Astaire and Rogers at RKO Trivia Quiz

Answer: False

"Flying Down To Rio" was originally developed as a vehicle for Mexican star Dolores del Rio, who starred alongside leading man Gene Raymond. Receiving fourth and fifth billing respectively were Ginger Rogers, then a contract player at RKO, and Broadway star Fred Astaire.

At the time of the film's release in 1933, Astaire had made only a single film appearance, a small role in the 1933 MGM musical "Dancing Lady", while Rogers had been making films since 1930, with significant supporting roles in two of 1933's most popular musicals, "Gold Diggers of 1933" and "42nd Street". "Flying Down To Rio" would be the only one of the films Astaire and Rogers made together in which Rogers was billed above Astaire.

Despite their relatively lowly billing, the pair were felt to have stolen the movie from the stars.

This was thanks both to their on-screen chemistry together, as well as their only dance number in the film, "The Carioca". The dance routine was so well-received it reportedly got standing ovations during preview screenings of the film.

Answer: Cole Porter

"The Gay Divorcee" was based on the stage musical "Gay Divorce", written by Dwight Taylor with songs by Cole Porter, which had opened on Broadway in 1932 starring Fred Astaire and Claire Luce. Following the success of "Flying Down To Rio", Pandro S. Berman, the head of production at RKO, purchased the rights to "Gay Divorce" as a starring vehicle for Astaire and Rogers.

The title of the film was altered to "The Gay Divorcee" on advice from the Hays Office, on the grounds that "while a divorcee might be gay or lighthearted, it was 'unseemly' for a divorce itself to be so labelled".

Although the film was based on the show, the majority of the songs Cole Porter had written were replaced. The only one of Porter's songs to be retained was "Night and Day", which was used in Astaire and Rogers' first paired dance sequence in the film, which was taken directly from the stage show.

This was in spite of Astaire initially requesting that it not be used, as the song had become a massive hit, with the star worried that its use would lead to it becoming overexposed.

Answer: Indiana

"Roberta" was based on a Broadway show of the same name by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach. In the show, the character of Scharwenka is a real countess, and was played by Polish-born actress Lyda Roberti. However, in the film the character is reworked to play a more prominent role - instead of being a genuine aristocrat, she is in fact Lizzie Gatz from Wabash, Indiana, and is the old girlfriend of Huck Haines, played by Astaire.

The rights to the stage version of "Roberta" had been originally been purchased by Pandro S. Berman for RKO as a starring vehicle for actress Irene Dunne.

However, the success of "The Gay Divorcee" led to the studio ordering that "Roberta" be reworked to include Astaire and Rogers in significant roles. Despite the success of their previous movie, Astaire and Rogers were given the second and third billing behind Dunne, who at the time was still the bigger name.

Answer: True

When he was approached by RKO to produce the music for "Top Hat", Irving Berlin had not written a film score since 1930's "Reaching for the Moon". For "Top Hat", Berlin was able to negotiate what, at the time, was a unique and sizeable contract for his efforts - not only was he permitted to retain the copyrights of his score, but he would receive a 10% profit share from the film's receipts if it grossed more than $1.25m (it eventually brought in more than $3m at the box office). Berlin produced a large number of new songs, eight of which were discarded as it was felt that they did not advance the film's plot.

The five that were eventually selected included the seminal "Cheek to Cheek", which was used for the film's famous dance routine between Astaire and Rogers, and which was nominated for Best Song at the following year's Academy Awards. One of the discarded songs, "Get Thee Behind Me, Satan", was eventually used in "Follow the Fleet".

Answer: Randolph Scott

Randolph Scott had begun his film career in 1927, working as an extra and bit-player, before moving to stage work at the Pasadena Playhouse in an effort to gain experience. By 1932, he was established enough to have been given a contract by Paramount.

At Paramount, he established a reputation as a leading man in Westerns, before he was loaned to RKO, where he made his first appearance alongside Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in "Roberta". The studio retained Scott to appear in three further films; "Village Tale", "She" and "Follow the Fleet".

His success in these, as well as his subsequent appearance in "The Last of the Mohicans" for independent producer Edward Small, led Paramount to exclusively utilise Scott as a leading man in their 'A' pictures for the remainder of his time with the studio.

Answer: He dances with giant shadows of himself.

"Bojangles of Harlem", the sequence in "Swing Time" where Astaire dances with three giant versions of his own shadow, was put together ostensibly as a tribute to the great pre-war dancer Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, but also to honour African-American dancers in general.

The idea of Astaire dancing with his own shadows came from his collaborator Hermes Pan, with the complexity of the sequence leading to it being the last part of the film to be shot. To produce the sequence, Astaire was first filmed dancing in front of a blank white screen, onto which a powerful light projected his shadow, footage that was then tripled in the film lab. Next, Astaire reshot the sequence in front of another white screen while watching a projection of the shadow dancing, so as to match up as closely as possible the movements.

These four pieces of footage (Astaire himself and the three shadows) were then optically combined to form a single piece of footage. The sequence, which earned Hermes Pan an Academy Award nomination for Best Dance Direction, lasts approximately two minutes, and took three days to shoot.

Answer: Harriet Hoctor

Harriet Hoctor had begun her training at the Normal School of Dancing under the Russian ballet master Louis Harvy Chalif at the age of twelve. By the age of sixteen, she had joined the Duncan Sisters, a major vaudeville act of the 1920s, playing a major role in their Broadway show "Topsy and Eva", from which she subsequently began appearing in shows produced by the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, eventually receiving a starring role in the "Ziegfeld Follies".

In 1935, the Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons reported that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers would be ending their partnership after their next film (eventually released as "Swing Time"), and that Hoctor would be recruited to appear alongside Astaire in the subsequent production. This proved to be untrue, as Rogers did appear in "Shall We Dance".

As recompense, an extended sequence was devised specially for Hoctor to demonstrate her skills, most notably an elliptical backbend en pointe, which she had perfected as a headline act in the "Ziegfeld Follies". George Gershwin composed a special 10 minute piece of music for the sequence titled "Hoctor's Ballet", which proved to be the last extended piece the composer wrote before his death in 1937.

Answer: Burns and Allen

Having made seven films in three and a half years, both Astaire and Rogers felt they needed time apart to do other things and so, following the release of "Shall We Dance", put their partnership on hiatus. While Rogers went to work on "Stage Door", her only collaboration with RKO's other major female star of the period, Katharine Hepburn, Astaire began "A Damsel in Distress", a musical based on a play by PG Wodehouse, with songs by George and Ira Gershwin. Joan Fontaine, then a young contract player at RKO, was cast in the titular role as Astaire's leading lady, but second and third billing went to the comedy partnership of George Burns and Gracie Allen, both of whom were experienced dancers from their time in vaudeville. For their audition for Astaire, Burns and Allen developed a routine involving whisk brooms that Astaire was so taken with, he had the duo teach it to him, and incorporate it into the film to the song "Put Me To The Test". Burns and Allen's experience as led to them being heavily used in the film's musical numbers, while Fontaine's limitations as a dancer saw her only take part in a single brief sequence to the song "Things Are Looking Up".

Answer: Doctor

In the films that Astaire and Rogers had made together, the character that Astaire played was invariably an entertainer of some kind. As a result, on their return from the hiatus after "Shall We Dance" to begin work on "Carefree", Astaire relished the opportunity to play a different type of character, in this case a psychiatrist.

In the film, Astaire's character tries a number of different ways to diagnose the reason that Rogers' character won't agree to marry her suitor (played by Ralph Bellamy), including eating "dream promoting foods" (such as shrimp cocktail with whipped cream, and cucumbers with buttermilk), anaesthesia to release her inhibitions, as well as hypnosis.

The film also sees Astaire undertake some self-analysis in a famous scene where he talks back to himself in the mirror, making it one of the first Hollywood films to spoof Sigmund Freud's theories. "Carefree" is regarded as being the least "Fred and Ginger"-like of the films Astaire and Rogers made, as it features only four musical numbers, and has a plot that is more akin to a screwball comedy than any of their previous efforts.

Answer: Royal Flying Corps

"The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle" tells the story of the titular couple who, prior to the First World War, were famous around the world for their dancing. In 1916, having qualified as a pilot, Vernon Castle enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps, serving on the Western Front until 1917, when he was transferred to Canada.

In February 1918, while on a training flight in Texas, his aeroplane crashed and he was killed. The film of their story had a number of elements to it that Irene Castle, despite serving as a consultant, did not approve of.

A major departure from the previous films that Astaire and Rogers had made, in that it was a (fictionalised) biopic, with the pair playing an already married couple, and with a tragic ending, the film went on to lose $50,000 as a result of its high costs.

By the time of its release, the pair had elected to end their working relationship - while Ginger Rogers remained under contract at RKO, going on to win an Academy Award for the 1940 film "Kitty Foyle", Fred Astaire left RKO to work as a freelance performer, appearing in pictures for a number of different studios. Ten years after "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle", Astaire and Rogers reunited one final time in the MGM musical "The Barkleys of Broadway".