The Gay Divorcee

RKO capitalized swiftly on Astaire and Rogers’s newly minted boffo box office pairing by teaming them in their first starring vehicle. Set amidst a soundstage vision of European seaside glamor, this Hays Code-testing boudoir farce revolves around Rogers’s machinations to divorce her negligent geologist husband while being wooed by an impetuous Astaire. It’s studded, of course, with transcendent moments of cinematic dance: Astaire kicking up his heels while putzing around his apartment to “Needle in a Haystack”; the epic showstopper “The Continental”; and Fred and Ginger ascending to the heights of romantic sophistication in a dance-floor seduction set to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”