Shall We Dance is the seventh of the ten Astaire-Rogers musical comedy films. It was released in 1937. The idea for this film originated in the studio's desire to exploit the successful formula created by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart with their 1936 Broadway hit On Your Toes, which featured an American dancer getting involved with a touring Russian ballet company, and which featured the famous "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" satirical ballet creat...
more
Shall We Dance is the seventh of the ten Astaire-Rogers musical comedy films. It was released in 1937. The idea for this film originated in the studio's desire to exploit the successful formula created by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart with their 1936 Broadway hit On Your Toes, which featured an American dancer getting involved with a touring Russian ballet company, and which featured the famous "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" satirical ballet created by the Russian émigré choreographer George Balanchine. In a major coup for RKO, Pan Berman managed to attract the Gershwins (George Gershwin wrote the score and Ira Gershwin the lyrics) to score this, their first Hollywood musical.
Astaire was not enthused by the proposal to blend ballet with popular dance. Neither, it appears, was George Gershwin—who had become famous for blending jazz with classical forms—as he makes no reference to this concept in any of the songs. While the film—the couple's most expensive to date—benefits from quality...
less
