A Damsel in Distress

Comments on the 1937 movie from a 1999 perspective, with source material

Mike Skupin (Photo by Jan Wilson Kaufman)

A talk delivered at the Houston convention of The Wodehouse Society, October 1999. Mike is not only a movie maven, but a composer and performer, and he entertained us with those talents at the convention. Bill Rudersorf provided, via Mike, the rare "behind the scenes" photographs which illustrate this article. --OM

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen the movie adaptation of Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress, yet my opinion of it today is the same as the first time I saw it: it is a rich film, containing beautiful songs and some of the greatest dance footage ever filmed (the "Fun House" sequence won its choreographer an Academy Award®, but there are other terpsichorean gems besides); it featured some of the most brilliant talents of the day, not only Plum, but songwriters George and Ira Gershwin, choreographer Hermes Pan, radio stars George Burns and Gracie Allen, and the incomparable Fred Astaire.

    It had the makings of a masterpiece, but is flawed in a strange way, not by the presence of any of the above, but by an absence, that of Astaire's partner Ginger Rogers.

    Rogers had arrived in Hollywood already a star from her Broadway successes, and continued to thrive as a singer and comedienne in the movies (42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933). Then, abruptly, she became a dancer when the studio paired her with Astaire. Although her teenage title of Charleston champion of Fort Worth, Texas, had been her only accolade in that area, she was scrappy, and rose to the challenge of matching Astaire (a dancing machine, workaholic, and perfectionist) step for step through a series of movies that brought the team fame (and, I predict, immortality). However, it is clear from the film they had just finished, Shall We Dance?, that Rogers was burned out: she looked gaunt, unhealthy, and so must have been relieved to temporarily part company with Astaire (she starring in Stage Door, he in A Damsel in Distress). After the two ended their professional relationship for good in 1939 (with the exception of one reunion ten years later), she quickly won acclaim as an actress (non-dancing) in her own right, receiving a best actress Oscar® in 1942 for Kitty Foyle. In 1937, however, the important thing was the team, and Ginger was not at Fred's side; whoever presumed to step into her shoes could expect a cold welcome from the fans. Astaire put it succinctly in Steps in Time:

    Any girl following Ginger at this point was on the spot . . .

    As we will see, other actresses refused the part, and so the female lead devolved to a newcomer, which was a flaw for the film's first audience; to compensate, Burns and Allen were brought in, which is a flaw for us today. Although they proved to be excellent dancers, their jokes have not stood the test of time, and their exchanges clash with the Wodehouse dialogue.

    A few words about the leading lady, Joan Fontaine, the target of much criticism. La Fontaine's great days would be years in the future: in 1937 she was an eighteen-year-old starlet with only a few roles behind her. To her credit, she played her acting part well, but the script forced her to dance a lengthy pas de deux with the legendary Astaire, and the film's first audience did not forgive her terpsichorean shortcomings. They wanted Ginger. Pan composed a dance with Fontaine's limitations in mind, and coached her; and the reader may recall that Astaire was a master at making his partners look good: one recalls Paulette Goddard in Second Chorus, Red Skelton in Three Little Words, Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn and Blue Skies, and in Royal Wedding--a hatrack! Still, the fans were not satisfied.

    (For the record, I maintain that, although Fontaine may have not been up to Ginger Rogers' standards [she admittedly gets through the number only by the skin of her teeth], she was no worse than two or three other ladies that Astaire would later dance with, and she was nowhere near as downright bad as Betty Hutton would be in Let's Dance.)

    Comparison of the plot of the movie with that of the novel is interesting, but I do not propose to treat it in detail; suffice it to say that characters are merged, the story line and motivations are radically different, but the dialogue is largely intact. Sometimes a phrase will occur in the mouth of a different character from the original, but it is still there. A study of the nuts and bolts of the transfer from the printed page to the silver screen would be a fruitful one, but I leave it for another day.

    I have said my say about A Damsel in Distress. I now present some gleanings from my background research. First, Garson Kanin's recollections of the adulation that the Rogers-Astaire team evoked, from page 165 of Together Again:

    I remember going to see Top Hat at the Radio City Music Hall on its opening day. Never before and never since have I seen an audience stand up and cheer at the end of a picture. A standing ovation for a movie? I sat through the picture twice and that evening insisted on going again and taking my brother with me. Twice for him too, which meant four times that day for me. The next evening I was back again. Only once through this time. Then I went back every single evening, each time taking a beloved friend and enjoying it anew through his or her eyes.

    Top Hat was, unquestionably, a breakthrough, a milestone. The musical screen was growing up. This was a brand of sophistication new, not only to it, but to most of the musical shows on Broadway.

    Kanin also gives us, on page 166, a glimpse backstage:

    One of the few joys of my being under contract with RKO in the late thirties was being on the lot while Astaire-Rogers pictures were being made. These were the studio's most important productions, and the best of everything was reserved for them.

    Months before an Astaire-Rogers went into production, preparations were under way. A great sound stage would be set aside, and for weeks, whenever one walked by, one would see Fred Astaire in dapper rehearsal clothes, sweating it out with Hermes Pan. Early morning, late afternoon, often evening. A pianist and two creative artists digging, discovering, inventing, often astonishing even themselves.

    Hermes Pan was a brilliant young Greek dancer and choreographer from Tennessee whose name was actually Panagiotopoulos, which he found unwieldy in the world of show business. He had approximately the same build, height, and dimensions as Fred, which made it easy for Fred to work with him on choreography. The sound stage, while they were working, was full of blackboards, large and small, detailing routines in the way that football coaches lay out plays.

Fred Astaire and Hermes Pan devising a dance

    George Burns had much to say about our subject on pages 204-206 of Gracie: A Love Story.

    The picture both Gracie and I enjoyed making the most was Damsel in Distress, a musical comedy starring Fred Astaire based on a P. G. Wodehouse story. RKO asked Paramount to lend us to that studio for this movie, and we really wanted to make it. It was the first film Astaire had done without Ginger Rogers in years; the musical score had been written by George and Ira Gershwin--it was the last complete score George Gershwin had written before his death--and featured such wonderful songs as "A Foggy Day," and "Nice Work If You Can Get It," and it was directed by George Stevens.

Fred Astaire at the piano with George and Ira Gershwin

    We spent hours in our backyard next to the pool learning the dance. Not only did we get very good at it, we ended up with the cleanest pool deck in Southern California. When we demonstrated the dance for Fred Astaire, he not only hired us, he thought the brooms were so good he also put them in the picture. So Gracie and I ended up teaching Fred Astaire how to dance.

Fred with Gracie Allen and George Burns:
Note the whisk brooms atop Hal Borne's piano!

The result of all those months of work:
the incomparable Fred and the rather more comparable George and Gracie in the fun house, making it look easy and fun.

    (We note parenthetically that Astaire would continue to put his partners at ease by deliberate mistakes, as with the young Audrey Hepburn, recorded on page 139 of the Harris biography:

    Fred Astaire also tried to help. "We were getting ready to record the vocal track for their duet of ' 'S Wonderful,' director Stanley Dornen recalled. "It was also Audrey's first time with Fred in front of a full orchestra, so she was very ill at ease and nervous, as anybody would be. I was in a mixing booth, and they were out on the stage, and she made a mistake, so I said, 'Hold it.' She said she was terribly sorry, and we started again. She made a mistake again, and this time she stopped and asked to start again. The third time we went through it, she made a mistake, and Fred jumped in and did something wrong on purpose. He said, 'Oh, I'm sorry. I've ruined it. Can we do it again?' It was so wonderful, and I'm not sure that she ever realized. He was so fabulous."

    This in 1957.)

    Burns continues on pages 206-207:

    The dance at the amusement park was one of the most complex scenes ever filmed, requiring countless retakes. Gracie never complained, never said a single word; I think she was still amazed that the worst dancer in the entire family was performing with Fred Astaire.

    By the end of the day we were exhausted. For a while we went to the screening of the dailies, the showing of the film we'd just shot, but one night I looked over at Gracie and she'd fallen asleep. I'd never seen her fall asleep in public before, even when I sang, so from that night on we always went right home at the conclusion of the day's shooting. That was probably the first time I realized that Gracie couldn't do everything.

    Gracie did four or five dances with Fred Astaire, including the whisk-broom number, and made her sisters proud. Don't take my word for it, not while I'm holding a lit cigar, but Time magazine wrote, "Far more facile as an Astaire partner (than Joan Fontaine) is, of all people, rumpish Radio Dunce Gracie Allen." And a New York newspaper critic wrote, "Gracie and George go into several dance routines with Mr. Astaire, matching him step for step in one of the liveliest and merriest sequences in the picture. The gadgets...of the fun house are employed in one of the most unusual routines invented for the cinema. Miss Allen, moreover, is extremely pretty, and is quite as fetching, in spite of her loony sayings, as some of the glamour girls who could be mentioned."

    At least I got better notices than the whisk brooms.

    When the film came out, RKO suggested that theater owners promote it by putting mice in a cage in the lobby and advertising, "These waltzing mice are trying to imitate Fred Astaire and Burns and Allen doing 'The Fun House Dance' from A Damsel in Distress."

    On the Fontaine question, we turn to pages 143-144 of the Bob Thomas biography of Astaire:

    On December 3, 1936, George Gershwin wrote a friend in New York:

    "The Astaire picture is practically finished and so far everybody is happy. The studio, realizing Gershwin can be lowbrow, has taken up their option on our contract for the next movie which, incidentally, will be minus Rogers. Fred has wanted to go it alone for a long time and he'll get his chance in the next picture."

    The film was A Damsel in Distress, and it was George Stevens' turn to direct. RKO didn't want Fred Astaire to go it entirely alone, and the studio announced that Carole Lombard would play opposite him. Her salary would be $200,000, a figure that infuriated Lela Rogers [Ginger's mother and frequent career advisor--MS]. Ginger, still under contract at a weekly salary, had been paid $61,193.28 for Swing Time. Fred's salary for A Damsel in Distress was said to be $250,000, but he was paid $119,000 plus his usual percentage.

    Carole Lombard dropped out, reasoning that she couldn't win as successor to Ginger. Alice Faye was considered, also Ida Lupino. Pandro Berman finally agreed to Joan Fontaine, who had the advantage of being under contract to RKO. She was also English and could fit the role of Lady Alyce of Totleigh Castle. Could she dance? A little.

    Fred accepted the casting with some trepidation. His fears grew when he tried a few steps with the eighteen-year-old actress. But she had studied ballet as a girl, and Fred and Hermes Pan believed they could fashion a duet or two with her modest talent.

    "Before the film began,' Miss Fontaine later recalled, "I took tap-dancing lessons from Ruby Keeler's brother, who came to the house each day with a portable wooden dance floor. Why these tap lessons, I never knew. I didn't have to do any tap steps in the film."

    On pages 146-147, Thomas continues with more backstage "dirt," this time from director Stevens' perspective:

    Late in life, George Stevens reminisced about A Damsel in Distress:

    "Freddie's a great worrier, and he started worrying about Joan Fontaine. After I'd been shooting for about four weeks, Freddie and Pan Berman came down on the set and said, 'We're disturbed about Joan Fontaine. It seems to us we've got to make a change.'

    "I said, 'If we take this girl out of this picture, she'll kill herself.' They said, 'Well, now, that's an exaggeration.' I said, 'It probably is. I'm not going to say, You can do it, but I'll be elsewhere. I'll just say one thing: "I'm going to stay here, and you're not going to do it. We've got to put her through this picture." '

    "I can understand Freddie; he's a great artist. But Joan was a girl with problems; she cried and all that. So they went back and thought it over, and they came back with a plea for Ruby Keeler, somebody who could dance. I said, 'I'm not going to take this girl out of the picture.'

    "Freddie said, 'Go ahead, let's make the goddamned picture.'

    They were right: She was the wrong girl in the wrong spot. She never knew they wanted her out of the picture, or she would have collapsed."

    Finally, on pages 90-91 of his Astaire tribute, Peter Carrick is worth citing for his ambivalence.

    Fred's Damsel in Distress, meantime, turned out to be a sad experience because of the incomprehensible casting of Joan Fontaine opposite Astaire. Ruby Keeler was tipped for the part, so was Jessie Matthews, but it went finally to the up-and-coming Fontaine, recently signed by RKO. Theoretically, the film had everything to make it a winner--sound production and direction by Pandro Berman and George Stevens, immaculate dance and art direction from Hermes Pan and Van Nest Polglase, and also superb music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin. But the sad reality was that Joan Fontaine was not a singer, nor a dancer, and didn't possess the ability or experience at that time to showcase, as Ginger did, Astaire's polished talent. They had only one dance number but Miss Fontaine's inability to complement Fred's artistry was painfully and embarrassingly obvious, despite valiant 'paste-over' efforts by director George Stevens. It had its good points--a more soundly based P. G. Wodehouse script, effortless comedy performance from George Burns and Gracie Allen, and an Oscar went to dance director Hermes Pan--but this surely was one film which Astaire-Rogers fans might have wanted to forget--except for that superlative Gershwin music. 'Nice Work If You Can Get It' quickly became an Astaire special and 'A Foggy Day' was destined to become one of the greatest popular music standards of all time.

Cover of the sheet music for "A Foggy Day"

    I end by saying that if my remarks inspire others to see A Damsel in Distress, I will be well pleased.

Together Again! The Stories of the Great Hollywood Teams, by Garson Kanin. Doubleday, 1981.

Astaire: The Man, The Dancer, by Bob Thomas. St. Martin's Press, 1984.

The Encyclopedia of Movie Awards, by Michael Gebert. St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Audrey Hepburn: a biography, by Warren G. Harris. Simon & Schuster, 1994.

A Tribute to Fred Astaire, by Peter Carrick. Salem House, 1984.

Gracie: A Love Story, by George Burns. G.P Putnam's Sons, 1988.

Steps in Time, by Fred Astaire. Da Capo, 1981.

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