Page "The Sky's the Limit (1943 film)" Paragraph 7

* One For My Baby: In this hard-driving solo Astaire explores the themes of anger, violence, frustration and drunken despair deploying a single-minded focus to create as much noise as possible with his taps, by way of emotional catharsis.

The number took two and a half days to shoot, after seven days of full set rehearsal.

After a drunken rendition of the song he furiously tap dances up and down the bar as a choreographic device to reflect a sense of pointlessness, pausing only to smash stacked racks of ( real ) glasses and a mirror.

Astaire's first drunk dance was the comic routine You're Easy To Dance With in Holiday Inn, but this solo marks his first clear departure from a carefully crafted screen image of urbane charm.

Astaire has sometimes been criticised by other choreographers for exploring a carefully limited range of emotions in his dancing, and it is possible that this routine was his response.

However, he avoids any sense of vulgarity, and it would be nearly ten years before he would throw caution to the wind with the studied comic crudeness of the How could you believe me ... routine in Royal Wedding.

See also: Fred Astaire's Solo and Partnered Dances.