User Reviews

. . . or maybe not. But this "making of" is far more technical than the one essentially the same crew and cast of talking heads did for TOP HAT. Perhaps that's because there is not as much to SWING TIME as TOP HAT, other than discussing the repetitive dance motif, and apologizing after-the-fact for Fred Astaire's character "Lucky" appearing in "black-face" as a "tribute" to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in his "Bojangles of Harlem" dance number. Besides SWING TIME, this short features clips from the Astaire & Rogers films TOP HAT and FOLLOW THE FLEET. There is also archival interview footage from their choreographer, Hermes Pan. Beyond that, perhaps the most memorable observations are in regard to the use of "special effects" in Astaire's dance performances.

" . . . 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.