Top Hat (musical)
Top Hat is a 1935 American screwball musical comedy film in which Fred Astaire plays an American dancer named Jerry Travers, who comes to London to star in a show produced by Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton). He meets and attempts to impress Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) to win her affection. The film also features Eric Blore as Hardwick’s valet Bates, Erik Rhodes as Alberto Beddini, a fashion designer and rival for Dale’s affections, and Helen Broderick as Hardwick’s long-suffering wife Madge.
The film was written by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor. It was directed by Mark Sandrich. The songs were written by Irving Berlin. “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” and “Cheek to Cheek” have become American song classics. It has been nostalgically referred to — particularly its “Cheek to Cheek” segment — in many films, including The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and The Green Mile (1999).
Top Hat was the most successful picture of Astaire and Rogers’ partnership (and Astaire’s second most successful picture after Easter Parade), achieving second place in worldwide box-office receipts for 1935. While some dance critics maintain that Swing Time contained a finer set of dances, Top Hat remains, to this day, the partnership’s best-known work .
An American dancer, Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire) comes to London to star in a show produced by the bumbling Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton). While practicing a tap dance routine in his hotel bedroom, he awakens Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) on the floor below. She storms upstairs to complain, whereupon Jerry falls hopelessly in love with her and proceeds to pursue her all over London.
Dale mistakes Jerry for Horace, who is married to her friend Madge (Helen Broderick). Following the success of Jerry’s opening night in London, Jerry follows Dale to Venice, where she is visiting Madge and modelling/promoting the gowns created by Alberto Beddini (Erik Rhodes), a dandified Italian fashion designer with a penchant for malapropisms.
Jerry proposes to Dale, who, while still believing that Jerry is Horace, is disgusted that her friend’s husband could behave in such a manner and agrees instead to marry Alberto. Fortunately, Bates (Eric Blore), Horace’s meddling English valet, disguises himself as a priest and conducts the ceremony; Horace had sent Bates to keep tabs on Dale.
On a trip in a gondola, Jerry manages to convince Dale and they return to the hotel where the previous confusion is rapidly cleared up. The reconciled couple dance off into the Venetian sunset, to the tune of “The Piccolino”
• Fred Astaire as Jerry Travers•
Ginger Rogers as Dale Tremont•
Edward Everett Horton as Horace Hardwick•
Erik Rhodes as Alberto Beddini•
Helen Broderick as Madge Hardwick•
Eric Blore as BatesNotable bit parts:•
Lucille Ball as Flower shop clerk•
Gino Corrado as Venice hotel manager•
Leonard Mudie as flower salesman•
Dennis O’Keefe as Elevator passenger / Dancer•
Tom Ricketts as Nervous Thackeray Club waiter (uncredited)
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