Grace Never Dies

Someday, when I'm awfully low, when the world is cold, I will get a glow just thinking of you--and the way you look tonight.

These song lyrics from "The Way You Look Tonight" were first featured in the 1936 black-and-white musical "Swing Time." Fred Astaire sang them to the ineffable Ginger Rogers, who was coiffed and dressed as immaculately as always, ready to waltz (or tango, or foxtrot) into his arms.

This Tuesday, Ginger Rogers died at 83 years old. In her movies, however, she is immortal. The song's lyrics apply to her now just as they did 60 years ago--and not just as sung by the man with whom she danced, but as felt by the millions over the past half-century who have watched her films with Astaire.

For some excitement, there's Astaire and Ginger's duo debut in "Flying Down to Rio," with a finale in which girls dance on the wings of moving airplanes. For sheer melodic and dancing enjoyment, try the bouncy "Lovely to Look At" sequence from the 1936 "Roberta," a musical with songs by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. For one of the greatest Gershwin songs sung with heart (if not virtuosity) to Rogers by Astaire, listen to "They Can't Take That Away From Me" from the 1937 "Shall We Dance?"

And of course, there is no comparison to the "Cheek to Cheek" number in the dazzling "Top Hat" (1935). Ginger Rogers appears in a silky, white, floor-length dress; Astaire sweeps her onto the floor and they dance into heaven, as the song says.

Anyone who has ever watched one of the pair's 10 fluffy romantic comedies knows you don't rent them in order to ponder deep subjects. You watch them for the dancing and the music, pure and simple.

These movies, after all, have little redeeming social value; they're mostly about a blissfully oblivious upper class. They do not pretend to have a cohesive plot; the dancing sometime hangs on stories as flimsy as Astaire's having a girl back home who prevents him from dating Rogers. And their movies certainly don't carry any weighty morals or lessons at the end of the day.

But they do provide us with an utter escape from this world of "Reservoir Dogs" and "Natural Born Killers" through 1930s Hollywood grace, glamour and fancy footwork. They do remind us of an era that perhaps never even existed, save in a small RKO studio in the age of the truly silver screen.

And yet who watches these movies anymore? Video stores stock them, but from conversations with my parents and peers, these films seem to draw mainly an older crowd: people who can remember a time when movie theaters were bigger than crackerboxes.

Rogers said in 1983: "They're not going to get my money to see the junk that's made today." While there are many worthwhile modern movies, she did have a point. So much of what passes before us in previews and feature films in junk--we often watch for lack of something better to do. But there's simply no way to be unhappy when you're watching a dance sequence like "Cheek to Cheek;" that's in contrast to many modern movies, whose whole purpose seems to be to point out the horrors of the world in which we live.

Ginger and Fred's dancing may seem too orchestrated, too perfect to many younger people who would rather watch shoot-em-up dramas or sci-fi flicks. True, there is a lot to be said for dramas and science fiction. But our generation is missing out on plain, old-fashioned beauty by watching only modern movies at the expense of the old.

That said, Ginger, those of us who do watch your films will miss you. In your movies with Fred Astaire, you stood for quiet pizzazz and untainted glamour, for elegantly tailored gowns and effortless dance steps. You may not have given us profundity, but you've given us beauty and grace--and they can't take that away from us.

Sarah J. Schaffer's column appears on alternate Fridays.