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
Claire Luce musical "Gay Divorce" (1932). Astaire tried to get Luce for the film version of "Gay Divorce", "The Gay Divorcee" (1934) but was overruled by the studio, RKO Radio Pictures, which preferred to use their contract player, Ginger Rogers. Of her performance in "Gay Divorce" the critic Brooks Atkinson wrote: "In the refulgent Claire Luce, Fred Astaire has found a partner who can match him step for step and who flies over the furniture in his company without missing a beat." Unfortunately, during the London run of "Gay Divorce", Luce suffered a serious injury during the "Table Dance" routine—a routine which