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This page is to obtain access to the broadcast of this Sands Films Cinema Club presentation
SWING TIME
Swing Time is the finest of the Astaire-Rogers musicals. Like numerous other ’30s Hollywood films, it provides commentary on the Depression. Money, for instance, is a motif. Lucky, a dancer, makes a bet that causes him to miss the appointed time of his wedding. Lucky’s motivation isn’t money; he can’t resist the sport. But money is what motivates others to detain him by luring him into the bet whose outcome they know in advance. If Lucky marries, after all, he may leave the show he headlines for more respectable prospects, putting his fellow performers out of work. Arriving late to his intended’s home, where the wedding would have taken place, Lucky finds her father furious; but the successful businessman softens a bit when Lucky pledges to earn the man’s daughter by going to the big city and amassing money of his own. Money, his future father-in-law asserts, proves “character,” unawares, it seems, that he is commoditizing his own daughter. The names of both lead characters—the gambling Lucky (Fred Astaire), with his lucky quarter, and Penny (Ginger Rogers), the dance instructor he meets in New York—also refer to money.
Swing Time
Lucky is tricked into missing his own wedding to Margaret and has to make $25,000 so her father will allow him to marry her. He and business partner Pop go to New York where they run into dancing instructor Penny. She and Lucky form a successful dance partnership, but romance is blighted by his old attachment to Margaret and hers for Ricky.
- Year:
- 1936
- Runtime:
- 103 minutes
- Language:
- English
- Director:
- George Stevens
- Screenwriter:
- Allan Scott, Howard Lindsay
- Producer:
- Pandro S. Berman
- Cast:
- Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore
- Cinematographer:
- David Abel
- Editor:
- Henry Berman
- Composer:
- Jerome Kern
This page is to obtain access to the broadcast of this Sands Films Cinema Club presentation
SWING TIME
Swing Time is the finest of the Astaire-Rogers musicals. Like numerous other ’30s Hollywood films, it provides commentary on the Depression. Money, for instance, is a motif. Lucky, a dancer, makes a bet that causes him to miss the appointed time of his wedding. Lucky’s motivation isn’t money; he can’t resist the sport. But money is what motivates others to detain him by luring him into the bet whose outcome they know in advance. If Lucky marries, after all, he may leave the show he headlines for more respectable prospects, putting his fellow performers out of work. Arriving late to his intended’s home, where the wedding would have taken place, Lucky finds her father furious; but the successful businessman softens a bit when Lucky pledges to earn the man’s daughter by going to the big city and amassing money of his own. Money, his future father-in-law asserts, proves “character,” unawares, it seems, that he is commoditizing his own daughter. The names of both lead characters—the gambling Lucky (Fred Astaire), with his lucky quarter, and Penny (Ginger Rogers), the dance instructor he meets in New York—also refer to money.
Swing Time
Lucky is tricked into missing his own wedding to Margaret and has to make $25,000 so her father will allow him to marry her. He and business partner Pop go to New York where they run into dancing instructor Penny. She and Lucky form a successful dance partnership, but romance is blighted by his old attachment to Margaret and hers for Ricky.
- Year:
- 1936
- Runtime:
- 103 minutes
- Language:
- English
- Director:
- George Stevens
- Screenwriter:
- Allan Scott, Howard Lindsay
- Producer:
- Pandro S. Berman
- Cast:
- Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore
- Cinematographer:
- David Abel
- Editor:
- Henry Berman
- Composer:
- Jerome Kern