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
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for Astaire and Rogers, "Shall We Dance", which co-starred Edward Everett Horton. Although the film was RKO's biggest film of the year with worldwide rentals of $2.2 million, it did not perform as well as expected by the studio. "Shall We Dance" had the first Hollywood score by the brothers George and Ira Gershwin, and included the song "They Can't Take That Away from Me". Although Astaire and Rogers would go on to make two more films together for RKO, the film's comparative disappointment in the box office was the beginning of the end for their partnership. After an unusually