The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)

Really Surprised!

Purely Joyful Movie!

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Blistering performances.

The least remembered of the Astaire & Rogers pictures and their only film based on real people it was their RKO swansong released in 1939. My dear Mum would watch all the Astaire Rogers films when on TV and i vividly recall watching this as a child in our prefab when TV was still new. This DVD viewing was my first since those long ago days. The reason is that it's down beat ending has stuck with me for all these years and to be frank when i watch any musical i mostly want to be uplifted. What i now know of the Castle's and their Pre great war fame i have learned only from Wiki the online encyclopedia and no more. Given that i am writing this review 40 years after the death of Elvis Presley the movie has made me think about the nature of fame and how it can last for some but fade out for others. Also it is 100 years since the events of the great war, the scars of which still run deep for Europe and the United States. So this musical biopic is very timely as a window into those dark days though made 20 years later, just as the world prepared to do it all again.As for the RKO musical film itself, i think it has stood the test of time very well, it packs an astonishing amount into just 93 minutes and benefits from the remarkable chemistry between its popular dancing stars and the popular music of those times are still known to me and i'm sure a great many others.Perhaps only fans of the golden age of Hollywood would want to watch this film today, but i found it to be entertaining interesting and informative of an era long now gone.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions. Excellent. Biopic of pre Great War famous dancing couple. Who else better to portray them than Fred and Ginger?Maggie and Walter were excellent. I always love Zowie and the other dogs. Good to see the real Lew Fields. Ginger's costumes were divine. I hated to see all of the hair cutting, however. Postwar period may have been bad for theatricals, so Vernon's and Irene's careers may not have survived, anyway. Changing tastes may have had a great effect, but in a bad way. The Castles were correct for the time, however, and they introduced a lot of great dances. I am a degreed historian, actress, singer, dancer, fashion designer, film critic and movie reviewer. I am very interested in theatrical history.

There was probably a good reason why RKO put these top-rated stars into a vehicle that was alien to everything they had done before; it's interesting to speculate that perhaps the studio felt the franchise was winding down and needed kick-starting in a new direction, or maybe the studio felt the partnership was growing too demanding and wanted to 'teach them a lesson' or, to explore another avenue, maybe they HAD been unable to persuade Astaire to sign another contract and decided his last contractual obligation would be in a movie weighted towards Ginger. Whatever, they came up with a bio-pic of two dancers who had revolutionized ballroom dancing a quarter of a century earlier but were, at the time of filming, virtually forgotten. Unlike the others in the franchise this time around there would be no mistaken identity ploys to keep the couple apart until the last reel, no new score (just a single new number) from the likes of Berling, Kern or Gershwin AND for good measure an unhappy ending.Vernon Castle was an Englishman from Norwich who moved to America and appeared in a dozen or so Broadway shows before forming a dance partnership with his wife, Irene, which brought them fame and fortune. He enlisted soon after the outbreak of World War I and was killed in February, 1918, and the film more or less follows that outline. This time around there is virtually no chasing the girl; they meet and marry within two reels, spend another reel starving then become an overnight sensation, enjoy it for five or six years until Vernon dies in an airplane accident.Fred and Ginger do what they did best, sing and dance but this time in a completely different style to the one fans were used to and expected. Nevertheless they still manage to charm and captivate and actually carry much more of the film with no Eric Blore, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes or Helen Broderick to share the load. In lieu of these comic stalwarts we get Walter Brennan (playing the part of a man who, in real life, was Black) and Edna May Oliver, both of whom are up to the little they get to do. Apparently it disappointed fans on its initial release but today it stands up well and reminds us just what our grandparents, parents, and even ourselves loved about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is the last of the 9 RKO musicals Astaire did with Rogers. However, from a story point-of-view, it is their best film by a mile. The contest isn't even close, IMO.It's not their best musical. This film is really a drama with a few musical interludes, whereas most of the other Astaire-Rogers films were musical comedies. Those other films had flimsy plots at best and were saved only by their songs and dances. BUT - "Vernon and Irene" could easily stands alone without any songs or dances. It even has some action sequences as is typical of war-time films (WWI, in this case).The film is a bio-pic about the Castles, who in their heyday were even bigger than Astaire and Rogers. The choreography is more attuned to 1910's sensibilities than the usual Astaire and Rogers film, but that's okay. Astaire and Rogers dance just well as always.As the dancing duo's last RKO film, V&C is quite classy and a fine close to a great RKO dancing career for the two.