Vinton Freedley A. Aarons with whom he formed a long term producing partnership. Their first major hit was "Lady Be Good!" (1924) with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and featuring Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire. Over the next ten years the pair produced some of the most important works in the Broadway musical canon, featuring some of the most famous songs ever to emerge from the tin pan alley era, part of what is commonly referred to as "The Great American Songbook." The shows that followed included "Tip-Toes" (1925), "Oh, Kay!" (1926), and "Funny Face" (1927), again starring the
So Near and yet So Far a Latin beat and an English-language lyric" that was a "U.S. consumer-friendly approximation" of an Afro-Cuban rumba. Theorist Gustavo Perez Firmat discussed "So Near and Yet So Far" in his book "The Havana Habit" and described it as "the most elegant rumba ever captured on film". So Near and yet So Far "So Near and yet So Far" is a song written by Cole Porter, for the 1941 film "You'll Never Get Rich", where it was introduced by Fred Astaire, and accompanied a dance with Astaire and Rita Hayworth, choreographed by Robert Alton. Astaire and Hayworth's performance was significant as