STATE

Evening Star, Issue 22449, 21 September 1936, Page 2

STATE

It may tie said that * Follow the Fleet,’ the film at the State this week, with that splendid combination of stars, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, rises to the top standard in screen musical comedy. The story illustrates the old saying, “The course of true love never runs smooth,” but innumerable complexities arise from the fact that both the men whose love stories are followed (Fred Astaire and Randolph Scott) arc sailors. Full opportunity is therefore taken for witty repartee, for which Astaire is famous, and several dances

are introduced in appropriate places. The opposite leads are played by Ginger Rogers artd Harriett Hilliard as sisters. Particularly witty lyrics are sung by Astaire to. music of the usual high standard of Irving Berlin, the best of which are ‘We Saw the Sea,’ ‘ Let Yourself Go,’ ‘ Let’s Paco the Music and Dance.’ There are no half-measures about the musical. It uses not one, but four, bands to present the Irving Berlin tunes composed especially for the nautical adventures and land romancing of these masters of song and dance. A wing-footed music-mad sailor in the IIKO Radio film, Astaire himself conducts one 10-pieco band and presents the first of Berlin’s seven compositions with it aboard a battleship in San Francisco Harbour. The piece is ‘We Saw the Sea.’ For this and other sequences on the deck of a United States battleship a navy band provides traditional marine music. A 12-pieco dance orchestra, playing in a San Francisco dance hall, sets the fox-trot rhythm for Ginger Rogers in her rendition of the rollicking ‘ Let Yourself Go,’-