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CAREFREE (RKO Radio, 1938), directed by Mark Sandrich, is a screwball comedy with music that should be seen more than once to be appreciated or depreciated, depending on how one accepts this new type of production. Pairing for the eighth time on screen, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers take welcome change from their usual format, in which Astaire plays a doctor, a psychiatrist by profession, instead of his usual lovesick American dancer, although the doctor in question DOES have a talent for dancing, and Rogers, breaking away from sophisticated humor, making her mark in more broader comedy. She's been funny before, usually sassy with one liners, but this time in the dizzy-dame mode, but fortunately, not to the extreme.The plot focuses on Stephen Arden (Ralph Bellamy), a witless attorney who becomes drunk after his engagement to popular radio star, Amanda Cooper (Ginger Rogers), has been broken for the third time. He stumbles to the Medical Foundation building to ask his good friend, Dr. Tony Flagg (Fred Astaire), a psychiatrist who practices with the white coated Connors (Jack Carson), to have Amanda "what's 'er name" analyzed, which he agrees to do. Once in his office, Amanda, who keeps her appointment, accidently stumbles upon Flagg's phonograph record and listens to a diagnosis of his last patient and his comment about Miss Cooper being a maladjusted woman when told by his receptionist that Miss Cooper is waiting outside his office. Upset, Amanda decides to give this doctor the once over by sitting behind his desk with the doctor on the other end, followed by a question and answer session. When Amanda and Tony meet again while bicycling in the park, as arranged by Stephen, they come to friendly terms, and Amanda agrees to Tony's upcoming treatments. At one point Tony insists Amanda go to sleep so that he can later analyze her dream. This is done after eating lobster with mayonaise and buttermilk while dining in a restaurant. After Amanda returns to her apartment, which she shares with her spinster Aunt Cora (Luella Gear), she dozes off and dreams of herself dancing with Tony. Right then and there she realizes she loves her doctor and not the stuffy Stephen, who now calls Tony his "scientific cupid." Because Amanda doesn't want to lose Tony as her doctor, she decides to make up some wild dream she's had for 11 straight years (based on Little Red Riding Hood), causing Tony to study her some more by giving her an anesthetic. This leads to some problems when Amanda unwittingly leaves the office going amok in the streets by walking through traffic, kicking policemen and anyone else, and following a truck carrying a giant plate of glass which she eventually breaks with a policeman's wooden club. More problems ensue when Tony later hypnotizes Amanda, who once more goes about the streets, driving wildly to the country club to find Stephen skeet shooting, where Amanda grabs one of Stephen's guns and shoots all over the place, and at one point, wanting to shoot Tony "like a dog." The problem now is to get Amanda out of the trance, but Tony has to get by Stephen, who won't let him undo the experiment, for reasons of his own.The original score by IRVING BERLIN include: "Since They Turned 'Loch Lamond' Into Swing" (danced by Fred Astaire minus vocal); "I Used to Be Color Blind" (sung by Astaire); "The Yam" (sung by Ginger Rogers); "Change Partners" (sung by Astaire); and "Change Partners" (reprise by the St. Brendan's Boy Choir).With plenty of comedy in the screenplay, one would wonder how a story, that could actually play as straight comedy, fit in some dance numbers. This is where CAREFREE stands apart from the other Astaire and Rogers films. The first number finds Astaire at a golf course accomplishing into doing several things at the same time by tap dancing to a Scottish fashion underscoring and teeing off several golf balls in rhythm, all to perfection with Astaire not once missing his mark. The succeeding number, "I Used to Be Color Blind" is very interesting mainly because it takes part as Rogers' dream dance, with Astaire, and in slow motion. While "The Yam" is an upbeat number, sung by Rogers at a country club, followed by dancing with Astaire on wooden floors instead of shining glassy floors as in the past, didn't become a memorable duet as "The Carioca," "The Continental" or "The Piccolino." Unlike these earlier dances, Astaire and Rogers take over the dance floor as they drown out the score by their tapping, and then inviting the patrons sitting at the dinner table to join in. Another first in the series is watching Rogers doing a flying lift while she dances. The final number, "Change Partners," which should have been the movie title since it's more appropriate than "Carefree," is a beautiful love dance, or trance dance, in which Rogers, hypnotised by Astaire, dances in a motionless manner with him. While "Change Partners" is a slower tempo, it's one of the film's most memorable scores, it not, their most standout dances. The score as nominated for an Academy Award as Best Song. However for a movie with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, none of them have won the kind of status as the songs he had written for another film that same year, ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND (20th Century-Fox).In this production, Rogers is assisted by her on screen aunt, Cora, played by Luella Gear, who looks like a middle-aged Kay Francis but talks like Helen Broderick (of TOP HAT and SWING TIME). Gear, in her movie debut, had very few films to her credit. She is reportedly best known for her role as Aunt Hortence in the stage version of THE GAY DIVORCE (1932) starring Astaire. Ralph Bellamy, who by this time was usually type-cast as stuffy suitors, happens to be the most masculine of Rogers' rejected beaus thus far. His character becomes quite unlikable towards the second half of the story.Also seen in smaller roles are Franklin Pangborn as Roland Hunter; Hattie McDaniel as Hattie, the maid; Clarence Kolb as Judge Joe Travers, Stephen's friend who tells corny jokes; Kay Sutton as Miss Adams; and Robert B. Mitchell and the St. Brendan's Boy Choir. The latter must have been victims of the cutting room floor since their names are mentioned in the closing cast credits but nowhere to be seen, except heard in the soundtrack to "Change Partners" near the end of the story. Interesting to point out that the score itself to the dance numbers, especially "The Yam," sometimes plays like an orchestra from the big band era of the 1940s.In spite of numerous pros and cons with this production, CAREFREE, ranked as the team's most underrated film, mainly due to the fact of its lack of frequent television revivals on commercial television a few decades ago, and their shortest, 83 minutes, is an occasionally funny outing with imaginable, if not too successful, dance numbers. Other than CAREFREE being available on video cassette and DVD, it was formerly a frequent broadcast on cable TV's American Movie Classics, and is presently shown on Turner Classic Movies. Next Astaire and Rogers outing, THE STORY OF VERNON AND IRENE CASTLE (1939).
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