Ruth Leon recommends… The Carioca – Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

The Carioca – Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

 So many contenders for the ‘best dance routine ever filmed’ that I’ve had to make a special file for readers’ choices.

Here’s this week’s entry, Fred and Ginger (“Everything he did, I did backwards, in heels”) in their first movie together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). Here’s the Carioca, foreheads firmly pressed together. I can’t imagine how hard it was for them to dance with their heads together like that, in such an unnatural position.

It was said that he would work on their dances alone while she, at the time a bigger star, was filming elsewhere. Then she would arrive on the set, in costume and make-up, he would show her the steps, once, and then the cameras rolled.

​Magic, yes, but I’m amazed all over again by how incredibly precise and disciplined they were and how easy they made it look.

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