Blood, sweat and sexual chemistry: How Fred and Ginger mesmerised audiences

Ahead of the BFI’s Fred & Ginger Day next month, which pays tribute to the famous movie dance duo as part of a Ginger Rogers season, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at the couple’s movie magic – achieved, despite their off-screen tensions, through sheer hard work and sizzling sexual chemistry

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in ‘Swing Time’ from 1936 (John Miehle/RKO/Kobal/Shutterstock)

It’s the blood in the slippers that gets you every time. When Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were shooting the dramatic “Never Gonna Dance” sequence at the end of their 1936 film, Swing Time, they did 48 takes. This is a dance of desperation and longing. Astaire and Rogers are playing sweethearts whose love affair seems to be ending. He has just discovered she is supposed to be marrying somebody else. On screen, the dance seems effortless. Astaire is in his white tie and top hat. Rogers – the subject of a month-long retrospective at the BFI later this month – is in a glittering ball gown. He serenades her and then they begin to whirl around the empty nightclub floor. There’s next to no cutting – “either the camera dances or I do”, Astaire famously used to tell his directors – but the two stars appear as if they’re enjoying themselves as they waltz, twirl, and pirouette their way up a staircase.

Years later, in her 1991 autobiography, Rogers revealed the full strain behind what was one of the most glorious set pieces in the 10 movies she made with Astaire. The sequence took an eternity to get right. If there was the slightest hiccup, they had to start again. At one stage, an arc light went out. At another moment, the camera made funny noises. Sometimes, the dancers lost their rhythm. Worst of all, at the end of what had been a perfect performance by the two leads, Astaire’s toupée suddenly flew off.

Rogers was a hardened professional. “I never said a word about my own particular problem. I kept on dancing even though my feet really hurt. During a break, I went to the sidelines and took my shoes off: they were filled with blood. I had danced my feet raw.” Audiences watching the film may regard that beatific smile on Rogers’s face in a different light if they know the agonies she was enduring.