You Were Never Lovelier

This is one of the minor (pretty minor I think) musical comedies made by Fred Astaire in the later part of his musical film career. The story takes place in Buenos Aires, where he plays Bob Davis, a performer who needs money since he has lost his by gambling at the track. He hopes to get a job at the club owned by Mr. Acuna (Adolphe Menjou) but Acuna could care less about him. Currently Acuna is involved with marrying off his eldest daughter. He has three others, and insists on marrying them off in order, with Maria (Rita Hayworth) next on the list. This dismays his younger daughters who already have beaus and are anxious because Maria has no desire to be married. She apparently has romantic ideals and want a knight to carry her away.

Acuna hatches a plan with Maria’s namesake godmother, and writes his daughter anonymous love letters so that his daughter might be in the right frame of mind to accept a suitor. By chance Bob gets one of these letters and delivers it, and Maria mistakenly believes him to be her secret admirer. Acuna, seeing an opportunity, offers Bob a job at his club in exchange for Bob breaking his daughter’s heart, so that she will start looking elsewhere (Acuna doesn't consider Bob a suitable match), but his plan backfires.


There are some songs and dances, none that match up to what we got in the Fred and Ginger films, and I found them forgettable.  A couple are just songs performed at the club so have nothing to do with advancing the romantic plot.  Rita Hayworth is attractive and fine but since this is an innocent musical comedy she is not allowed to live up to her sexy bombshell reputation. Also, to have Acuna write these apparently erotic love letters to his daughter (and also to choose the lingerie for his other daughter’s honeymoon) appears unseemly in this day and age and I was somewhat turned off by that premise, and I am no prude!

Xavier Cugat and his orchestra play themselves as the band at Acuna’s club. Gus Schilling plays the slightly flamboyant office secretary to Mr. Acuna who gets fed up with his domineering behavior. The majority of the song music is by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, but I think there is other incidental music and a couple Latin influenced songs by other artists.

The best dances are those which Astaire performs himself, with jazz or Latin style steps, and these dances are what is worth going through the rest of the film for, as the story itself is slight; the dances with Hayworth are not very complicated and mostly stepping and gliding around the dance floor and their romantic chemistry for me is a miss.