The Gay Divorcee

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The Gay Divorcee is a 1934 film that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was based on the musical play The Gay Divorce written by Dwight Taylor, Kenneth S. Webb, Samuel Hoffenstein, with screenplay by George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost and Edward Kaufman, from an unproduced play by J. Hartley Manners. The Hays Office insisted on the name change, believing that while a divorcee could be gay, it would be unseemly to allow a divorce to appear so. The movie was directed by Mark Sandrich.

Erik Rhodes, Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore

The movie is a romantic musical with a slim plot. It included the popular dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and also starred Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes. The song "The Continental" by Con Conrad and Herb Magidson won the Academy Award for Best Song, and is the music to the twenty-minute dance sequence towards the end of the film.

The stage version included many songs by Cole Porter, most of which were excised from the film, "Night and Day" being a notable exception.

External links

• [Karin Longworth's analysis of the Night and Day routine]

{| style="margin:0 auto" align=center id=toc width=600 !style="background:#CCCCCC" align="center"|Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers |- |- |align="center" | Flying Down to Rio (1933) • The Gay Divorcee (1934) • Roberta (1935) • Top Hat (1935) • Follow the Fleet (1936) • Swing Time (1936) • Shall We Dance (1937) • Carefree (1938) • The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) • The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)

]