(See Cover)
It was news in Hollywood that a new star had been made. But it was news throughout the U.S. that the best tap dancer in the world, Fred Astaire, had a new dancing partner. She danced out with him before the nation in Columbia's new musical, You'll Never Get Rich, and there could be no doubt that she was the best partner he had ever had.
It takes two to make a dance team, and a partner for Astaire is a Hollywood problem. She has to be good-looking, since he himself is no beauty, and she has to be a really able dancer to match his hummingbird agility. Few have filled that bill.
His first partner (in pre-Hollywood days) was his sister, pert, chic Adele, who left him in 1932 to become Lady Cavendish and live in an Irish castle. The second was Ginger Rogers, who joined him in his second picture, Flying Down to Rio, in 1933. Six years later, just as Adele had left him, so Ginger Rogers departed, to shroud her lyric legs in the toga of a dramatic actress. Astaire tried two new partners: proficient, metallic Eleanor Powell and gaminous Paulette Goddard. Neither Hollywood nor the nation was impressed.
In You'll Never Get Rich Astaire has the right girl: Rita Hayworth. Those who saw russet-tressed, incandescent Rita Hayworth dance before the movies drafted her knew she was a dancer to partner even the great Astaire. But few of them would have expected her to keep up with his wry, offbeat brand of comedy. She fills both assignments in You'll Never Get Rich.
The show itself is no extravaganza with bevies of beauties pouring out of cornucopias. It is an intimate musical comedy strung on an adequately comic story of U.S. Army rookies, and glittering at intervals with the shining beads of Astaire's exhilarating, airy acrobatics accompanied by Rita Hayworth's lambent looks and legs.
Fidgety Comic Robert Benchley, whose chief claim to charm is that he seems to be in a perpetual, ingratiating hangover, launches the picture. As a soft-shelled Broadway producer with an eye for nice little items named Sonya, he drives into Manhattan, sees the picture's title, cast and credits on a series of roadside billboards.
His favorite dancing master (Mr. Astaire) is caught in the draft and, unable to control his feet or his temper, becomes a permanent resident of the camp guardhouse. His favorite chorine (Miss Hayworth) turns up at camp in the wake of an Army officer (John Hubbard). She eventually solves everything by marrying the jailbird. Comic honors go to swivel-tongued Cliff Nazarro, double-talker extraordinary, who spreads utter confusion whenever he opens his mouth. The picture is well done and well directed.
But the high spots of the show come when its six Cole Porter melodies (not full-strength Porter, but good) tickle the dancing feet of Astaire & Hayworth. The best of them (Since I Kissed My Baby Goodbye), jived in the guardhouse by a steaming Negro quartet, sends Astaire into one of his oldtime paroxysms of unabashed American buck & wing. Three others (one a nifty named Boogie Barcarolle) accompany the new dance team through routines that are light-hearted evidence of the fact that Rita Hayworth really knows dancing. Ballet-trained, as is Astaire himself, she is his first cinema partner with classical dancing equipment.