In his memoirs, Fred Astaire said that Rita Hayworth was his favorite dancing partner. The daughter of two dancers, she began dancing professionally (as Rita Cansino) at the age of twelve. Her first teaming with Fred Astaire, in "You'll Never Get Rich" (1941) got her on the cover of TIME (the most famous picture of her, one on many World War II men's trunks and lockers, came from a 1944 LIFE feature publicizing "Cover Girl" in which she danced with Gene Kelly. She was the title character of that, and, in between those two dancing triumphs, of "You Were Never Lovelier" (1942).

The plot of "You Were Never Lovelier" was supplied by an Argentine play of mistaken identities as romance (written by Carlos A. Olivari and Sixto Pondal Ríos, if anyone cares, adapted by Delmer Daves before he became a director). It involves a bad-tempered tycoon, Eduardo Acuna (Adolph Menjou) who owns a hotel with a chic nightclub where Xavier Cugat and his orchestra are playing. Acuna has four daughters. The eldest is being married at the start of the movie, and he is of the old school that the younger two cannot marry until the next oldest one, María (Hayworth) is married. Both of the younger ones are unofficially but not at all secretly engaged and chafing at the delay.

How do you solve a problem, like María?

Even aside from her father's considerable fortune, María is somewhere beyond gorgeous (superhumanly, goddess-like beautiful?). Many men look at her and try to put the moves on her, but she rebuffs them. Successful Manhattan hoofer Robert Davis (the so-imaginative name provided Fred Astaire), who is also a compulsive gambler on vacation in Buenos Aires, blows all his funds on a losing horse, and seeks a job at Acuna's night club to earn his fare back home. Acuna will not see him in the office, but Robert is enlisted by Cugat to sing "Dearly Beloved" at the wedding. While there, he meets and tries to hit on María. She rebuffs him and he likens her to the inside of a refrigerator (to her father, whom he does not know is her father or the man he's been trying to see about a job).

Papa decides to build daughter's confidence—or melt her froidure—by concocting a secret admirer, sending her orchids and extravagant love notes. (Freud and Jung had already permeated American popular culture in the 1940s, and it's hard to imagine that no one looked askance at the not-all-that-sublimated courting of a daughter, an "Electra complex," etc.) No viewer then or now could have had the slightest doubt that María would mistakenly conclude that the secret admirer was Robert Davis, or that she would respond, or that there would be complications, humiliations, punishments, and final blissful and danced reconciliation.

Sexual antagonism was a central component of the Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies, and carried over. The course of true love running smoothly is not very entertaining, and, let's face it, Astaire was not a movie star to inspire love at first sight, so misunderstandings and contrivances were plentiful between the songs (conventional ones by Jerome Kern) and the dances (inspired ones choreographed by Astaire).

Although there are some amusing lines (e.g., "If you wanted to take my husband, why didn't you just ask me for him?") and opportunities to see who Xavier Cugat was and what his ensemble sounded like, the main reasons to watch "You Were Never Lovelier" are to gaze at Rita Hayworth and to watch Astaire dance, both with her and with whatever is lying around Acuna's office (when he dances onto the office sofa, Acuna's desk, and all around it). It takes half an hour to get to the first dance sequence (the office one) and Astaire and Hayworth do not dance together until 52 minutes into the 96-minute movie (launched by Hayworth singing "I'm old-fashioned").. Both instances are worth the wait. There is a fair bit of charm amidst the set-up of plot, but I was getting impatient, particularly with the songs.

There are two very famous lines about the Astaire/Rogers partnering. The earlier one, attributed to Katharine Hepburn, is that "he gave her class and she gave him sex appeal." Rogers's roles (and Hayworth's one here) were frequently of women of a stratum as high or higher than that of Astaire's, though in the sense of apparent sophistication, Astaire was the summit. Rogers (and Hayworth) ended up with Astaire in the movies, but I don't see the appeal as sex(ual). The later (1970s feminist) line is "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but had to do them backwards and in high heels." Rogers and Hayworth were very skilled dancers and had to follow Astaire's lead in high heels, but there were things he did (in solo dances) they did not do, and within the "everything" Astaire did was choreographing the dances (credit for making the skirts billow photogenically has to be shared between performer, choreographer, and costume designer).

Rogers had more verbal repartee with Astaire in their movies together than Hayworth did in her two movies with Astaire. Onscreen (and, no doubt, off) Astaire angered Rogers on occasion, but I can't recall Rogers ever appearing as hurt as Hayworth does in "You Were Never Lovelier". This gave Astaire the opportunity to look helplessly mortified rather than just embarrassed, so amidst all the silliness of the plot, there is a very convincing disaster to be made right (with some amusing visual jokes in the last reel).

The video and sound transfer of the DVD are fine. There is not even an insert with a list of scenes, nor a trailer for the movie included. The extra material on the disk are trailers of the two greatest Hayworth femme fatale parts, playing the title roles in "Gilda" (1946) and as "The Lady from Shanghai" (1947). Instead of one for "You'll Never Get Rich" (or for "You Were Never Lovelier, though it is also on DVD from Columbia Tristar Home), there is also one for "A Man for All Seasons" (quite a good trailer, but why is it included here?)




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12