Roberta

All facts (16)

1. #001

   Lucille Ball, who had briefly worked as one of the Goldwyn Girls at Samuel Goldwyn Studios, decided to try for this film when she heard that RKO was looking for girls who had modeled at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. She had not actually worked at Bergdorf's, but she had taken part in a fashion show staged there by a promoter, so she applied and got the job.

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2. #002

   Lucille Ball appears as a model in this film without being credited, and she would later buy the studio that made it, RKO. At the height of her success during I Love Lucy (1951), she and Desi Arnaz purchased the studio and renamed it Desilu Studios.

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3. #003

   (At about 1 hour 35 minutes) A 24-year-old Lucille Ball appears in the fashion show, adorned with white-blonde hair, white furs and a white dress.

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4. #004

   RKO producer Pandro S. Berman insisted that the studio pay whatever was necessary to buy the rights to Roberta, a major Broadway success. The gamble paid off, earning the studio a net $770,000 and helping RKO announce its first annual profit since 1930.

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5. #005

   The third of ten dancing partnerships between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

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6. #006

   The elevator scenes were a three-story RKO set filmed with a camera mounted on what was then the world's largest camera crane.

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7. #007

   Ginger Rogers's accent is a tribute to Lyda Roberti, the Poland-born actress who played the role on Broadway.

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8. #008

   Lucille Ball's lines in the fashion show sequence were ultimately cut.

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9. #009

   The original Broadway production featured Sydney Greenstreet, Bob Hope, Lyda Roberti, Fred MacMurray, George Murphy, Allan Jones, Tamara and Fay Templeton. In the film, Fred Astaire's role is a combination of Hope's and Murphy's roles, and Ferdinand Munier plays Greenstreet's role.

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10. #010

    When MGM decided to make Lovely to Look At (1952), a Technicolor remake of this film, the studio bought up prints and negatives of this film and halted its further distribution so that it would not compete with the remake's box-office potential. The original film remained out of sight for decades and did not resurface until the mid-1970s, after the 1952 remake had continued to play in theaters and on television. By then the film was in the MGM library rather than RKO's, and it was re-released in response to the nostalgia boom that followed That's Entertainment! (1974), because it was the only Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film that could not be shown at revival houses.

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11. #011

    Irene Dunne, thanks in part to her manager Charles K. Feldman, earned enormous money for her performance as the star of the film. At a time when the average worker earned about $2,000 a year: "… Feldman persuaded RKO to give Dunne 15 percent of the gross in addition to her salary for this film once it covered twice its cost. RKO billed Dunne ahead of her co-stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (proof of a star's clout and contract), and in the months following the film's release Dunne received a steady income from her percentage: July $8,700, August $7,000, September $3,500, October $5,900, November $28,600, December 1–15 $24,600, December 15–31 $21,270. Thus Dunne earned more from her percentage deal on this film than from her salary." ["Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents," Tom Kemper, 2010].

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12. #012

    This is one of two Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers films adapted from a Broadway musical, along with The Gay Divorcee (1934). In the Broadway stage version of The Gay Divorcee (titled "Gay Divorce"), Astaire played the same role he played in the film, whereas neither Astaire nor Rogers appeared in the stage version of Roberta.

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13. #013

    Randolph Scott also appeared with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet (1936).

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14. #014

    Virginia Carroll's first film.

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15. #015

    Lorraine DeSart's only role in the film.

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16. #016

    Zena Savine's last film; three weeks earlier, though uncredited, she had had a role in only one previous film.

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