Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Another movie sitting on my DVR was the 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical Roberta, so I recently watched it to do a post on here. Interestingly enough, even though the pairing of Rogers and Astaire had become successful already, and they had starred together in The Gay Divorcee, they're not the stars here.

That honor goes to Irene Dunne, and to a lesser extent Randolph Scott, even though he gets biling below the other three. But the movie starts off with Fred, here playing a man named Huck Haines, leader of a band called the Wabash Indianans. They've made their way to Le Havre, the port that serves Paris, because they've been booked by the owners of one of the nightclubs. However, that owner (character actor Luis Alberni) that he was going to be getting Indians (as in feather and all the other stereotypes), not Indianians, so he cancels the contract on the spot.

Huck's friend John Kent (Randolph Scott) was going to go to Paris anyway to see his aunt Minnie, who goes by the pseudonym Robert (Helen Westley) because she runs a fashion house in Paris that apparently would be more successful under the Robert name than under the Minnie brand. Working for Roberta is Stephanie (Irene Dunne), who also does the designs and likely has an option to buy the business should Roberta retire. Unsurprisingly in a movie like this, John falls in love with Stephanie, even though he has an old flame Sophie (Claire Dodd) who is going to be coming over to Paris to join the fun.

I haven't mentioned Ginger Rogers yet. At one of the nightclubs John and Roberta are trying to get Huck and his band a gig at, one of the singers is the Russian émigrée Countess Schwarenka (Rogers). Except, Huck knows that's an act because he knows the alleged countess, real name Lizzie, from back in the States. The two wind up having a relationship a lot like the one that James Cagney and Joan Blondell had in their movies over at Warner Bros., and not one complicated by misunderstandings.

Those misunderstandings are for John and Stephanie. Sadly for all involved, Roberta suddenly drops dead; without a will, the fashion house goes to the nearest relative, which happens to be John. This even though he knows nothing about fashion design or this sort of business. Sophie, having heard about the inheritance, shows up, and it's up to Huck to make certain that John ends up with the right woman.

Among the interesting things here is that Fred and Ginger (and decidedly more so Ginger) are not the stars of the show, although they certainly get some dance numbers. And Randolph Scott gets the girl rather than playing the second banana in all those other romantic comedies.

And then there's the music. Roberta was based on a stage show with songs by Jerome Kern, including a tune that's gone on to become a standard, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes". The bad news is that the script has Irene Dunne's character sing it, and her Jeanette MacDonald-like voice is, I think, entirely wrong for the song. That may, of course, be because like a lot of younger people, I would have heard the Platters' 1950s version on one of the oldies stations my parents would have listened to before seeing the movie. Other songs in the movie have also become standards, such as "Lovely to Look At".

Roberta, being stuck squarely in the 1930s, may not be for everybody, and certainly younger viewers are most likely not to appreciate something seemingly old-fashioned. But for anybody who likes the 1930s style of musical, Roberta should be right up your alley, and definitely worth a watch.