User reviews

Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Randolph Scott shine in "Roberta," a 1935 film directed by William Seite, based on the Broadway play, with music by Jerome Kern This isn't a typical Astaire-Rogers film, so if you're looking for that, you may be disappointed. The emphasis here is on fashion, and on the design house of Roberta - in reality, John Kent's (Randolph Scott) Aunt Minnie (Helen Westley), a dressmaker who found success in Paris. Astaire plays Kent's friend, Huckleberry Haines, a bandleader. Irene Dunne is Stephanie, the head designer at Roberta's. Actually, she and her doorman cousin Ladislaw (Victor Varooni) are Russian royalty. Rogers plays Countess Schwarwenka, a troublemaking client who's recognized by Huckleberry as Lizzie Gatz, an old girlfriend from back home. The Countess gets Hucklebery and his band a job at the Cafe Russe, and Stephanie and John find they're interested in one another. Then Roberta dies, and John inherits the design shop.

The film is filled with not only beautiful music but the fashions of the day in gorgeous art deco settings, making for a very sophisticated and polished look. Astaire and Rogers are actually comic support, but they're knockouts.

The music consists of some familiar tunes, including the haunting "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," sung by Irene Dunne and later danced by Astaire and Rogers, "Lovely to Look At," sung by Dunne and then danced by Astaire and Rogers, "Yesterdays," sung by Irene Dunne, and, of course, "I Won't Dance" - but they do. Astaire sings the lively "Let's Begin" as well.

This enchanting musical was re-made in 1952 as "Lovely to Look At," but somehow, it's not as good, lacking the cast. "Roberta" shows up on TCM occasionally. Don't miss it.

Huckleberry Haines (Fred Astaire) and his band, the Wabash Indianians, arrive at Le Havre, in France, for a season in a Russian nightclub. However, the owner Alexander Petrovitch Moskovich Voyda (Luis Alberni) expects the arrival of an Indian band and he calls off their contract.

Haines and the band head to Paris, and his friend John Kent (Randolph Scott) decides to visit his Aunt Minnie (Helen Westley), who owns the fashion house Roberta, to use her influence to find a work for the band. John meets the manager Stephanie (Irene Dunne) and they immediately feel attracted for each other. Huck Haines meets in the Roberta's salon his old friend Liz with the artistic identity of Comtesse Scharwenka (Ginger Rogers) and she helps him to get a job with Voyda.

When Aunt Minnie passes away, John Kent is the heir of her fortune and also Roberta. However he decides to give the fashion house for Stephanie, but she proposes a partnership between them two. But when John's old passion, the gold digger Sophie Teale (Claire Dodd) seeks out John, the infatuated Stephanie decides to leave the business and travel abroad with the Russian Prince Ladislaw (Victor Varconi).

"Roberta" is an adorable musical with one of the most beautiful songs of the cinema ever. With music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Otto A. Harbach, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is performed by Irene Dunne. The plot is naive, but the musical numbers, the dances and the fashion parade are delightful. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Roberta"

I found this to be a very entertaining musical with some decent mixture of songs, comedy and romance. There are no less than three leading ladies and they all look good. Two of them are big names: Irene Dunne and Ginger Rogers.

There's Fred Astaire in here, too, so I guess we can call this another "Astaire- Rogers film." If so, I think it's one of their best and certainly one of their most underrated. You don't hear much about this movie, and that's unfair.

Rogers and Astaire both have some funny lines in this film and I wish Ginger's role had been bigger. She and Astaire do a couple of tap dance numbers that are excellent - some of their best work together. Dunne's first two songs aren't bad but you have the rest. Her soprano voice almost broke my eardrums, especially with "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes."

Randolph Scott, Helen Westley and Claire Dodd also star in this dated-but-generally fun movie.

'Roberta (1935)' marked the third teaming of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and, like 'Flying Down to Rio (1933),' it suffers from a studio oversight: RKO hadn't yet realized that Fred and Ginger were the main attraction. This, of course, is to take nothing away from Irene Dunne, who is first-billed, a talented actress and a genuine box-office draw, but, with the apology of hindsight, it's not Dunne for whom I'm watching this film {just out of interest, this was my eighth Astaire/Rogers film – now I need only to track down 'The Gay Divorcée (1934)' and 'Carefree (1938)'}. The main plot concerns All-American football player John Kent (Randolph Scott), who has arrived in Paris with his friend Huckleberry Haines (Astaire), who has brought along his orchestra, the Wabash Indianians. While John falls in love with fashion designer Stephaine (Dunne), Haines reacquaints with childhood sweetheart Lizzie Gatz (Rogers), who is now, for show-business purposes, sporting a fake European accent and the prestigious title of Countess Scharwenka.

Randolph Scott appeared with Astaire in two 1930s musicals, and it's interesting to observe how their respective roles changed in such a short time. In 'Roberta,' he is clearly the leading man, and makes a good go at it, too – John Kent is sincere, likable and slightly naive in that Frank Capra All-American sense. Astaire is there to provide slightly goofy comedic support, and his musical routines help obscure the fact that Scott has no musical talents to complement Irene Dunne's incredible singing voice. Just one year later in 'Follow the Fleet (1936)' – after 'Top Hat (1935)' had made box-office gold of Fred and Ginger – Scott is similarly relegated to a romantic supporting role, having to settle for Ginger's nondescript sister (Harriet Hilliard). The bulk of the plot in 'Roberta' concerns John's complicated romance with Stephanie, and it occasionally gets bogged down by it. Still, whenever Fred and Ginger get tapping they kick up a storm, with memorable musical numbers including "I'll Be Hard to Handle," "Lovely to Look At" and "I Won't Dance."

Though Dunne certainly has an excellent singing voice (and it is, indeed, her own voice), the contrast between her solemn, operatic songs, and Fred and Ginger's playful vaudeville routines is too great to sit comfortably together. This, and the over-dependence on a central love story, makes the film enjoyable but uneven. As did many of the Astaire/Rogers films, 'Roberta' proved successful with audiences because it consciously defied the woeful economic conditions in which the United States still found itself. Aside from an elevator that doesn't quite get there, the hotels and nightclubs of Paris are glittering hot-spots of class and high fashion. Much effort was evidently spent designing the range of outfits that appeared in the film, and, had I cared one bit about fashion, I might have found myself in Heaven – as it were, the fashion show itself proved a little tedious. In any case, it's fascinating to note how times have changed since the 1930s. That controversial dress that Randolph Scott dismissed as "vulgar?" I thought it was a knockout!

... because when it was made Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were still supporting players. The real stars of the film are Randolph Scott in modern dress not western garb,and queen and songbird of the RKO lot at the time, Irene Dunne. A somewhat musical rom-com, it has Huck Haines (Fred Astaire) and his big band arriving in France only to learn that their promised gig has fallen through. Huck's best friend John Kent (Randolph Scott) decides to look up his aunt, a dressmaker named Roberta (Helen Westley) to see if she has any advice on work for the band.

John ends up inheriting the dressmaking firm with Roberta's death, and he falls for lead designer Stephanie (Irene Dunne), while Huck meets up with Lizzie Gatz (Ginger Rogers) a neighborhood gal pretending to be European aristocracy.

Give this one a chance. I All four leads are charming and on top of their game. The costumes are elaborate, and the models are stunning, including a young blonde Lucille Ball. The songs are good, too, including the standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".

What's not to like - Astaire-Rogers dancing to "I Don't Dance, Don't Ask Me", ocean liners crossing the Atlantic, trains racing across northern France, jazz bands rehearsing in Paris clubs, stupendous art deco sets, a couturier's elegant salon, serenading to balalaikas, stunning models privately displaying satin gowns, Russian princes, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" sung by the beautiful Irene Dunne, an elegant Old Russian restaurant with its frescoes, fashion show that incorporates Astaire and Rogers dancing, Irene Dunne's warmth, a witty script, a Broadway smash hit brought to the screen - geez, what a movie! It is only recently that I've begun to enjoy musicals. The ones I like are the light ones - not the ones incorporating social issues which I feel musicals are ill-equipped to handle.

But a light musical comedy - with exquisite dancing, charming leads, swank clothes, elegant sets, witty dialogue - WOW! And this is definitely such a musical - absolutely charming.

The four leads are wonderfully cast. Irene Dunne reminds me of Greer Garson in having a certain soulfulness combined with innate gentility and enormous warmth - Dunne also happens to have had a world-class operatic singing voice (that in later movies, as operettas ceased to be appealing, was seldom heard). There is something so very vulnerable about a wounded Irene Dunne character - and she is wonderful in this part.

Randolph Scott has a big, clean, very handsome, American quality that is also wonderfully suited to this part - one in which his character is candid, straightforward, easily swayed by others who are sophisticated -but at a certain point will act decisively when he comes to realize his judgment has been mistaken.

Fred Astaire's subordinate comic supporting role is suited well by the enormous difference in size between himself and Scott - and obviously his dancing and his easy way with humorous lines is just wonderful.

The 24 year old Ginger Rogers may be the biggest revelation to me - it's not just that she can dance astonishingly well, that she is wonderful (and wonderfully funny) with accents, that she can sing songs equally comically or romantically (and with great gestures), that she is very VERY funny, whip-smart with dialogue,, but she perfectly suits the job of one hustling for jobs, adapting to all circumstances, rough and ready -- and extremely aware at all times.

I think studio heads really saw Rogers' amazing abilities through the end of World War II (after which she was shamefully abandoned) - she seldom played the "classy woman" and we instead find her as a shop girl, prisoner on furlough, society wannabe, entertainer. I would like to have seen her play in her career, a part in which she more deliberately seductive (like Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford, Miriam Hopkins or Bette Davis often did) but alas.

You'll like this - just relax and feel yourself enthralled.

Once upon a time, audiences went to see musicals like this expecting melodies you could whistle on the way out of the theater, and American composers delivered. It seemed songs you could sing were a dime a dozen back then -- it was called "Tin Pan Alley." But now they are enshrined in "The Great American Songbook," a list of the greatest American songwriters and their works from the 1920s to 1950s, whose posthumous rolls seem to expand every year.

"Roberta," a musical largely forgotten today, was the cradle of some of those classics, including "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Lovely to Look At," and "I Won't Dance" (which was wonderfully reinterpreted in "Warm Springs), plus some forgettable but amusing 1930s novelty numbers, such as playing an organ made up of the band members' gloves.

Audiences went to Fred Astaire - Ginger Rogers movies to see great dancing to great music. A great plot and great acting would be nice (such as in "Top Hat") but weren't essential. Hollywood kept trying to come up with new vehicles for this duo, with varying success, but always with fine music and dancing. "Roberta"'s plot is about average for the genre, and is worth seeing -- once. If you took the music and dancing out, how many stars would it get?

The songs here are not as closely integrated into the plot as they would be in later musicals beginning with Rodgers and Hammerstein, although "Showboat" of 1936 by Kern and Hammerstein was more successful in this regard. But in both "Showboat" and "Roberta" we have musical performers in the plot as an excuse for the music.

Irene Dunne's superb singing was one of the surprises of "Roberta." It turns out she was a thoroughly trained singer; she also sings in "Showboat." Sadly, she did not get to use her fine voice more, but she was an older actress by the time of the great musicals of the late 1940s and 1950s. Unlike some musical stars, she was able to easily transition to straight dramatic parts, such as "I Remember Mama."

I was also surprised to see some hot piano keyboard action by Fred Astaire. I think one reason audiences adored Astaire is that although he was a multi-talented singer, dancer, actor (and sometimes musician), he made it look so effortless and had an innate modesty.

Check out Candy Candido, the band member whose voice keeps changing registers. He was the voice of the angry apple tree in "The Wizard of Oz," and did some voices for Disney. And keep an eye out for an anonymous Lucille Ball, who is one of the fashion models.

This is a movie you will probably only want to see once, unless you wait long enough, in which case you probably won't remember any of the plot, anyway.

"Roberta" is fairly typical of the movies set in Astairerogersland (as one author called their world). What is atypical is that their roles are not the main ones. Fred and Ginger supply the vehicle to get the actual leads, Randolph Scott and Irene Dunne, together; their own romance is more of a subplot. They do, of course, sing and dance, most excellently....

Dunne provides the showstopper number, with an excellent rendition of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" performed to balalaikas. She also supposedly supplies many of the costume designs for the characters in the plot (which were actually created by Bernard Newman, and were wonderful). Watch for a young Lucille Ball in a frothy, feathered evening gown in the final fashion-show sequence.

It seems really bizarre that after starring in "The Gay Divorcée," Rodgers and Astaire went back to playing supporting roles in this one. Leads Randolph Scott are Irene Dunne are fine, but Rodgers and Astaire are on blazing whenever they're on screen, so Scott and Dunne get pushed into the background.

The story is contrived and theatrical and not a particularly exciting one. However, four great songs and dances lift it into the must see category: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Lovely to Look At," "I Won't Dance," and I'll Be Hard to Handle." Please note that the last three have lyrics by Dorothy Fields. She may have been the greatest lyricist of the 20th century with songs like "Sunnyside of the Street," "A Fine Romance," "I'm in the Mood for Love" and "Big Spender" to her credit.

The movie is a little dated and tedious at an hour and forty minutes, but, at least 30 of those minutes with Ginger and Fred are enchanting.

"Nous Sommes étonné." as Fred says in the movie.

Here is a movie musical what is a movie musical! Forget the story! It is slight at best, involving a he-man (Scott) inheriting a designing house in Paris. It comes complete with assistant (Dunne) and a phony countess (Rogers) and a band (complete with Astaire as leader) which has come to Paris with him. Why he is traveling with the band, or why Rogers is getting away with the phony royalty bit is never really explained. To be honest, the first half of the movie is totally missable and rather confusing. Scott as a love interest? Unable to see it. Dunne as a singer? Hard to take. Having said that, then, there is the dancing of Astaire and Rogers, unmatched by anyone before or since. No wonder tap and ballroom dancing has gone somewhat out of vogue. Once you see these two perform, everything and everyone else is a letdown. The music of Jerome Kern is some of the best ever put out for a movie. If you're under 35, you may never have had the opportunity to listen to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "I Won't Dance" and the rest. Do yourself a favor - watch this movie just for the music and dancing. A wag once said that Fred Astaire looked so good in a tuxedo that he rented himself out to them. No one else looks so at ease in top hat and tails. The clothes are dated, maybe, but you get an idea of what real glamour can be. Yards and yards of exotic looking material draped over some delicious looking models, including a brief glimpse of the redoubtable Lucille Ball! Well worth the time it takes to watch!!

(Spoilers, sort of) Everyone seems to be saying the same thing about this film: great music, burdensome plot. But virtually all 9 RKO Astaire-Rogers films borrowed their plots from one another. They were, after all, the comic relief in 3 different films- including FLYING DOWN TO RIO and FOLLOW THE FLEET. These films- in terms of chronological release- alternated with GAY Divorcée, TOP HAT, and SWING TIME- all which had some combination of Erik Rhodes, Helen Broderick, and Eric Blore as comic support. I could stand the 'two-couple' formula a little more so, because Astaire and Rogers weren't carrying the heavier half of the plot. They usually already know each other and make wicked sideline commentary while waiting to go on the dance floor. This is most evident in their first duet in ROBERTA, "I'll Be Hard To Handle," which appears completely spontaneous, even though it is a rehearsal. Astaire and Rogers wear matching shirts and slacks and enjoy a very funny debate with their tapping feet. We seamlessly go from this sequence to a breathtaking moment with Irene Dunne and title character Helen Westley framed around the song "Yesterdays." (It's a bewitching moment when the light dims in the room as the vocal simultaneously fades away.) And to those of you complaining about the excessive fashion show sequences: well, that's the plot of the movie; didn't you see that coming? All the crazy clothes are worth seeing for the Astaire-Rogers duet of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." Following a cameo by a platinum-haired Lucille Ball, Rogers emerges as one of the models on parade in a satin gown and joins Astaire for a tender 'walk-around-the-floor' turn. Sublime stuff.

Roberta (1935)

This is a terrible patchwork of plot, dance, and song fragments. It has a reputation as the second full fledged Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie (and their third movie together), though even here it is only half that, and half a strained plot with the charming Irene Dunne and a handsome big hulk of a guy, Randolf Scott. It even takes a full 30 minutes before we get the first kick of a tap dance.

Now, for those who love Fred Astaire as I do, you still have to watch this at some point. He's his usual silly, warm, lovable, and extremely talented self. He's supposed to be a goofy guy, in a way, and makes faces or gags and gets our sympathies at the drop of a hat. Or a baton. He plays a bandleader with spirit. And he plays the piano the way he dances, with terrific joy and percussive energy. That was a highlight of the film. And there are some great songs taken from the play that served as the source for the plot and music, including "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." So you can't go totally wrong with that.

But this is pre-Top Hat (1935) and pre-Swing Time (1936) Astaire and Rogers (the peaks of their film output by most measures). Those two movies came next, and so this was still a stepping stone, in a way. For sheer dance excess, you might actually like "Flying Down to Rio" more, the first of their films. Irene Dunne is wonderful, and she makes the most of her purposely conflicted role (as a remnant of old Eastern European royalty and as regular girl wanting to fall in love). This is common 1930s stuff well done at its core. But Irene Dunne is not wonderful singing in her false operatic style, and this happens several times throughout. Be prepared.

There are lots of filler moments, painful ones, and some characters who are just dull clichés (the old woman dying) or too blustery for a sometimes elegant film (the club owner, unbearable). And director William S Seiter is known for plowing through a movie to get it done, and for his blatant interpretations of ideas (probably a natural approach for Laurel and Hardy plots, but not for a more complex musical romance like this one).

I know it's sacrilege to put down the great dance pair of the 1930s, but this just isn't a great movie. It has some great scenes and a great dance or two. And it does, in fact, get better in the second half, once the many crossed lover conflicts get in place.

All about a gay romp in Paris with lavish beauties in lavish gowns, and the music of Jerome Kern. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are stylish and beautiful together. The great cast includes Irene Dunne, who sang her own songs, along with Randolph Scott and Helen Westley. 6/10

If Roberta is less well-known than most of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movies, it's partly because it was out of circulation for a long time after 1945, when MGM bought up the rights to the film and the Broadway musical on which it was based, planning to remake it in Technicolor as a vehicle for Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. That plan fell through, and the actual remake, Lovely to Look At (Mervyn LeRoy, 1952) with Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Red Skelton, and Marge and Gower Champion, is nothing special. But MGM's hold on the property meant that, unlike the other Astaire-Rogers films, it didn't show up on television until the 1970s. But it was also a kind of throwback to the first of their movies, Flying Down to Rio (Thornton Freeland, 1933), in that they weren't the top-billed stars of Roberta, and their plot is secondary to that of the star, Irene Dunne, and her leading man, Randolph Scott. It doesn't matter much: What we remember from the film are the great Astaire-Rogers dance numbers, "I'll Be Hard to Handle," "I Won't Dance," and the reprises of "Lovely to Look At" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Scott's inability to sing resulted in the big number for his character in the Broadway version, "You're Devastating," being cut from the song score of the movie. "I Won't Dance" was brought in from another Jerome Kern musical, and Kern and Jimmy McHugh composed that fashion-show/beauty-pageant classic "Lovely to Look At," with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, for the film, earning Roberta its only Oscar nomination. Except when Astaire and Rogers are doing their magic, the film is a little draggy, and Dunne and Scott strike no sparks. Look for a blond Lucille Ball, draped in a feathery wrap, as one of the models in the fashion show.

I have been lucky enough to have this fashion parade comedy musical film in my life since the mid 70s when New Zealand TV stations sent all their old 16mm prints to Australia for junking. Instead, most of these 500 prints were found be in mint full length condition. As a result they were hired out, and I operated a cinema and ran dozens and dozens of them.

Among this incredible library was ROBERTA which seemed to always be programmed every other month or two. So my first viewing was in a lovely old cinema with a perfect print and a big audience. I have never recovered and never want to. Every time I see ROBERTA I swoon from the sheer beauty of every part of this gorgeous film. 30 years later I can watch it on tape on TV and still get the same overwhelming emotional bliss knowing what it is doing to me. I admire the fashionable production and the team so much because they knew what they were doing to the audience too: presenting a sublime musical confection that is exquisite enough to make the viewer pass out from aching satisfaction. Find it, see it, love it. Have this film in your life and just absorb every second of its absolute perfection.

For several reasons, this is the comparatively hidden entry in the classic Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers filmography, but this 1935 film has been blissfully released in a fairly clean print transfer on DVD, both as an individual purchase and as part of a complete Astaire-Rogers DVD set. With great songs from the Jerome Kern songbook, the movie certainly contains the high-caliber musical quality of the other films starring the dancing pair. The challenge is really in the cumbersome story set-up and in the simple fact that Astaire and Rogers play decidedly secondary characters in the story.

The film's primary focus is on Stephanie, an exiled Russian princess working as a sales assistant in the House of Roberta, the most fashionable couturière in all of Paris. It is run by a lovable dowager referred to as Aunt Minnie, whose nephew Jack Kent ends up in Paris after his band gets fired right after they disembark from their transatlantic voyage. Astaire plays Jack's best friend, bandleader "Huck" Haines, and Rogers is a faux-Polish countess named Sharvenka a.k.a. Lizzie Gatz, Huck's ex-dancing partner who has become a Paris nightclub headliner. The various romantic pairings occur, but an unexpected tragedy strikes with Minnie's death and her wish to leave the shop to the woefully unqualified Jack, who of course needs Stephanie's fashion sense to make the company continue to thrive.

The plot threads start to feel unwieldy after a while, but journeyman director William A. Seiter is smart enough to know when to include the musical interludes. Astaire-Rogers fans may be disappointed to find them dance only twice in the film together, the first well after the half-hour mark in an informal but energetic tap routine and the second near the end in their standard formal wear. Astaire has only one solo to "I Won't Dance"; and perhaps to pacify fans, there is a brief reprisal dance inserted after the story's actual ending though dramatically it makes little sense. Irene Dunne gets to sing three songs - a Russian lullaby and three Kern gems ("Yesterdays", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Lovely to Look At") - in her bell-like operatic soprano, pretty in itself but seemingly at odds with the jazzy sound of the rest of the score.

A year before she let her inner screwball comedienne emerge in "Theodora Goes Wild", a severe-looking Dunne is saddled with a stiff, uninteresting part as Stephanie, and she is not aided much by a bumptious Randolph Scott, who has to play the somewhat ignorant and judgmental Jack on a relative one note. Astaire and a particularly funny Rogers, on the other hand, are breezy and sharp with the little screen time they do get. Little-remembered Claire Dodd predictably plays Jack's slithery fiancée Sophie, while character actress Helen Westley plays Minnie with her amusing gruffness intact (she was to reunite with Dunne the next year in James Whale's classic version of "Showboat").

There's an extended fashion show at the end, and you can easily spot a bleached blonde, baby-faced Lucille Ball in ostrich feathers among the models. The resulting movie shows the whole to be somewhat less than the sum of its parts, but it's still worthwhile for the talent involved in the production. The 2006 DVD contains some interesting curios as extras - the original trailer (in relatively poor condition); a full-color twenty-minute 1935 musical short, "Starlit Days the Lido", with oddly attired variety acts entertaining bemused Hollywood stars like Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery; a vintage cartoon, "The Calico Dragon" about a little girl's dream of her stuffed animals coming to life to protect her from the dragon; and an eleven-minute audio-only radio promo for the movie.

ROBERTA has to be my least favorite of the movies teaming GINGER ROGERS and FRED ASTAIRE--mostly because they have little more than supporting roles while the spotlight goes to IRENE DUNNE and RANDOLPH SCOTT. Furthermore, the plot is a zany one, best described by TCM's capsule comment: "An American jazzman and his buddy love a Russian princess and a fake countess in Paris." It's odd material for a musical with a score by Jerome Kern and only comes to life when Astaire and Rogers are hoofing it to the beat of an uptempo tune.

Otherwise, it falls flat in the comedy department and the romance between RANDOLPH SCOTT (who seems uncomfortable in an "out of his element" role as a football coach who inherits a fashion shop) seems awfully hard to believe. IRENE DUNNE is lovely to look at, but I was never a fan of her singing voice, the style of which is probably suited well enough to the Kern songs but seems to have a shrill sound whenever she's in the higher register.

The fashion finale gets a lift from the final dance of Astaire and Rogers which ends the story on a high note. They give the film its liveliest, most professional moments.

Trivia note: Look for a glimpse of a very blonde LUCILLE BALL wearing an ornate white gown toward the end of the fashion show. The fashions themselves tend to date the film terribly, as does RANDOLPH SCOTT's slang expression which evidently was hugely popular in the '30s and he uses throughout: "That's swell!" You know what he'd be saying today.

Irene Dunne gets top billing over Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in this adaptation of a Broadway theater musical. Rogers is at her funniest, doing several dance numbers in which she outdoes Astaire. The film features the timeless songs "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance" and "Lovely to Look At." Roberta is the third Astaire-Rogers film, and the only one to be remade with other actors. MGM did so in 1952, titling the new Technicolor version "Lovely to Look At." With an eye to a remake, MGM bought "Roberta" in 1945, keeping this version off the market until the 1970s. --Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013

The music is by Jerome Kern, from the Broadway play. What a flowering of musical talent show business produced between, say, 1925 and 1955. Composers and lyricists include Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Charles Warren, Dorothy Fields, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rogers, and a horde of others. (It's surprising how many of them grew up at the same time in the same Brooklyn neighborhood.) Kern was the equal of any of them and though Roberta doesn't include his most original or memorable songs, those we do hear are both sonorous and technically adept.

But, the songs and dances are virtually the only good things in the movie. The story is plot bound, and is to the Astaire-Rogers series what "Room Service" is to the Marx Brothers. Otto Harback wrote the script for the play, mainly a contrast between stereotypical masculinity and feminine delicacy. (Randolph Scott, a former football player, inherits some kind of fashion business and feels his virility is compromised.) It makes for some heavy plodding in the film. Scott isn't nearly as enjoyable as he was in the later "Follow the Fleet," let alone straight comedies like, "The Awful Truth." Or even (dare I suggest it?) the priggish cowboy he played in the cheap Ranown movies of the 1950s -- "You make good coffee. Good-NIGHT, Mrs. Lowe." Or the best line Scott has ever uttered on screen about a beautiful woman -- "She ain't ugly." I gather the play, with its contrast in gender sensibilities, was a little more risqué than the film, but some of the humor survives: Astaire complaining into a phone that he's been running the fashion shop "for so long my voice is beginning to change."

Kern wrote eight songs for the play and four of them are included here: "Let's Begin," "I'll be Hard to Handle," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and "Yesterdays." Two new Kern songs were brought in: "Lovely to Look At" and "I Won't Dance." The last may be the Astaire-Rogers signature tune. I know an institutionalized schizophrenic who shows the usual flat affect but who, every once in a while, begins to sing "I Won't Dance" in a peppy tempo.

Probably the two best dances are Astaire's solo in "I Won't Dance" and the pas de deux in "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." In the first, Astaire is hauled to the foot of a staircase and goes into a spasm of twists, turns, and impossibly rapid taps, his arms flailing about as he twists and turns like a crazed marionette, managing to shake hands with someone in the process. Astaire always insisted on full body shots during the dance numbers and as few cuts as possible. There is only one cut in this scene. This is unquestionably one of his most distinctive solos. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", with Rogers, is slower but not moony. The rudimentary pulsing rhythm makes their simple dance together look positively elegant. If they were backed by a German band, there would be a tuba playing OOM-pah, OOM-pah in the arrangement. Rogers is remarkably supple. At one point Astair drapes her backward over his arm and she drapes her torso over it as if her spine were made not of bones but chondrocytes. They dance for two and a half minutes without a single cut in "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." One false step and they'd have fallen all over each other and had to start from the beginning.

Worth seeing, but only for the songs.

Fashions change. If you only thought so once, you'd know it after seeing this. Let's be frank, honest and earnest: it's a totally unco-ordinated weird and utterly ghastly mess. I amazed myself by sitting through the whole thing from beginning to end. I'm certainly not going to do so again. But I may, nevertheless, pick out all the bits with delightful, adorable, heart-warming Ginger, who is just the most wonderful gal that ever was. She always makes me feel good within seconds of her appearance. Astaire would be much, much less without her. Not that anyone would admit it. I had to look up Irene Dunne on Wikipedia, and was stunned at the career she'd had. Almost as stunned as to discover that she'd had any career at all. The clothes in the fashion parades were slightly astonishing, I'll give them that. I expect to see some of them next season, worn by Gaga, however, or Bonkers, or someone similar. Just a word on the story: perfectly and completely idiotic. Dialogue script and acting: wooden and dreadful. Direction: which way did it go? Rogers and Astaire? Heroic. Great, against all odds. Roberta? Flag Hippo?