Fred Astaire
Jerry Travers
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Top Hat: Directed by Mark Sandrich. With Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes. An American dancer comes to Britain and falls for a model whom he initially annoyed, but she mistakes him for his goofy producer.
- (21K)
- Comedy, Musical, Romance
- Mark Sandrich
- 1935-09-06
- Overview
- Production notes and credits
- Cast
- Academy Award nominations
Top Hat, American musical film, released in 1935, that was the first of the 10 films pairing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to boast a screenplay written specifically for them.
The film was based on the play The Girl Who Dared. A characteristic vehicle for Astaire and Rogers, it featured a slight story of initially unrequited love, mistaken identities, and a requisite happy ending and allowed for frequent and breathtaking dance numbers starring the leading pair. Astaire played an American dancer appearing in a London stage show, and Rogers was cast as the dress model he falls for at first sight. Their romance is complicated when Rogers’s character mistakenly believes the smitten dancer to be a married man.
Britannica Quiz
Oscar-Worthy Movie Trivia
•Studio: RKO Radio Pictures
•Director: Mark Sandrich
•Writer: Dwight Taylor
•Music: Irving Berlin
•Fred Astaire (Jerry Travers)
•Ginger Rogers (Dale Tremont)
•Edward Everett Horton (Horace Hardwick)
•Erik Rhodes (Alberto Beddini)
- Lee Pfeiffer
European royalty ca. 1859. Austin Lane Crothers, 46th Governor of Maryland (1908–1912), wearing a top hat. A top hat (also called a high hat, or, informally, a topper) is a tall, flat-crowned hat traditionally associated with formal wear in Western dress codes, meaning white tie, morning dress, or frock coat.
The movie, made during the Depression in 1935, features characters so rich that even their butlers are gentlemen of leisure. Astaire plays Jerry Travers, who is opening in a London musical being produced by his best friend, Horace Hardwick ( Edward Everett Horton ), which means he doesn't know his best friend's wife, either.
Top Hat (1935) is one of the great 30s dance musicals, and possibly the best, most characteristic and most profitable Astaire and Rogers musical ever, with wonderful, magical dance and song numbers (with straight-on, full-length views of the dancers without a lot of camera cuts or unusual camera angles). Its tagline was:
"Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for the 1935 film Top Hat, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire. The song title refers to the formal wear required on a party invitation: top hat, white tie, and a tailcoat.
Top Hat - (Re-issue Trailer) A woman thinks the man who loves her is her best friend's husband in Top Hat (1935), a romantic comedy starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and featuring the songs of Irving Berlin.
