A Damsel in Distress (1937)

(On Cable TV, October 2020) One of the lesser Fred Astaire musicals of the 1930s, A Damsel in Distress takes us to England, where Astaire plays (as usual) a renowned entertainer trying to find love. He eventually finds it in the character of an English lady, although not without the complications that usually follow such narratives. The cast does offer some interest, with Joan Fontaine at the female lead, and comic characters played by none other than George Burns and Gracie Allen, the later being progressively funnier as a squeaky-voiced airhead. There’s the usual number and variety of dance numbers from Astaire, and while there’s nothing truly anthology-worthy here, two or three sequences still work really well: “Stiff Upper Lip” leads to a showpiece funhouse dance number, while “Nice Work If You Can Get It” leads to an Astaire drum solo played with a variety of appendages. Nearly everything about the film is perfunctory by Astaire’s high standards—Fontaine is not a particularly good dancer, the comedy is slight (aside from Burns and Allen) and the premise is a bit dull compared to other movies of the era. Those who keep a wearied eye on Astaire’s romantic persona (boiled down to “no means try again later”) will note an explicit statement of the persistence credo late in the film, where a character calls out Astaire for being too passive and to Go Get It. Modern audiences will groan at that moment—what works for Astaire would mean a restraining order and social media denunciations in real life twenty-first century. Still, A Damsel in Distress itself is not too bad, even though it is frankly one of the more easily disposable of Astaire’s black-and-white films.