Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers In 1934, Astaire and Rogers made the musical movie "The Gay Divorcee" which co-starred Edward Everett Horton; it was their first joint starring role in a movie and grossed even more with worldwide rentals of $1.8 million; the movie also featured the classic Cole Porter song "Night and Day". The song "The Continental" from the movie was a hit and was also the first song to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song in the 1934 Academy Awards. Astaire and Rogers made two movies in 1935, "Roberta", which featured the song "I Won't Dance" and "Top Hat", which also
Mark Sandrich Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In 1934, Sandrich was given the job of directing the first proper Astaire-Rogers musical, "The Gay Divorcee", which proved a tremendous success. The following year, he directed "Top Hat" (1935), another Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical. He continued working with the team on "Follow the Fleet" (1936). After directing Katharine Hepburn in "A Woman Rebels" (1936) he returned to Astaire and Rogers for "Shall We Dance" (1937), and "Carefree" (1938). In 1939, Sandrich left RKO for Paramount, which offered him a chance to be not only director, but a producer as well. Sandrich's first