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With The Gay Divorcee, Pan begins a seven-year association with RKO that includes the choreography for every Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical through The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, though he wins the Academy Award for Best Choreography with the “Fun House” number from the non-Astaire-Rogers Damsel in Distress. Throughout his tenure at the studio, Pan also designed dances for non-musical films such as A Dog of Flanders, Stage Door where he worked with Ann Miller and Ginger Rogers, Becky Sharp, and a variety of Katharine Hepburn films including Mary of Scotland and Quality Street.

The musical resurgence was spearheaded by the election of Franklin Roosevelt and by Warner's 42nd Street, both of which indicated that better times were ahead. Busby Berkeley's dance spectacles became a symbol of the new optimism even as Gold Diggers of 1933 mirrored Depression woes. Backstage films made a comeback as musical genres became more standardized, and at the end of the year Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, in Flying Down to Rio, indicated a new direction for screen dance.

This chapter challenges the conventional notion that the song and dance musicals that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made for MGM in the 1930s epitomized Hollywood escapist fare in the Depression decade. Through a close reading of one of their movies, Roberta (1935), it shows how this could be seen as romantic nonsense at one level and as a poignant reminder of ordinary people’s wider lived realities in hard times at another. It analyses, in particular, how the dual rendering of ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ in song by the Irene Dunne character and in dance by the Astaire and Rogers characters gives the narrative moments of emotional depth by stressing the potential for loss. This lifts the film beyond the private ordeals of the romantic couples involved in its on-off love plots into the public domain of the Depression audience both on screen in the salon and nightclub sequences and off screen in the case of moviegoers.

This chapter begins with Walters and John Darrow building a house in Malibu Beach, and concisely discusses the development of Malibu Colony. Most of this chapter is devoted to the making of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which reunited Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on-screen (after a ten year hiatus) when Judy Garland was removed from the picture. The film co-stars Oscar Levant, with choreography by Hermes Pan and Robert Alton.

The Pan family’s introduction to New York City in the 1920s is luxurious and spectacular but when their money runs out, the members find themselves doing menial labor. Hermes and Vasso earn money by dancing in a speakeasy and eventually they find employment performing in the chorus of various Broadway shows, appearing together in a college musical called Happy. He also appears with the Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers performing the famous “Hooray for Captain Spaulding.” Pan’s coworkers note his resemblance to Fred Astaire and Hermes meets Ginger Rogers when they are both cast in Top Speed. Pan’s personal magnetism, sensitivity, and good looks earn him the attention of people of both sexes from all walks of life.

This chapter takes a closer look at the personalities and celebrities that would epitomize and popularize the character of the blonde bombshell, namely: Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, and Ginger Rogers. It looks at, for example, Nothing Sacred (1937) where Hazel Flagg—played by Lombard—carries the banner for modern American womanhood. The fast-talking dame, in a sense, looks towards democratic society's ideology that boasts of endless opportunities for self-advancement and translates this ideology into modern parlance. She speaks of the language of the times as quick and unforgiving, and at the same time she also expresses the fluid, unstable character of American society during a period of drastic change. The chapter thus analyzes and expounds on the character of the fast-talking dame and sees how this incorporates into the blond bombshell persona, further exploring such a dame in the personas of the characters played by Harlow, Lombard, and Rogers.

Betty Comden and Adolph Green, after finishing work on the screenplay for Good News, began work on their third Broadway musical. It became Bonanza Bound, and the tuner, a comedy set in the 1890s in Alaska, closed during its tryout engagement in Philadelphia. Though critics were chilly toward this show, there were warm notices for the film. It prompted MGM to offer them work on two more movies, and Comden and Green returned to Hollywood to work on the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers picture The Barkleys of Broadway and Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

The most significant shift in the wartime and postwar history of the Hollywood producer was the rise of women. Joan Harrison and Virginia Van Upp are best known, but little has been written about the producing careers of Harriet Parsons, Helen Rathvon, Ruth Herbert, Frances Manson, Ginger and Lela Rogers, Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, Helen Deutsch, Jane Murfin, Theresa Helburn, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Kay Francis, and Rita Hayworth. Together with Mary Pickford, longtime partner of United Artists Studios, and Ida Lupino, actress turned writer-director-producer, they formed a formidable contingent of women who sought to redefine and re-energize the creative role of the producer. Many of these women combined screenwriting, editing, acting, and producing duties. During the war years, two factors advanced women’s executive roles in Hollywood: women outnumbered men in the United States and public and cross-party support for the Equal Rights Amendment was at its peak.

The main theme is Milestone’s World War II film work. After a consideration of his two pre-War romantic comedies Lucky Partners and My Life with Caroline, both starring Ronald Colman, attention turns to the propagandistic documentary Milestone edited with Joris Ivens using footage from Soviet cameramen, Our Russian Front. A section on The Edge of Darkness, set in Nazi-occupied Norway and starring Errol Flynn, follows. The controversial Oscar-nominated The North Star is then extensively treated. This argumentative collaboration with screenwriter Lillian Hellman (with music by Aaron Copland), produced by Sam Goldwyn, was widely condemned for an overly sympathetic portrayal of the USSR, but earned six Oscar nominations.

Today, when the media puts studio-era Hollywood and feminism together, the answer is usually Katharine Hepburn. But during her career at RKO and MGM, she did not discuss women’s issues regarding equal pay, career opportunities, or political equality. However, she did state flatly in 1933, “I intend to speak my mind when I please, despite movie traditions,” setting her independence against the Hollywood establishment. She remained uninterested in working with other Hollywood women on-screen or in recognizing the advantages of promoting women’s careers through publicity networks off the set. Katharine Hepburn endures as a product of American myths about pioneering individualism, the Hollywood star system, and the studio-era film industry’s ambivalent investment in strong women. But if, as historian Nancy Cott has argued, “Pure individualism negates feminism because it removes the basis for women’s collective self-understanding or action,” then Hepburn was no feminist. This chapter unravels her myth.

The quality of assignments and size of his salary climbed steadily. His major breakthrough was Kitty Foyle, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He wrote his third novel, The Remarkable Andrew, an antiwar satire, and adapted it for the screen.

After producing too many movie musicals at the dawn of sound, Hollywood had virtually abandoned the genre by 1932. Steiner was convinced that the public was eager to see a well-made musical—and after the success of Warner Bros.’ 42nd Street in March 1933, he had a chance to prove it. The visually extravagant Melody Cruise was only a modest hit, but it opened the door for a cinematic breakthrough at RKO: Flying Down to Rio, which paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for the first time. This chapter details the swift evolution of movie musical production and Steiner’s role in it, as he and his team experimented with pre-recording music to be used as “playback” during filming. During Rio’s making, the twice-divorced Steiner began a romance with studio harpist Louise Klos. It would become one of the most significant, and complicated, relationships in Max’s life.

To help Betsy Drake’s flagging career, Grant agreed to do a radio series with her. Mr and Mrs Blandings (1951) continued the comical adventures that began in Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), but the series was not well received. On screen, he took some risks in this period, playing an outspoken doctor in the politically charged People Will Talk (1952), and an ordinary family man in the gentle comedy Room for One More (1952). He also returned to the more familiar terrain of screwball comedy. Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business (1952), co-starring Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe, allowed him some fine comic moments, but Dream Wife (1953), co-starring Deborah Kerr, seemed tired and old-fashioned. None of these films scored with audiences. Seeing the rising popularity of young method actors such as Marlon Brando, Grant began to wonder if his own debonair image was out of date, and if it was time for him to retire.

These films are considered together in this chapter not only because they are two of Allen’s greatest cinematic accomplishments, but because they share so many elements in common—including their very hedged conclusions affirming the value of art. In Purple Rose, Cecilia’s Depression era infatuation with Hollywood movies provides her with the only consolation her grim working-class existence affords; Kleinman, the Kafkaesque protagonist of Shadows and Fog, escapes the murderous political atmosphere of his European town to sign on with the circus as assistant to the Great Irmstedt, the circus magician. Cecilia ultimately chooses the actor who plays Tom Baxter in Purple Rose rather than the character, since she concludes that she must side with reality over illusion; reality proves unreliable when the actor flees back to Hollywood, betraying all the romantic promises he had made to her. Kleinman’s commitment to magic (Allen’s favorite shorthand for art) is compromised when Irmstedt’s craft fails to capture the killer who has been terrorizing the town, a roustabout affirming that “everyone loves his illusions,” even though they are nothing but illusions that fail to alter the realities of the human condition.

When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War, Cary Grant finally felt able to apply for US citizenship and then to serve in the US military. He also married Barbara Hutton, and they were dubbed “Cash and Cary” in the press. While he waited for his citizenship papers, he continued making films. In George Stevens’ The Talk of the Town (1942) he vies with co-star Ronald Colman for the affections of Jean Arthur. Anxious that Stevens was favouring Arthur, Grant was unhappy making this film. Afterward, he embarked on the Hollywood Victory Caravan, a fundraising tour of American cities, and he was touched to see the public’s affection for him. With director Leo McCarey and co-star Ginger Rogers, he made Once Upon A Honeymoon (1942). The original story, co-written by McCarey, appears in some respects to be an apologia for Barbara’s Hutton’s previous marriage to a Prussian-born aristocrat who served in the German army during the First World War. Still eager to serve in the military, Grant made one more film at the behest of RKO. Mr Lucky (1943) is a “conversion narrative” in which he plays an initially cynical gangster who ultimately volunteers to serve his country. While making it, the military ruled that no one over the age of 38 could enter the services. Grant, who turned 39 as Mr Lucky was completed, would not be able to serve his adopted country.