A Damsel in Distress (1937)

A Damsel in Distress was the first film in the RKO Astaire-Rogers period in which Astaire was featured solo. The Astaire-Rogers magic was wearing thin by 1937. The previous year’s Shall We Dance was less popular than the films that preceded it, and both stars were eager to decouple. The studio decided to take Astaire as far afield from the previously golden formula as possible with some curiously bold decisions. P.G. Wodehouse was hired to help develop the script from one of his successful novels, which he also had adapted for a successful Broadway play. George Stevens, who had directed Swing Time and was probably RKO’s best director at the time, was assigned to direct. A very young and untried Joan Fontaine was cast as Astaire’s romantic lead, even though she couldn’t dance or sing. (Astaire wasn’t happy about it, but Stevens threatened to bail on the project if she were jettisoned.) George Burns and Gracie Allen, deft vaudevillians and popular radio comedians, were brought on as both comic relief and Astaire’s dancing partners. To top it off, George and Ira Gershwin — longtime friends of Astaire’s — were hired to write the songs, and George to write the score.

Those choices made for a strange brew, and the film lost money — the first Astaire film that did. Even if The Fred and Ginger Show was losing popularity, audiences apparently still wanted to see the two stars paired. Astaire was champing at the bit to be in the forefront and to do more comic dancing. He also clearly wanted to partner more with objects than a romantic partner — a development in screen dancing that I consider really important. (I have more to say about it later.) Damsel is unique in the Astaire canon. Its formula wasn’t repeated, and it’s one of the few of his films of that golden period that still hasn’t been properly restored.

The concept for Damsel is sheer craziness. I can’t even imagine what the writing room was like. They must all have been high as kites on laughing gas. (Wodehouse was there, “adapting” his own very successful novel and play. I can only imagine what he was thinking when Burns and Allen were inserted.) So, a Wodehouse English country squire, his castle, his service staff, and his innocent, impressionable daughter + an American dancer who happens to be in London + his vaudevillian managers + Gershwin tunes and music. Or to put it another way: Astaire falls for an English gentry rose + Joan Fontaine, who can’t sing or dance, is the rose + Burns and Allen do their customary paralogical comic relief (and incidentally steal the show). It’s almost as if the RKO producers tried to put together a scenario so silly and incongruous that it would make Astaire long for more movies with Ginger. Actually, it’s probably the opposite. Whatever they had in mind, it worked.

As with all Astaire films, there are two movies, the negligible love story and the song-and-dance. The love story is very artificial, but in a film this joyously loony it comes off as camp. When I first stumbled on Damsel, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I hadn’t heard of it. Knew nothing about it. Burns and Allen with Astaire? Really? (Actually, I knew Burns and Allen could be great. I loved them in International House [1933], in which they upstage some of the most famous comics in Hollywood.) The most important thing is that B&A are excellent vaudeville dancers — especially Gracie.

Astaire has a sweet minute and a half number in a London street as he escapes from the law. The final swing onto the bus is breathtakingly graceful.

So, no Ginger, and in fact no dancing love-interest. No pair dances. But the trios! The “Whisk Broom Trio” (to Gershwin’s “Put Me to the Test”) was suggested by Burns, who paid an old vaudevillian originator for its use. Imagine Astaire and Hermes Pan working out the comedy of a trio with Gracie Allen in it. Gracie is brilliant — how many times can you say someone upstages Astaire? I love the way her dancing embodies her crazy logic.

The centerpiece of the film is the great Funhouse Routine. In my post on Astaire’s Shall We Dance I suggested that Astaire was increasingly interested in using machines as partners. As long as romance was the central thread, the possibilities were limited. But when one’s partners are deft comic dancers (with excellent taps chops), horizons open up. I like to place the Funhouse Dance alongside the Boiler Room Dance in Shall We Dance as two of the best human-machine dances that Hollywood produced. It’s also one of the most inventive Astaire and Pan ever put together.

There is romance, of course. But since Fontaine couldn’t dance or sing, Astaire gets to sing the Gershwins’ “A Foggy Day” all by himself.

Another surprise for me is that “Nice Work If You Can Get It” was first introduced in Damsel. The situation isn’t important (it would be like explaining a joke). We’ve seen the singers before, singing faux English madrigal carols. Here they break into Andrews Sisters-style close harmony with a Mills Brothers vibe.

The film’s finale is a crazily free, inventive virtuoso solo Astaire number with a drum kit.

Maybe Astaire’s most joyfully hilarious film, Damsel in Distress deserves a better print.

Bonus 1: “Nice Work If You Can Get It” is one of my favorite Gershwin tunes, but for a long time I thought it was written by Thelonious Monk. His was the first version I heard when I was a teenager, before I learned that Gershwin wasn’t just a classical composer. So this version has priority.

Bonus 2: I don’t care for “A Foggy Day in London Town,” but David Bowie going all Bryan Ferry on it is irresistible.

Finally, Bonus 3: The music that the trio dances to in the “Whisk Brooms Trio” became the basis of the “Put Me to the Test” dance in Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth’s Cover Girl. Ira Gershwin’s lyrics weren’t used in Damsel. He teamed up with Jerome Kern after his brother died. Kern refashioned George’s music for Cover Girl and Ira’s lyrics were finally sung. I love this routine! I’m a big fan of Rita Hayworth’s dancing, and here she’s in an ensemble worthy of her.