When Feathers Flew

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced together in 10 magical movie musicals, including nine at RKO from 1933 through 1938. Sixty years after they last appeared together on screen, their collaboration that has held up the best, according to most cineastes and critics, is "Top Hat" (1935), which -- like four of the others -- was directed by Mark Sandrich.


The film is best known and most commonly referenced ("The Purple Rose of Cairo," "The English Patient," "The Green Mile") for a song-and-dance number that pops up about halfway through, "Cheek to Cheek," which remains one of the most charming, romantic, and crowd-pleasing sequences ever committed to celluloid. For the participants, though, it was one of the most tedious and least enjoyable they ever endured -- and all because of a dress!

Bernard Newman, head costume designer for RKO, welcomed actors' suggestions for costumes. Rogers, then 24, took him up on his offer by requesting an item about which she had obviously fantasized: a pure blue dress -- "like the blue you find in paintings of Monet" -- festooned "with myriads of ostrich feathers." In record time, he produced a beautiful creation that fit that very description, and was additionally notable for its high neck and low back. Sandrich, Astaire, and the "Top Hat" crew got their first look at it -- and felt their first concerns about it -- as it was being delivered to Rogers' dressing room on the set, leaving in its wake a trail of feathers.

Sandrich assumed the thankless task of pointing this out to Rogers, who could be a bit of a diva. When he did, he also suggested that she instead wear the "much, much prettier" white dress she had worn in the "Night and Day" number of "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), her last picture, which he had brought down from storage to give to her. Rogers was appalled by the notion of reusing a dress she had previously worn in another film, insisting that moviegoers would remember it, and grew even more upset after five members of RKO's front office got involved in the matter -- and Astaire did not.

The situation escalated after she summoned her mother, Lela Rogers -- an archetypal stage mother if ever there was one -- to the studio. Before long, the Rogerses ended the discussion and walked off the set in protest. They were convinced to return only after Sandrich reluctantly agreed to shoot the scene with Rogers in the feather dress, inspect how it came across the rushes the next day, and only then decide whether or not it had to go.

"Everything went well through the song," Astaire remembered years later, "but when we did the first movement of the dance, feathers started to fly as if a chicken had been attacked by a coyote... They were floating around like millions of moths," and sticking to his skin and clothes. Choreographer Hermes Pan recalled, "They blinded Fred, and got in his nose, and made him sneeze."

"This went on until the cameraman stopped the scene," Astaire said, "because he couldn't photograph the number that way, and also that the floor was covered with feathers. It got to be funny after a while. The news went all over the lot that there was a blizzard on the 'Top Hat' set."

By one account, as many as 60 takes were attempted, each impeded by the constantly thinning dress. As efforts dragged on late into the night, and then much of the next day, the wardrobe department was kept busy trying to reinforce each individual feather. "Finally," Astaire recalled, "the fallout had run its main course. With just a minimum amount flying, the cameraman decided he would take a chance and photograph the number." In the rushes that ran the next day, a few stray feathers could still be seen drifting off the dress, but it wasn't a big deal and the scenes were deemed acceptable.


In some respects, the relationship between Astaire and Rogers would never be the same. After the scene was finally captured, Astaire and Pan tried to make light of it by singing "a little parody" of "Cheek to Cheek" to Rogers. It went, "Feathers, I hate feathers/And I hate them so that I can hardly speak/And I never find the happiness I seek/With those chicken feathers dancing/Cheek to Cheek." Rogers didn't find it funny. A few days later, though, Astaire more than made amends when he had a small white box delivered to her dressing room that contained a gold feather to add to her charm bracelet along with a note that read, "Dear Feathers, I love ya! Fred."

All's well that ends well, I guess: After "Top Hat," Astaire and Rogers would work together -- happily, for the most part -- on six more films. Astaire would later parody the dress disaster, with the aid of Judy Garland, in "Easter Parade" (1948). Rogers would forever after go by the nickname "Feathers." And as for the feather dress itself? It currently resides at the Smithsonian and has outlasted everyone who worked on the film for which it was crafted.