Astaire and Rogers

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers endure in the American imagination. The charm and grace of their dancing in the ten films they made together, including Top Hat and Swing Time, elicit nostalgia today. Most books about the Astaire-Rogers films focus exclusively on the music and dance scenes, but this book shows that the films are much more than the sum of those scenes, which after all only account for approximately one-third of their films' running times. Gallafent argues that, contrary to received opinion, the musical numbers are not discrete, generic moments dropped in to enliven the films. Instead, the music and dance routines advance the movies' themes.