Duo flies across the dance floor

Astaire & Rogers Collection, Vol. 2

(Warner Home Video, $60)

Flying Down to Rio

After the early success of “The Jazz Singer” and 1929’s “The Broadway Melody,” audiences’ interest in movie musicals began to fade. The films were clunky and stilted, and only Paramount directors Ernst Lubitsch and Rouben Mamoulian seemed to breathe any life into the genre.

Then came Warner Bros.’ exhilarating 1933 musical “42nd Street,” which featured avant-garde and surreally outrageous numbers staged by Busby Berkeley. Suddenly, musicals were a hot commodity again.

Released in 1933, “Flying Down to Rio” was RKO’s answer to “42nd Street” and one of the studio’s biggest productions. Though it’s now known as a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical, the performers are given fourth and fifth billing. The wafer-thin romantic comedy actually revolves around Dolores Del Rio, who falls in love with a womanizing band leader-aviator -- Gene Raymond in a one-note performance.

Despite their limited screen time, Astaire and Rogers steal the film. Both were Broadway musical veterans -- Rogers had kicked around Hollywood for a few years, usually in supporting roles (she was also in “42nd Street”), and Astaire had made MGM’s “Dancing Lady,” in which he had to sing and dance with tone-deaf, flat-footed Joan Crawford.

In “Rio,” Astaire plays one of the band members and Rogers is the group’s singer. And it is their one number together, the infectious “Carioca,” which featured them touching heads and turning without losing contact, that had audiences wanting to see the two paired in their own movie.

The film also features the standard “Orchids in the Moonlight” and the campy “Flying Down to Rio” number, in which scantily clad chorus girls perform on the wings of flying airplanes.

Extras: The theatrical trailer, the 1933 Three Stooges short “Beer and Pretzels” and the toe-tapping cartoon “I Like Mountain Music.”

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The Gay Divorcee

Astaire and Rogers’ first starring vehicle, this shimmering 1934 musical was based on Astaire’s Broadway success “The Gay Divorce.” The title was changed to “Divorcee” for the film because censors believed a divorce could never be gay, but a divorcee could be!

In this lavish, witty vehicle, Rogers plays an unhappily married woman who wants to divorce her husband. Astaire is a dancer who Rogers mistakenly believes is the gigolo hired to end her marriage.

Deftly directed by Mark Sandrich, who would helm several of the Astaire-Rogers films, “Gay Divorcee” also stars a witty supporting cast, including Edward Everett Horton as Astaire’s best friend and Rogers’ attorney and Erik Rhodes as the gigolo. Even an 18-year-old Betty Grable has a scene-stealing number with Horton called “Let’s K-nock K-nees.”

But it is the fancy, frenetic and ethereal footwork of Astaire and Rogers that propel this frothy romance. Every one of the team’s films had a slow dance number of seduction, and in “Gay Divorcee” it’s the hauntingly sexy “Night and Day” by Cole Porter.

Nominated for five Academy Awards including best film, “Gay Divorcee” picked up the first best song Oscar for the engaging “The Continental,” which unfurls in an extravagant, Art-Deco, 17-minute number.

Extras: Technicolor musical shorts “Show Kids” and “Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove,” hosted by Leo Carillo and featuring Mary Pickford, Bing Crosby and even a young Ann Sheridan, the cartoon “Shake Your Power Puff,” the trailer and a “Hollywood on the Air” radio promo.

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Roberta

Based on the hit Broadway musical -- composer Jerome Kern’s last for the Great White Way -- which featured Bob Hope, George Murphy and Sydney Greenstreet, this 1935 musical features some wonderful repartee and dance numbers from Astaire-Rogers. But one also has to slog through the romance between Randolph Scott, as a handsome rube who inherits a chichi Parisian fashion house from his aunt, and a member of Russian nobility (Irene Dunne) who designs the gowns. Dunne does get to sing some of the show’s most effective ballads, including “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” but there’s little chemistry between the actor and actress.

Astaire plays the leader of a jazz band; Rogers is his former girlfriend who is performing in a popular Parisian cabaret as Comtesse “Tanka” Scharwenka. Among their breathtaking numbers are “I Won’t Dance” and the mesmerizing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

“Roberta” marks the first time that choreographer Hermes Pan received screen credit. And don’t blink or you’ll miss Lucille Ball as a model.

Extras: Theatrical trailer, a “Hollywood on the Air” radio promo, the cartoon “The Calico Dragon” and the musical short “Starlight Days at the Lido.”

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Carefree

Astaire and Rogers go the screwball comedy route with pleasant results in this 1938 vehicle. Astaire plays a shrink who is asked by his good buddy (Ralph Bellamy) to treat his commitment-phobe girlfriend (Rogers). Of course, the two end up falling in love.

The movie really belongs to Rogers, who gets to show off her comedic prowess in several scenes, including one in which she’s performing on a radio show.

In this outing, the two perform a catchy jive called “The Yam.” Other numbers include the Oscar-nominated Irving Berlin tune “Change Partners” -- it lost to “Thanks for the Memory” -- and “I Used to Be Color Blind,” which features the duo dancing in slow motion.

Extras: The musical short “Public Jitterbug No. 1,” which stars a teenage Betty Hutton, and the cartoon “September in the Rain.”

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The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle

Long before “Dancing With the Stars,” Vernon and Irene Castle were the premier ballroom dancers in the U.S. In the pre-World War I years, they created such dances as the Castle Walk, the Maxie and the Texas Tommy. Astaire and Rogers’ final appearance together at RKO told the Castles’ story. “Vernon and Irene Castle” lacks the comedy and pizazz of previous Astaire-Rogers films, but the period songs and the duo’s dancing is, as always, first-rate. After this 1939 film, the pair wouldn’t reteam until 1949’s “The Barkleys of Broadway” at MGM.

Extras: The musical short “Happily Buried” and the cartoon “Puss Gets the Boot,” the first Tom and Jerry short, which was nominated for an Oscar.

-- Susan King