Flying Down to Rio

"We'll show them a thing or three," Honey Hale (Ginger Rogers) says as she and Fred Ayres (Fred Astaire) take to the dance floor to do the carioca. As events turned out, Astaire and Rogers showed us three times three more, making nine other films together after their breakthrough first screen teaming in Flying Down to Rio. "Too big for the Earth, so they staged it in the sky!" ads declared for this spirit-lifter with a swell Vincent Youmans score and built around a romantic triangle played by Dolores del Rio, Gene Raymond and Raul Roulien. It also includes a dandy production number in which chorines soar on airplane wings. Rogers and Astaire are fourth- and fifth-billed, but their magic was undeniable. When the film ends, the last image we see isn't the leads. It's Fred and Ginger.

• comedy
• musical