Screen Test of Time, Ep. 43: The Gay Divorcee

Screen Test of Time is a podcast where Suzan Eraslan and David Daw set out to watch every movie ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, in order, from the first awards season to, eventually, the present day. Each week, they watch and review a different movie, and when they've watched everything nominated in a particular year, they tell you whether the Oscar went to the right one! 

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Our hosts' first foray into the world of Fred and Ginger, The Gay Divorcee is a bit of a mixed bag, but at least it's an improvement over the last two weeks! The good: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sing and dance a bunch, Alice Brady plays a hilarious one liner machine named Aunt Hortense, and the sets are so beautiful the movie single handedly increased the sales of Venetian blinds (no, really). The bad: some outdated and frankly dangerous tropes, a frankly nonsensical plot, and a desperate attempt by the studios to, as David puts it, "Make fetch happen." Find out what he means on this week's episode!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: “The Continental” from The Gay Divorcee (1934)