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
Fred Astaire I'm not your sister, you know." The success of the stage play was credited to this number and, when recreated in "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), the film version of the play, it ushered in a new era in filmed dance. Recently, film footage taken by Fred Stone of Astaire performing in "Gay Divorce" with Luce's successor, Dorothy Stone, in New York in 1933 was uncovered by dancer and historian Betsy Baytos and now represents the earliest known performance footage of Astaire. According to Hollywood folklore, a screen test report on Astaire for RKO Radio Pictures, now lost along with the