Shall We Dance

Shall We Dance is a 1937 American musical comedy film directed by Mark Sandrich. It is the seventh of the ten Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films. The story follows an American ballet dancer (Astaire) who falls in love with a tap dancer (Rogers); the tabloid press concocts a story of their marriage, after which life imitates art. George Gershwin wrote the symphonic underscore and Ira Gershwin the lyrics, for their second Hollywood musical. Plot Peter P. Peters (Fred Astaire) is an amiable American ballet dancer billed as "Petrov", who cultivates a public image of being a serious, demanding and temperamental Russian, though his employer knows the truth. Peters dances for a ballet company in Paris owned by the bumbling Jeffrey Baird (Edward Everett Horton), and secretly never wants to blend classical ballet with modern jazz dancing because they think it does not look very professional. When Peters sees a photo of famous tap dancer Linda Keene (Ginger Rogers), he falls in love with her. He contrives to meet her (as "Petrov"), but she is less than impressed. They meet again on an ocean liner traveling back to New York, and Linda warms to Petrov. Their interactions spark a tabloid campaign that they are (or are perhaps not) married. Unknown to them, their associates create a publicity stunt "proving" their proper marriage. Outraged, Linda becomes engaged to the bumbling Jim Montgomery (William Brisbane), much to the chagrin of both Peters and Arthur Miller (Jerome Cowan), her manager, who secretly launches more fake publicity. Peters (who by now has revealed his true identity) and Keene, unable to squelch the rumor, decide to actually marry and then immediately get divorced. Linda begins to fall in love with her husband, but then discovers him with another woman, Lady Denise Tarrington (Ketti Gallian), and leaves before he can explain. Later, when she comes to his new show to personally serve him divorce papers, she sees him dancing with dozens of women, all wearing masks with her face on them: Peters has decided that if he cannot dance with Linda, he will dance with images of Linda. Seeing that he truly loves her, she happily joins him onstage.