Carefree (1938). 83 minutes. Directed by Mark Sandrich. Starring Fred Astaire (as Tony Flagg), Ginger Rogers (as Amanda Cooper), Ralph Bellamy (as Stephen Arden), Luella Gear (as Aunt Cora), Jack Carson (as Thomas Connors), Clarence Kolb (as Judge Joe Travers), Franklin Pangborn (as Roland Hunter), Walter Kingsford (as Dr. Powers), Kay Sutton (as Miss Adams), and Hattie McDaniel (as Hattie). Choreography by Hermes Pan. Music by Irving Berlin.
Carefree is the seventh and shortest musical starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, featuring only four songs—all composed by master songwriter Irving Berlin. The plot follows a psychiatrist’s intervention in a woman’s lukewarm love life at the behest of her concerned partner, and the movie could easily be experienced as a comedy about therapy rather than as a standard Astaire-Rogers musical. The material is sexually offbeat, with a topsy-turvy master/subservient element: by analyzing intimate dreams and performing borderline-erotic hypnosis intended to remove his patient’s inhibitions, Astaire as the doctor in question mans … Read the rest