A Damsel In Distress

Format : NTSC
Publisher : Warner Archive
List Price: ~~$26.99~~
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Product Description

Fred Astaire sails across the pond to meet damsel in distress Joan Fontaine and delightful (if unlikely) dance partners George Burns and Gracie Allen in a musical co-scripted by master wit P.G. Wodehouse and directed by George Stevens (Swing Time). The helium-light story concerns servants running a betting pool on the marriage prospects of a fetching aristocrat (guess who wins her hand). The elegant George and Ira Gershwin score includes two standards forever associated with Astaire, A Foggy Day and Nice Work If You Can Get It, plus one of Hollywood's cleverest song-and-dances: the Academy Award(r)-winning* Fun House number, which sends Astaire, Burns and Allen cavorting among chutes, mirrors, moving floors and rolling barrels.

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Amazon.com

A Damsel in Distress is a lighthearted romp to showcase the classic comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, the classic songwriting team of George and Ira Gershwin, and the classic dance team of Fred Astaire and... Joan Fontaine? Damsel was filmed in 1937 when Astaire was taking a break after his seventh film with Ginger Rogers, so the 19-year-old Fontaine plays Lady Alyce Marshmorton, a young British woman whose scandalous love life leads to a mistaken-identity problem with American Jerry Halliday (Astaire). OK, so the romance falls flat and Fontaine can't really dance, but Burns and Allen provide their usual screwball comedy (especially in a funhouse sequence) and Astaire is as charming as ever, such as his dance with a drum set (an idea he revisited in Easter Parade) to "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and his rendition of "A Foggy Day," which set the standard for all singers to follow. Those songs are among the finest film songs the Gershwins ever wrote, and they're complemented by "I Can't Be Bothered Now" and "Things Are Looking Up." Fontaine, incidentally, got out of the musical-comedy business and over the next few years landed some pretty fair gigs in Gunga Din and The Women, and securing one Oscar nomination and one win for her work in two Hitchcock films, Rebecca and Notorious. --David Horiuchi

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