I HEART PATRICK STONER

Saturday nights are movie nights on WHYY, our local public television station. Patrick Stoner is the movie critic and each night he introduces the film and provides some context and hints at a spoiler that he reveals at the end of the flick. He's the one who turned me onto Hitchcock and Mrs. Minivier. Tonight's movie, which I'm watching as I write this, is some Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers concoction. Now, I am not a fan of Fred Astaire -- too scrawny -- but you can't knock the guys talent. He and Ginger just danced this duet and I swear to g*d Ms. Rogers is wearing an entire ostrich on her dress, the downy fragile under feathers. I expect the feathers to rip off with every turn. I can't believe costume picked this material! She deserves an Oscar just for carrying the dress off. The plot is too stupid for words. It's basically an episode of Three's Company ("Jack is....gay?!"). Ginger meets a man she mistakes for her friend's husband - who she's never met - ...oh, blurg, I can't summarize it well it's so dumb. Let me see if I can find an IMDB summary.

Couldn't find a summary but found this instead about the dress!

For the "Cheek to Cheek" number, Ginger Rogers wanted to wear an elaborate blue dress heavily decked out with ostrich feathers. When director Mark Sandrich and Fred Astaire saw the dress, they knew it would be impractical for the dance. Sandrich suggested that Rogers wear the white gown she had worn performing "Night and Day" in The Gay Divorcee (1934). Rogers walked off the set, finally returning when Sandrich agreed to let her wear the offending blue dress. As there was no time for rehearsals, Ginger Rogers wore the blue feathered dress for the first time during filming, and as Astaire and Sandrich had feared, feathers started coming off the dress. Astaire later claimed it was like "a chicken being attacked by a coyote". In the final film, some stray feathers can be seen drifting off it. To patch up the rift between them, Astaire presented Rogers with a locket of a gold feather. This was the origin of Rogers' nickname "Feathers". The shedding feathers episode was recreated to hilarious results in a scene from Easter Parade (1948) in which Fred Astaire danced with a clumsy, comical dancer played by Judy Garland.

Skip to 3:20 to watch the feathers fly!