Tag Archives: Ginger Rogers

Swing Time (1936)… Yikes…!

Whenever I present a review of a film, optimally I like to see the whole thing or as very close to the whole thing as I can.

This should be an obvious statement!

There are times, however, when I catch a film when its halfway through its run time (or a little more) and wind up watching the whole thing but don’t write about it because, frankly, since I’ve only seen a part of it it feels wrong to give it a “full” review.

The other day I was flipping through the various channels and they were showing the 1936 film Swing Time. I saw the film once before, in a film class I took as an elective back in the stone age and during my very early college years.

I recalled very little of the film, frankly. See, though I love most film genres, film musicals don’t really do all that much for me. That’s not to say I don’t find some of them enjoyable (I liked, for instance, Grease).

Anyway, when we were about to see Swing Time, I recall our teacher say that this is considered one of the very best Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pairings. The film was directed by George Stevens, who would go on to direct such classics as Gunga Din, A Place In The Sun, Shane, Giant, etc., but, frankly, I recalled very little about the film other than my teacher’s statement.

So when I spotted it on, I was curious. I kept it on and caught some of the early minutes.

The film was, I must admit, quite charming in its early going. Astaire is elegant and Ginger Rogers is quite lovely and when they dance, they move so smoothly. There is plenty of chemistry between them and, given the Depression era these films were originally released in, it much have been quite a relief to get out of the negatives one faced on a daily basis and lose yourself -if only for an hour and a half- in a movie featuring such lovely people having such a lovely time.

I was enjoying the film quite a bit even if it was corny (at least according to these more jaded eyes). I was enjoying it.

And then came the Bojangles of Harlem number…

Le… yikes…!

What this clip doesn’t show is Fred Astaire applying his blackface right before the number.

As he was doing it, I thought to myself: “Is that… is that what I think it is…?!”

Yup, it sure was.

The dance number itself was, like the rest of what I saw in the film, entertaining and beautiful and exciting and Astaire sure does seem to walk on air…

…but…

…blackface…?!?

Holy cow I had completely forgotten that was in the film (again, when I first saw it years ago, none of it really stuck with me at all).

I suppose this is another of those examples of things that were permissible and, indeed, deemed quite entertaining way back when but today…

Yeah, this just doesn’t fly.

At all.

And with good reason!

I shook my head and shut the film off after this… I simply didn’t have the time to finish it up, and I was left wondering how many other famous/well known films like this one have similar sequences. How many musicals from this era (and this was one of the bigger eras for musicals) feature such numbers?

I suspect there are many.

I know, for example, that the first “talkie” film was the 1927 feature The Jazz Singer. The concluding number was Al Jolson singing Mammy while looking like this…

Yikes indeed.