck George Brent. This dance, choreographed by Hermes Pan, is a dazzling romp over chairs, up and down stairs, and the taps are done at a torrid pace. It is one of the greatest dances in film, easily the equal of any of the fast dances that she did with Astaire, but criminally marred by far too small a set and the wrong camera (virtually the only directing blunder that William Seiter made in his five films with Ginger, forced by the small budget).
The second dance, again choreographed by Pan, also shows the limited budget of the film. This time the set is appropriately large, a nightclub in a terrific 'film within the film' scene. It's a more typical Broadway dance, the star fronting a chorus line of male dancers, as seen in films by virtually every major dancing star from Grable and Powell to Monroe and Jane Russell, and this type of dance continued to be seen long after the Golden Age had passed. There are two gimmicks, or 'buttons'; the first has Ginger strolling on a revolving table, the second 'button' has her leading all the men around by a string, or rather a bunch of strings, pulling them around at will. Rogers is stunningly beautiful. It's a fine showpiece, but it's clear that it would have been improved with a bigger budget. Astaire, who starred in front of chorus lines many times (c.f. The finale of "Shall We Dance"), has no place here either.
Still, the whole idea, from a business standpoint of view, was to make the studio's investment pay for itself. And in a typically boneheaded move by RKO, the studio released a Stanwyck movie, "Annie Oakley," on the same day, leaving the two films to compete for the same audience. Nevertheless, "In Person" was a fine success, peaking at #4 and generating about $147,000 in profit.
"In Person" rounded out arguably the largest output of truly great films of any year in history by an actress, three #1 hits and all five films in the top 5 at the box office; two terrific romcoms, "Romance in Manhattan" and "In Person," an all-time great slueth comedy, "Star of Midnight," and two masterpieces of musical film, "Roberta" and "Top Hat." Quite a movie, and quite a year.
In the event, 1935 saw the team produce "Roberta" and "Top Hat," two classics that still stand at the peak of movie history. Ginger brought out another film in between, the all-time essential "Star of Midnight" with William Powell. So it was that by the end of the year, it appeared the studio was facing a write-off with "In Person." But Rogers and producer Pandro Berman saw a way to make money with it - by turning it into a Ginger solo movie. They brought in George Brent, favorite leading man of Ginger's lifelong friend Bette Davis, a fine cast of supporting actors, lined up William Seiter, director of "Roberta" to run the film, and set down to work.
People familiar with Rogers' catalog of films with Astaire can see that "In Person" would not have been a good vehicle for Fred. The George Brent character, Emory Muir, is far too masculine and outdoorsmanlike for the rather petite city-dweller Fred Astaire. Fred was, from first to last, very range-bound in his roles. George Brent's screen presence is much closer to John Wayne or Joel McCrea than to Fred Astaire, and Brent is much the better choice for this role.
On the other hand it is a terrific vehicle for Ginger. She was able to indulge some of her various passions - for disguises, and multiple characters, complex situational comedy, and for the great outdoors, not to mention her amazing quadruple threat acting/singing/comedy/dancing abilities and that famous in-your-face combativeness towards her love interest. Her enthusiasm really jumps off the screen. The film is filled with incongruities; Carol Corliss is traumatized by crowds, yet for the intro she takes off for a supremely confident, extroverted stroll through crowded streets; Emory acts like a complete chauvinist, yet he's perfectly happy to do anything Carol asks of him, even to climbing a tree and waiting for her to call. There are also some belittling points about rural society: the people around the two stars in the city simply shrug knowingly at man and woman taking off for a week in a cabin by the lake, while the rural people are so scandalized that they demand a shotgun wedding. Alan Mowbray: "How charming..." This movie was the only chance Ginger had to play across from George Brent, and they both loved it. Although they tried several times to work on another film, their schedules never lined up. They only worked together one other time, in a 1939 radio version of "She Married Her Boss."
It's clear that the picture didn't get the kind of budget that it would have received if Ginger had been playing across from Astaire; the two dances in the film show this very plainly.
The first, astonishing, dance, which might be called 'Showing Off for Emory,' has a tiny set, in the cabin; there's no way to move the camera back, and the result is a very restricted setting, far too small for the thermonuclear Ginger Rogers at the peak of her powers. Ginger by herself completely overwhelms the set - it would have been impossible to add a dancing Fred Astaire into that tiny space. The scene is only saved from chaos, quite oddly, by the perfect stillness of a thoroughly dumbstruck George Brent. This dance, choreographed by Hermes Pan, is a dazzling romp over chairs, up and down stairs, and the taps are done at a torrid pace. It is one of the greatest dances in film, easily the equal of any of the fast dances that she did with Astaire, but criminally marred by far too small a set and the wrong camera (virtually the only directing blunder that William Seiter made in his five films with Ginger, forced by the small budget).
The second dance, again choreographed by Pan, also shows the limited budget of the film. This time the set is appropriately large, a nightclub in a terrific 'film within the film' scene. It's a more typical Broadway dance, the star fronting a chorus line of male dancers, as seen in films by virtually every major dancing star from Grable and Powell to Monroe and Jane Russell, and this type of dance continued to be seen long after the Golden Age had passed. There are two gimmicks, or 'buttons'; the first has Ginger strolling on a revolving table, the second 'button' has her leading all the men around by a string, or rather a bunch of strings, pulling them around at will. Rogers is stunningly beautiful. It's a fine showpiece, but it's clear that it would have been improved with a bigger budget. Astaire, who starred in front of chorus lines many times (c.f. The finale of "Shall We Dance"), has no place here either.
Still, the whole idea, from a business standpoint of view, was to make the studio's investment pay for itself. And in a typically boneheaded move by RKO, the studio released a Stanwyck movie, "Annie Oakley," on the same day, leaving the two films to compete for the same audience. Nevertheless, "In Person" was a fine success, peaking at #4 and generating about $147,000 in profit.
"In Person" rounded out arguably the largest output of truly great films of any year in history by an actress, three #1 hits and all five films in the top 5 at the box office; two terrific romcoms, "Romance in Manhattan" and "In Person," an all-time great slueth comedy, "Star of Midnight," and two masterpieces of musical film, "Roberta" and "Top Hat." Quite a movie, and quite a year.