Allan Scott; Writer of Astaire-Rogers Musicals

Allan Scott, a veteran of 50 credited screenplays including six of the 10 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, and contributor to dozens of others, has died.

He was 88 and died Thursday in a Santa Monica hospital, said a family spokesman.

An Amherst graduate and Rhodes scholar, Scott returned from Oxford to begin writing plays in New York. His first was produced in 1932 but he found his light, satiric touch more suitable to the chatty films of early sound.

Starting with “Top Hat” in 1935, Scott wrote for Astaire-Rogers producer Pandro Berman the classics “Roberta,” “Follow the Fleet,” “Swing Time,” “Shall We Dance” and “Carefree.”

Scott told a 1986 Times interviewer that he “stayed in movies to learn my craft. . . . In the theater you had to wait a year or more to see your work in front of an audience. . . .”

Scott had many audiences beyond the musicals.

In 1940 he wrote another Ginger Rogers feature, “Lucky Partners,” but this time she was opposite Ronald Colman in a comedy. Much of his output was at RKO where he worked in a large paneled office and enjoyed “a nice life.”

Those films included “Quality Street,” “Joy of Living,” “Fifth Avenue Girl” and many more.

He also was at Paramount for “Skylark,” “Man About Town” and the highly praised “So Proudly We Hail,” a 1943 picture about the harrowing experiences of war nurses in the Pacific. The nurses included Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake and Paulette Goddard and brought Scott an Academy Award nomination.

He also was active in the formation of the Screen Writers Guild.

Survivors include a daughter, son and four grandchildren.