Roberta (1935 film)
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | William A. Seiter |
| Produced by | Pandro S. Berman |
| Written by | Based on the 1933 musical by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach and a 1933 novel by Alice Duer Miller |
| Screenplay by |
Jane Murfin Sam Mintz Allan Scott |
| Starring |
Irene Dunne Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers Randolph Scott |
| Music by | Jerome Kern, conducted by Max Steiner |
| Cinematography | Edward Cronjager |
| Edited by | William Hamilton |
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Production
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| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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106 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $610,000 |
| Box office | $2,335,000 |
Roberta is a 1935 musical film by RKO starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Randolph Scott. It was an adaptation of a 1933 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller. It was a solid hit, showing a net profit of more than three-quarters of a million dollars.
The film kept the famous songs "Yesterdays", "Let's Begin" (with altered lyrics), and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" from the play, along with a fourth song, "I'll Be Hard to Handle". Three songs from the play were dropped — "The Touch of Your Hand", "Something Had To Happen" and "You're Devastating". Two songs were added to this film, "I Won't Dance" (lifted from the flop Kern show Three Sisters) and "Lovely to Look At", which both became #1 hits in 1935. The latter addition was nominated for the Best Song Oscar. The songs "I Won't Dance" and "Lovely to Look At" have remained so popular that they are now almost always included in revivals and recordings of Roberta.
Roberta is the third Astaire-Rogers film, and the only one to be remade with other actors. MGM did so in 1952, entitling the new Technicolor version Lovely to Look At. Indeed, with an eye to a remake, MGM bought Roberta in 1945, keeping it out of general circulation until the 1970s.
John Kent (Randolph Scott), a former star football player at Harvard, goes to Paris with his friend Huck Haines (Fred Astaire) and the latter's dance band, the Wabash Indianians. Alexander Voyda (Luis Alberni) has booked the band, but refuses to let them play when he finds the musicians are not the Indians he expected, but merely from Indiana (Huck Haines and his Indianians Band).
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