Smartest Girl in Town "ketchup blood" on his face and then embraces him. RKO Pictures was also the studio which produced the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers series of films, thus "Smartest Girl's" comic supporting players, Helen Broderick, Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes, all had prominent roles in the previous year's Astaire-Rogers hit, "Top Hat". Furthermore, two months before "Smartest Girl's" release, Blore and Broderick were seen in the dancing duo's very successful 1936 effort, "Swing Time" and, the previous year, had been in another RKO musical comedy, "To Beat the Band". As for Blore and Rhodes, both had earlier appeared in the first Astaire-Rogers vehicle,
Ginger Rogers a founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Rogers was a lifelong member of the Republican Party, who campaigned for Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election and was a strong opponent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaking out against both him and his New Deal proposals. She was also a member of The Daughters of the American Revolution. Rogers and her mother also had an extremely close professional relationship. Lela Rogers was credited with many pivotal contributions to her daughter's early successes in New York and in Hollywood, and gave her much assistance in contract