A Damsel in Distress

Back when musicals weren't showcases for choreographers, we had wonderful movies such as this one.

Being a big fan of both Wodehouse and Fred Astaire I was delighted to finally see this movie. Not quite a blend of Wodehouse and Hollywood, but close enough. Some of the American vaudeville humour, the slapstick not the witty banter, clash with Wodehouse's British sense of humour. But on the whole, the American style banter makes the American characters seem real rather than cardboard caricatures.

Some inventive staging for the dance numbers, including the wonderful fairground with revolving floors and funhouse mirrors, more than make up for the lack of a Busby Berkley over the top dance number. They seem a lot more realistic, if you could ever imagine people starting to sing and dance as realistic.

The lack of Ginger Rogers and Eric Blore don't hurt the movie, instead they allow different character dynamics to emerge. It's also nice not to have a wise cracking, headstrong love interest. Instead we have a gentle headstrong love interest, far more in keeping with Wodehouses' young aristocratic females.

A Damsel in Distress is a delight because of the great Gershwin songs, Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, and a terrific supporting cast headed by Gracie Allen and George Burns.

Typically silly plot for an Astaire film has him as an American dance star in England with Burns as his publicist and Allen his secretary. They concoct a story about his being a love bug with women falling victim to him left and right. He runs into Fontaine who is being held captive in her castle by a domineering aunt and docile father. Silly plot.

The great songs include A Foggy Day, Things Are Looking Up, Nice Work if You Can get It, and I Can't Be Bothered Now. Fontaine does not sing, but does a brief (and decent) number with Astaire. Surprisingly good in a few dance numbers with Astaire are Burns and Allen, including an inventive and fun romp through an amusement park.

Also in the cast are Reginald Gardiner, Constance Collier, Montagu Love, Harry Watson (as Albert), Ray Noble, and my favorite--Jan Duggan as the lead madrigal singer.

Jan Duggan is in the middle of the swoony trio who sings Nice Work if You Can Get It. Her facial expressions are hilarious. She was also a scene stealer in the W.C. Fields comedy, The Old Fashioned Way, playing Cleopatra Pepperday.

Much abuse has been heaped on this film because of the absence of Ginger Rogers, who, as noted elsewhere, would have been hideously miscast. The TCM host notes that Ruby Keeler and Jessie Matthews were considered. Yikes. Two more would-be disasters. Fontaine is fine as Alyce and the dynamic allows the musical numbers to belong to Astaire, with ample comic relief by Burns and Allen.

Fun film, great songs, good cast, and Jan Duggan in a rare spotlight!

In a famous essay he wrote about Charles Dickens, George Orwell points out that many readers always regretted that Dickens never continued writing like he did in PICKWICK PAPERS: that is, he did not stick to writing funny episodic novels for the rest of his career. This would not have been too difficult for Dickens. His contemporary Robert Surtees did precisely that, only concentrating on the misadventures of the fox hunting set (MR. FANCY ROMFORD'S HOUNDS is a title of one of his novels). Among hunters and horse lovers Surtees still has a following but most people find his novels unreadable. Dickens was determined to show he was more than a funny man (and don't forget, his first book, SKETCHES BY BOZ, was also a funny book). So Dickens third book is OLIVER TWIST (which got pretty grim at points). Orwell says that for any author to grow they have to change the style of their books. Dickens would definitely (and successfully) have agreed to that.

But Orwell overlooked the genre writer who transcends his fellows. Surtees, as I said, is a genre writer concentrating on hunting - but not everyone is interested in hunting. But P.G.Wodehouse saw himself as an entertainer, poking fun at the upper reaches of the British social system. His Earl of Emsworth is prouder of raising the finest pig in England than being...well Earl of Emsworth! His Psmith is always prepared to counterattack when he is supposed to be submissive to an unfair superior. His Stanley Uckridge will always have a "perfect" scheme that should net a huge profit (but always manages to come apart at the end). And best of all, his Jeeves will always put his brilliant brain to work rescuing the inept Bertie Wooster, his boss. Since Wodehouse had a limited view of his mission as a writer - he was there to do cartoon figures of fun for the entertainment of the world - his books never lost their glow. They served (and still serve) their purposes. In fact, compare Wodehouse with his far more serious contemporary Evelyn Waugh (who also wrote funny books but of a more intellectual type). The best of Waugh remains among the high points of 20th Century British literature: BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, DECLINE AND FALL, and the rest. But in his determination to make his points, if his points failed to interest the reader the book frequently collapsed. For every VILE BODIES there was some failure late in his career like THE ORDEAL OF GILBERT PINFOLD. While Wodehouse could do lesser hack work too, his falling did not go as far as Waugh's did.

Wodehouse also was a gifted lyricist (when you hear "Bill" in the score of SHOWBOAT, it is not Kern and Hammerstein's tune, but Kern and Wodehouse's tune transposed from "Oh Lady, Lady" a dozen years earlier). He was a handy dramatist too. So it is pleasing to see that he took his novel A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS and turned it into the screenplay here.

It has the normal Wodehouse touches. That perfect butler Keggs (Reginald Gardiner in a wonderful performance) is a scoundrel in rigging a "friendly" gambling game of chance among the staff of the stately home he heads. He is also unable to refrain, occasionally, from singing Italian opera - despite Constance Collier's attempts to control his impulse. This is typical Wodehouse characterization. So is the way the love affair between Lady Alyce and Jerry keeps going well and going down due to the antics of Keggs and young Albert, both of whom want to win that game of chance pot of cash. Wodehouse always does that type of plot switch, with antagonists switching their point of view depending on their present state of interest.

Wodehouse was also lucky here to have Burns and Allan to work with. It is generally considered that of all the films they made as supporting actors together (such as SIX OF A KIND and WE'RE NOT DRESSING) George and Gracie did their best support with Fred Astaire. The Fun House sequence, which includes the song "Stiff Upper Lip", is wonderful, as is an earlier sequence where the three do a "whisk broom" dance (that Astaire learned from Burns). But Gracie's marvelous illogical logic is used by Wodehouse in scenes with Gardiner (see how she manages to confuse him into giving her more money than her change deserves to be - only Albert happens to notice Keggs/Gardiner's mistake, and looks at Gardiner as though he's either stupid or mad). Her dialog with Lady Caroline (Collier)'s son Reggie (Ray Noble, the British band leader)leading him to imagine that he will marry her, but saying goodbye to Gracie as she drives off with George to get married is wonderful too.

The film supposedly failed at the box office because of the lack of Ginger Rogers in it, and the weakness of Joan Fontaine. Fontaine is not doing a remarkable job in the role, but the flaw is really Wodehouse's - he didn't make the character very interesting. But the film can stand without that, given the other performers and their characters, Gershwin's music, and Wodehouse's marvelous sense of fun.

Rarely does a novelist have the opportunity to participate in the adaptation of one of his own stories for the screen, but such was the case with Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975). The 1937 movie, A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS, was the first and only time he assisted in transposing his prose to film.

A Damsel in Distress had initially been filmed back in 1919, at the time of its original publication, in a version faithful to the novel. In 1928 Wodehouse had collaborated on a stage version with Ian Hay, which had condensed and rearranged some scenes for the limitations of the proscenium, while retaining the highlights of the book. On the advice of George Gershwin, RKO producer Pandro Berman bought the screen rights to A Damsel in Distress in November 1936. Gershwin had collaborated in the theater with Wodehouse before he wrote the novel, and Gershwin believed that the character of the music writer named George Bevan in A Damsel in Distress was based on him. Gershwin's nine songs for the film were composed before the script was written, and he actually died during production of the movie. A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS had an unusual follow-up: in 1998, the score of the film, along with several songs Gershwin had written but which were not used in the picture, were included in a new stage musical of the Wodehouse novel, this time entitled A Foggy Day for one of the songs.

RKO was interested in filming A Damsel in Distress because the novel's romantic lead was a musical comedy composer, allowing a singer and dancer to be cast in the role--and RKO needed a Fred Astaire vehicle. Scripting was already well underway when Wodehouse was asked to assist in May 1937, and shooting took place from July 22 to October 16, while work on the script continued until September 25 (Wodehouse left on August 14). The recurring gag of everyone infectiously saying "Right-ho" to one another seems a nod to Wodehouse's presence on the movie. Similarly, the song "Stiff Upper Lip" is the most colloquial in its wording, and reminiscent of the Wodehouse prose in its lyrics. Like the Ian Hay stage version, A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS retained the basic plot outline of the novel, but unlike the play, the movie also deleted and merged a number of the characters, and added others, becoming a second, separate Wodehouse variation on the novel. Ideas from the novel are used, but combined with fresh material, as the movie increasingly strays from the source. To add box-office insurance, George Burns and Gracie Allen were brought in from Paramount to partner Astaire in gags and dance routines. Burns and Allen play Jerry's press agent and his secretary, using their own names as they did in most of their movies of this time. While their participation was definitely outside the original, and the humor different from the Wodehouse style, Burns and Allen provide the movie with additional amusement.

Joan Fontaine was cast opposite Astaire. She had just been placed under contract to RKO, and was only then emerging from low-budget films; her first successful starring role would not be until1940 with REBECCA. The casting of Burns and Allen was partly to compensate for the risk associated with placing a relative unknown as the love interest. Whereas previous Astaire films had emphasized a partnership, and the grace of the romantic dancing duet with Ginger Rogers, A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS placed Astaire front and center, emphasizing the solitary aspect of his performance. Fontaine and Astaire have only one brief number together, simultaneously inviting comparison with Rogers yet demonstrating that she was unable to dance adequately opposite Astaire. Only the presence of Burns and Allen keep the entire picture from pivoting entirely on Astaire. The expectations of a romantic musical comedy usually call for a couple at the center, but A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS opts for a solitary lead, or at most a trio (when Burns and Allen are also on screen)-an inherent imbalance in the genre. Fontaine believed that the movie actually set her career back several years. Reginald Gardiner had played the role of Percy, the antagonist in the romances, in the Hay version on the London stage. In the movie, by contrast, the character of Percy is eliminated, and Gardiner is cast as Keggs the butler, who becomes a much more sprightly and unlikely character than in the novel. Gardiner was an ideal choice, an English comedian in the same tradition as Wodehouse. A major screen credit seemed to open up the possibility of a new career for Wodehouse, but when A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS was released on November 19, it proved to be the first Astaire picture to lose money at the box office. This was probably inevitable; after seven vehicles together, audiences had grown accustomed to seeing Astaire paired with Ginger Rogers, and reviewers inevitably compared Fontaine unfavorably. The failure of A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS would compel Astaire to make two more movies with Rogers, although their reunion in CAREFREE (1938) also met with a lukewarm box office reception. Hence, the reaction to A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS was hardly unique for an Astaire picture at this point in his career. However, the disappointing box-office results must have stung Wodehouse, not only because of his involvement in its creation, but because his name had become a more prominent part of advertising and promotion than on any of the previous films from his novels. Subsequently, few movies were made from Wodehouse sources, although in decades to come he would be far more successfully adapted for television.

Disregard the plot and enjoy Fred Astaire doing A Foggy Day and several other dances, one a duo with a hapless Joan Fontaine. Here we see Astaire doing what are essentially "stage" dances in a purer form than in his films with Ginger Rogers, and before he learned how to take full advantage of the potential of film. Best of all: the fact that we see Burns and Allen before their radio/TV husband-wife comedy career, doing the kind of dancing they must have done in vaudeville and did not have a chance to do in their Paramount college films from the 30s. (George was once a tap dance instructor). Their two numbers with Fred are high points of the film, and worth waiting for. The first soft shoe trio is a warm-up for the "Chin up" exhilarating carnival number, in which the three of them sing and dance through the rides and other attractions. It almost seems spontaneous. Fan of Fred Astaire and Burns & Allen will find it worth bearing up under the "plot". I've seen this one 4 or 5 times, and find the fast forward button helpful.