Gown worn by Ginger Rogers in <i>Follow the Fleet</i>
date: label: Date made
content: 1936
name: label: depicted
content: Follow the Fleet
label: user
content: Rogers, Ginger
label: designer
content: Newman, Bernard
notes: label: Description
content: Ginger Rogers wore this full length gray beaded gown worn in the 1936 RKO musical comedy film Follow the Fleet. Bernard Newman designed this Art Deco-style dress, which Rogers wore with a fur stole in the film’s showstopping number "Let's Face the Music and Dance." RKO’s 1936 film Follow the Fleet was the fifth of nine films starring the now-legendary pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, best remembered for their Depression-era films featuring uplifting song and dance routines.
label: Description
content: Directed by Mark Sandrich, featuring music by Irving Berlin and Max Steiner, Follow the Fleet stars Fred Astaire as Bake Baker and Ginger Rogers as Sherry Martin, a performance duo as well as romantic partners. Upon a rejected proposal from Sherry, Baker disbands the partnership and joins the United States Navy, while Sherry unsuccessfully pursues her career as a dancer, performing as a hostess at the Paradise ballroom. When Baker and a fellow seaman Bilge visit Paradise during leave, he is reunited with Sherry. Promising to help her get her big break, Baker instead causes Martin to lose her job and later interferes in an audition, scuttling her chances at a lucrative contract. In a fundraising show to save the deceased Mr. Martin’s boat, The Connie Martin, Astaire and Rogers perform “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” Rogers wore this beaded gown for the number. The film ends with Baker and Martin reuniting as a dance and romantic pair.
label: Description
content: Colloquially known as Fred and Ginger for their iconic partnership, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were both versed in performing arts before they became a cinematic duo. Born Frederic Austerlitz and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Astaire began dancing at the age of four. Trained initially in ballet, Astaire later prioritized tap dancing, figuring out ways to incorporate elements of ballet, ballroom dancing, and jazz into his tap routines. Astaire grew up performing as half of a vaudeville duo alongside his sister, Adele, until she retired from performing, at which point Astaire had developed himself as a successful solo performer. Born Virginia Katherine McMath, Ginger Rogers spent most of her childhood in Missouri and Texas before getting her start in vaudeville as a teenager. The pair first met on Broadway in 1929, when Astaire choreographed a dance number for friend Alex Aaron’s Girl Crazy, in which Roger’s was performing. Following this brief meeting, the two crossed paths four years later, having both moved to California and set to co-star in their first film together, Flying Down to Rio, in which they were featured as supporting characters. This pairing was the catalyst for eight more RKO films in which Fred and Ginger starred as lead characters, and a 1949 reunion film The Barkleys of Broadway under MGM. Though their films followed a rather predictable format, their emphasis on escapism and the pre-Stock Market, Jazz Age fun and abandon were evident in their choreography and plots. Many films were set in foreign countries, playing to the idea of “mobility and modernity” as some scholars have written. Astaire and Rogers used dance as a means of expression and problem solving, which offered struggling, Depression-era Americans a brief dose of escapism and glamour.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (dress; bag of fabric pieces)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view (stole)
topic: label: Subject
content: Motion Pictures
label: Subject
content: Dance
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Popular Entertainment
label: See more items in
content: Movie Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2001.0025.01
label: accession number
content: 2001.0025
label: catalog number
content: 2001.0025.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Costume
physicalDescription: label: Measurements
content: overall: 130 cm x 110 cm x 20.32 cm; 51 3/16 in x 43 5/16 in x 8 in