| Follow the Fleet | |
| Director: | Mark Sandrich |
| Producer: | Pandro S. Berman |
| Starring: | Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers Betty Grable Randolph Scott |
| Music: | Irving Berlin Max Steiner |
| Cinematography: | David Abel |
| Editing: | Henry Berman |
| Distributor: | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Runtime: | 110 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Budget: | $747,000[1] |
| Gross: | $2,727,000 |
Follow the Fleet is a 1936 American RKO musical comedy film with a nautical theme starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in their fifth collaboration as dance partners. It also features Randolph Scott, Harriet Hilliard, and Astrid Allwyn, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Lucille Ball and Betty Grable also appear, in supporting roles. The film was directed by Mark Sandrich with script by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor based on the 1922 play Shore Leave by Hubert Osborne.
Follow the Fleet was extremely successful[2] at the box office, and during 1936, Astaire's recorded versions of "Let Yourself Go", "I'm Putting all My Eggs in One Basket", and "Let's Face the Music and Dance" reached their highest positions[3] of 3rd, 2nd, 3rd respectively in the US Hit Parade. Harriet Hilliard and Tony Martin made their screen debuts in this film. RKO borrowed Randolph Scott from Paramount and Astrid Allwyn from Fox for the production.[4]
Seaman "Bake" Baker and Sherry are former dance partners, now separated, with Baker in the Navy and Sherry working as a dance hostess in a San Francisco ballroom, Paradise.
Bake visits the ballroom with his Navy buddy "Bilge" during a period of liberty, reuniting with Sherry (but costing her job), while Bilge is initially attracted to Sherry's sister Connie. When Connie begins to talk about marriage, Bilge quickly diverts his attention towards a friend of Sherry's, Iris, a divorced socialite.
The sailors return to sea while Connie seeks to raise money to salvage her deceased sea-captain father's sailing ship. When the boys return to San Francisco, Bake attempts to get Sherry a job in a Broadway show, but fails amidst a flurry of mistaken identities and misunderstandings. He redeems himself by staging a benefit show which raises the final seven hundred dollars needed to refurbish the ship – although he has to jump ship in order to do so. Bilge, now a Chief Petty Officer, is ordered to locate and arrest him, but allows Bake to complete the show.
After the concert, Bake and Sherry are offered a show on Broadway, which A.W.O.L. Bake accepts on the proviso that Sherry asks him to marry her. Of course, he first has to be sent to the brig and take his punishment.
Cast notes:
Hermes Pan collaborated with Astaire on the choreography. Two songs, "Moonlight Maneuvers" and "With a Smile on My Face" were written for the film but unused.
Contemporary reviews were positive. "Even though it is not the best of [Astaire and Rogers's] series, it still is good enough to take the head of this year's class in song and dance entertainment," wrote Frank S. Nugent in The New York Times. "They tap as gayly, waltz as beautifully and disagree as merrily as ever."[10]
"With Ginger Rogers once again opposite, and the Irving Berlin music to dance to and sing, Astaire once more legs himself and his picture into the big time entertainment class", Variety wrote in a positive review, although it found the 110 minute running time "way overboard" and suggested it could have benefited from being cut by 20 minutes.[11]
"Well loaded with entertainment for mass satisfaction", reported Film Daily.[12]
John Mosher of The New Yorker wrote that "Fred Astaire bobs at his best ... I don't think he's done any better stepping anywhere then he does in this picture, and trim little Ginger Rogers keeps up with him all the time." They were enough, Mosher wrote, to overcome the film's excessive length and a plot that lacked "any of the lightness of the Astaire feet."[13]
Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a mildly good review, describing it as Fred Astaire's "the best since Gay Divorce". Comparing the acting of Astaire to the animated character Mickey Mouse, Greene suggests that the two are alike in "break[ing] the laws of nature". However, Greene draws the line at comparing Ginger Rogers to Minnie. Greene also denounced the bleep censorship introduced by the British Board of Film Censors in removing the word "Satan" from the Hilliard song "Get Thee Behind Me Satan".[14]
Dance commentators Arlene Croce and John Mueller point out that, aside from the obvious weakness,[15] a discursive and overlong plot lacking quality specialist comedians,[16] the film contains some of the Astaire-Rogers partnership's most prized duets, not least the iconic "Let's Face the Music and Dance". According to Arlene Croce: "One reason the numbers in Follow the Fleet are as great as they are is that Rogers had improved remarkably as a dancer. Under Astaire's coaching she had developed extraordinary range, and the numbers in the film are designed to show it off."[17] That this film's remarkable score [18] was produced immediately after his smash-hit score for Top Hat is perhaps testimony to Berlin's claim that Astaire's abilities inspired him to deliver some of his finest work.[19] As an actor, however, Astaire makes an unconvincing[20] attempt at shedding the wealthy man-about-town image by donning a sailor's uniform, while Rogers, in this her fifth pairing with Astaire, brings her usual comedic and dramatic flair to bear on her role as a nightclub entertainer.
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
The film earned $1,532,000 in the US and Canada and $1,175,000 elsewhere making a profit of $945,000. This was slightly down on that for Top Hat but was still among RKO's most popular movies of the decade.[1]
It was the 14th most popular film at the British box office in 1935–1936.[22]