A point not often raised by other reviewers of Top Hat is how much of a benchmark this film was in the career of Irving Berlin. Top Hat marked Berlin's return to Hollywood with a new appreciation for the business end of the motion picture industry.
Berlin had been there in the first three years of sound and wrote a few songs for the screen. He didn't like writing and seeing his work integrated into the scores of other films, he didn't like seeing his work ending up on the cutting room floor as was the case in Reaching for the Moon and he didn't like just writing the songs and seeing them tossed every which way into a film.
With Top Hat Berlin began a tradition of total control. After that it was extremely rare to hear a non-Berlin note in any score he wrote. He was as in on the creation of the film as he would have been on the Broadway stage. And he retained copyright control of his songs which was usually not the case, the studio did. The man was a first class businessman as well as our greatest songwriter.
This was the fourth teaming of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. With these two, RKO started rivaling Warner Brothers and MGM for quality musicals. With Fred Astaire they had not only a great dancer, but a star who worked hard in the creation of those numbers. The Piccolino number that he and Ginger do at the finale certainly rivals any of the stuff Busby Berkeley was doing at Warner Brothers though it is not as surrealistic.
Irving Berlin wrote and integrated five outstanding songs into Top Hat. The aforementioned Piccolino, No Strings, Isn't It a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain and Cheek to Cheek. The last was one of Berlin's most popular songs, still done today by would be Astaires. It was nominated in the second year of the Best Song Oscar category, but lost to Lullaby of Broadway.
My favorite number here is the free and easy Isn't It a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain. Fred and Ginger make that informal number under a gazebo so natural, it's positively infectious.
A whole lot of this cast was retained from the previous Astaire-Rogers outing, The Gay Divorcée. Edward Everett Horton, Edward Blore, Erik Rhodes, and Helen Broderick simply repeat their roles from the previous film.
So when you're caught in the rain at home with your significant other, you could do worse than watch Top Hat. You'll be dancing cheek to cheek and soon.
Berlin had been there in the first three years of sound and wrote a few songs for the screen. He didn't like writing and seeing his work integrated into the scores of other films, he didn't like seeing his work ending up on the cutting room floor as was the case in Reaching for the Moon and he didn't like just writing the songs and seeing them tossed every which way into a film.
With Top Hat Berlin began a tradition of total control. After that it was extremely rare to hear a non-Berlin note in any score he wrote. He was as in on the creation of the film as he would have been on the Broadway stage. And he retained copyright control of his songs which was usually not the case, the studio did. The man was a first class businessman as well as our greatest songwriter.
This was the fourth teaming of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. With these two, RKO started rivaling Warner Brothers and MGM for quality musicals. With Fred Astaire they had not only a great dancer, but a star who worked hard in the creation of those numbers. The Piccolino number that he and Ginger do at the finale certainly rivals any of the stuff Busby Berkeley was doing at Warner Brothers though it is not as surrealistic.
Irving Berlin wrote and integrated five outstanding songs into Top Hat. The aforementioned Piccolino, No Strings, Isn't It a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain and Cheek to Cheek. The last was one of Berlin's most popular songs, still done today by would be Astaires. It was nominated in the second year of the Best Song Oscar category, but lost to Lullaby of Broadway.
My favorite number here is the free and easy Isn't It a Lovely Day To Be Caught in the Rain. Fred and Ginger make that informal number under a gazebo so natural, it's positively infectious.
A whole lot of this cast was retained from the previous Astaire-Rogers outing, The Gay Divorcée. Edward Everett Horton, Edward Blore, Erik Rhodes, and Helen Broderick simply repeat their roles from the previous film.
So when you're caught in the rain at home with your significant other, you could do worse than watch Top Hat. You'll be dancing cheek to cheek and soon.