Rafter Romance

There's a feeling of deja vu to the plot of RAFTER ROMANCE about two people who aren't aware of each other's identity until they fall in love, but in 1933 it must have seemed quite an original idea.

At any rate, it gives GINGER ROGERS and NORMAN FOSTER a nice chance to show what they could do with light comedy and tender romance. They play two roommates who work different shifts but who eventually meet and fall in love. (Shades of YOU'VE GOT MAIL and other such stories). And oddly enough, ROBERT BENCHLEY would be making a play for Ginger as a lecherous wolf, just as he would some ten years later in THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR when he suggested she slip into something more comfortable.

After a series of pranks and misunderstandings, Foster and Rogers find each other at the company picnic and promptly fall in love.

Watch for LAURA HOPE CREWS (Aunt Pittypat of GWTW) as a woman who wants to "keep" Norman Foster--and GUINN WILLIAMS as a brawny taxicab driver.

Summing up: Good fun with an early look at Ginger.

Ginger Rogers was a first rate actress, and one of the funniest when she wanted to be. This film has her renting an apartment and having trouble with her rent. Her boss (Robert Benchley) is a sexist pig who demands a date. Several times.

Money forces her landlord to make her share her attic apartment with a painter (Norman Foster) – he gets days, she gets nights – and the two build certain assumptions about each other and dislike each other, sight unseen.

Sight seen, though they don't know they're sharing an apartment, they fall in love.

Laura Hope Crews is funny as the drunken woman of means who is constantly trying to seduce Foster, and George Sidney is delightful as the landlord.

Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams puts in an appearance as the protective cabbie.

All in all, a delightful film. Good plot, delightful acting, and – pre Hayes code – we get a glimpse of Miss Roger's legs. I'm sorry, but for all her splendid talent, we must not forget the God-given asset which carried her through so many later films with Freddy Astaire.

Ginger Rogers arrived at RKO Studios in April 1933 after they had signed her to a three-picture deal. Her first film there was "Professional Sweetheart". The director was William Seiter and her leading man was Norman Foster. Ginger said Seiter had a tremendous sense of humor and was a joy to work with. She had flirted with Foster in her first film at Paramouht.

After "Don't Bet on Love" and "A Shriek in the Night", Ginger's contract was picked up for another year, she was presented with the script for "Rafter Romance", to be directed by her old friend Bill Seiter and starring Norman Foster. She said it was like "old-home week again". This "B" picture was filmed just months before the big break of her career. In September, she would start filming "Flying Down to Rio", in which she would dance with Fred Astaire, effectively changing the arc of her career and her life.

"Rafter Romance" is a typical big-city story about young adults trying to make ends meet during the difficult economy. Mary (Ginger Rogers) and Jack (Norman Foster) are tenants in the same apartment building. When they can't pay their rents, the landlord, Mr. Eckbaum (George Sidney) ingeniously realizes they could share the same apartment since one works day hours and the other works the night shift.

It's a somewhat racy premise for its time, but the film was made in the pre-Code era--that brief but glorious period when studios were allowed freer expression. Accordingly, the film includes some suggestions of nudity and impropriety that were typical of pre-Code films.

The film lasts a mere 73 minutes and the story is not demanding, but the actors acquit themselves well. No doubt they enjoyed the filming, having a natural chemistry. The Eckbaum family provides a warm, but humorous, backdrop for the action.

In one scene, the Eckbaum son-who always seems to be hanging around--is drawing swastikas in chalk on the wall near the lobby phone. In 1933, the Nazis would have figured prominently in world news. Their eye-catching symbol was, no doubt, fascinating to youngsters, so it makes sense that he might scribble it as graffiti. Before long, the menace of Nazism would become more apparent.

The father was NOT upset due to a reference to Hitler but he was upset that the boy was scribbling on the walls. the swastika was, at one time, a good luck charm and could be found in many cultures around the world. Today, of course, it refers to nothing but Hitler and his atrocities, but in 1933 it had nothing to do with Hitler.

This was a great movie, and was before the censors got into cutting some scenes. Her bare back in one scene and showing her undressing must have been outrageous to many at that time.

Movies went from that freedom to almost no freedoms to almost unlimited freedom today. Ain't it a wonderful life ????

This has the same leading cast as "Professional Sweetheart", even the same director. It was lost for years because it was in legal rights limbo when Turner Classic Movies got the rights to it and five other films, but I digress.

The setup is simple but purely precode. A man (Norman Foster) and a woman (Ginger Rogers) -Jack and Mary - are forced by their landlord to move into the same attic together, with Mary having the premises at night and Jack having them during the day. Each has to be out of the attic 15 minutes before the other arrives "home" so that they never meet. The reason for this was that they were both behind on their rent with no real chance of catching up. Thus the landlord can rent their old rooms out to people who can pay the rent plus he gets rent for what has now been an unused part of the house - the attic - and Jack and Mary are not homeless. A win win.

Now the two have never met, but tensions rise immediately when Mary overhears Jack calling her a "skinny old maid". They play pranks on each other that escalate to the point we are in Looney Tunes territory. Meanwhile Jack and Mary have actually met on the street, and have begun to fall in love. What will happen when they each find out who the other is? Watch and find out.

As in many precode films, nothing really indecent goes on, yet this film would not have been allowed to be produced just a year later. The most extreme thing you see is Ginger Rogers in various stages of undress, and Jack seems to be in some kind of "boy toy" situation with Laura Hope Crews' character, Elise. He is an artist working as a night watchman and she is a rich woman who seems to want to "keep" him, although he is not willing to let it go that far.

This is Peter Benchley's biggest role so far in a film. Here he plays Mary's lecherous boss who is making the moves on Mary and at least one other girl in his employ. Not exactly the role I am accustomed to seeing Benchley in, and yet he still plays it with his signature dry wit.

The most shocking thing to audiences today, probably? The landlords, the Eckbaums, are Jewish, and they have a son that they tell to stand in the hall and wait for one of the tenants to get home, there is a message for this person. Well like so many teens he gets bored and starts doodling on the wall. What does he doodle? Swastikas! How odd.