Gown worn by Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Ginger Rogers wore this full length gray beaded gown worn in the 1936 RKO musical comedy film Follow the Fleet. Bernard Newman designed this Art Deco-style dress, which Rogers wore with a fur stole in the film’s showstopping number "Let's Face the Music and Dance." RKO’s 1936 film Follow the Fleet was the fifth of nine films starring the now-legendary pair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, best remembered for their Depression-era films featuring uplifting song and dance routines.

Directed by Mark Sandrich, featuring music by Irving Berlin and Max Steiner, Follow the Fleet stars Fred Astaire as Bake Baker and Ginger Rogers as Sherry Martin, a performance duo as well as romantic partners. Upon a rejected proposal from Sherry, Baker disbands the partnership and joins the United States Navy, while Sherry unsuccessfully pursues her career as a dancer, performing as a hostess at the Paradise ballroom. When Baker and a fellow seaman Bilge visit Paradise during leave, he is reunited with Sherry. Promising to help her get her big break, Baker instead causes Martin to lose her job and later interferes in an audition, scuttling her chances at a lucrative contract. In a fundraising show to save the deceased Mr. Martin’s boat, The Connie Martin, Astaire and Rogers perform “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” Rogers wore this beaded gown for the number. The film ends with Baker and Martin reuniting as a dance and romantic pair.

Colloquially known as Fred and Ginger for their iconic partnership, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were both versed in performing arts before they became a cinematic duo. Born Frederic Austerlitz and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Astaire began dancing at the age of four. Trained initially in ballet, Astaire later prioritized tap dancing, figuring out ways to incorporate elements of ballet, ballroom dancing, and jazz into his tap routines. Astaire grew up performing as half of a vaudeville duo alongside his sister, Adele, until she retired from performing, at which point Astaire had developed himself as a successful solo performer. Born Virginia Katherine McMath, Ginger Rogers spent most of her childhood in Missouri and Texas before getting her start in vaudeville as a teenager. The pair first met on Broadway in 1929, when Astaire choreographed a dance number for friend Alex Aaron’s Girl Crazy, in which Roger’s was performing. Following this brief meeting, the two crossed paths four years later, having both moved to California and set to co-star in their first film together, Flying Down to Rio, in which they were featured as supporting characters. This pairing was the catalyst for eight more RKO films in which Fred and Ginger starred as lead characters, and a 1949 reunion film The Barkleys of Broadway under MGM. Though their films followed a rather predictable format, their emphasis on escapism and the pre-Stock Market, Jazz Age fun and abandon were evident in their choreography and plots. Many films were set in foreign countries, playing to the idea of “mobility and modernity” as some scholars have written. Astaire and Rogers used dance as a means of expression and problem solving, which offered struggling, Depression-era Americans a brief dose of escapism and glamour.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date made: 1936
• depicted: Follow the Fleet
• user: Rogers, Ginger
• designer: Newman, Bernard
• Object Name: Costume
• Measurements: overall: 130 cm x 110 cm x 20.32 cm; 51 3/16 in x 43 5/16 in x 8 in
• Subject: Motion Pictures
• Subject: Dance
• ID Number: 2001.0025.01
• accession number: 2001.0025
• catalog number: 2001.0025.01
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

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Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.