Robbins created and performed in "Fancy Free", a ballet about sailors on liberty, at the Metropolitan Opera as part of the Ballet Theatre season in 1944. One of "Fancy Free"'s inspirations was Paul Cadmus' 1934 painting "The Fleet's In!" However, Robbins' scenario was more lighthearted than the painting. Robbins said in an interview with "The Christian Science Monitor": "After seeing..."Fleet's In", which I inwardly rejected though it gave me the idea of doing the ballet, I watched sailors, and girls, too, all over town." Robbins commissioned a score for the ballet from the then-unknown Leonard Bernstein and enlisted Oliver Smith as set designer. With "Fancy Free", Robbins created a dance that integrated classic ballet, 1940s social dancing, and a screwball plotline.