May 1 movie: Dancing Lady. Fred Astaire's first movie! He plays himself and is only in it for a few minutes. The stars of the movie are Joan Crawford as the titular dancing lady, and Clark Gable and Franchot Tone as two guys vying for her.
The plot is that Crawford gets a job starring in a Broadway show, and it's kind of ridiculous to have everyone falling all over themselves about what a brilliant dancer she is (for one thing, she looks at her own feet almost continually), but it allows her to do two numbers with "Freddy" Astaire, who costars in her show. Unfortunately Astaire doesn't get to do much; like Eleanor Powell dancing with Jimmy Stewart in Born to Dance, he has to tone it way down so Crawford can keep up. The best part is they do a dance number where they ride a magic carpet to Bavaria and sing about beer. Fred Astaire seems like the unlikeliest person in show business to sing a song about beer: he's better suited to evening jackets and champagne cocktails. And yet, I always love the beer songs. The one in The Bandwagon has Oscar Levant bellowing "More beer!" and somehow pronouncing "more" with four syllables, but this one has Astaire wearing lederhosen. That's a tough call.
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