STATE

Evening Star, Issue 22455, 28 September 1936, Page 2

STATE

It may he said that ‘ Follow the Fleet,’ the film having an extended season 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 arc introduced in appropriate places. The opposite leads are played by Ginger Rogers and Harriet 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 Face the Music and Dance.’ There are no half-measures about the musical. It uses not o-e hut four bands to present the Irving Berlin tunes composed especially for t'-e nautical adven turns and land romancing of these masters of song and dance. A wing-footed music-mad sailor in tho RKO Radio film, Astaire himself conducts one 10niccc band and prcscnts_ the first of Berlin’s seven compositions with it aboard a battleship in Han Francisco Harbour. Tho piece is ‘We Saw the Sea.’ Fo’ - this and other sequences on the deck of a United States battleship a navy baud provides traditional marine music. A 12-pioce dance orchestra, playing in a San Francisco dance hall, sets the fox-trot rhythm for Ginger Rogers in her rendition of tho rollicking ‘ Let Yourself Go.’