Night And Day | Cole Porters song defines his life.

"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter. It was written for the 1932 musical play Gay Divorce, and is perhaps Porter's most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook.

Fred Astaire introduced "Night and Day" on stage, and his recording of the song was a #1 hit. He performed it again in the 1934 film version of the show, renamed The Gay Divorcee, and it became one of his signature pieces. The song itself became an American standard and has been recorded by dozens of artists.

Porter was known to claim that the Islamic call to worship he heard on a trip to Morocco inspired the song.

The song was so associated with Porter that when Hollywood first filmed his life story in 1946, the movie was entitled Night and Day.

Night and Day, is a 1946 Technicolor Warner Brothers biographical film of the life of American composer and songwriter Cole Porter. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Arthur Schwartz, with Jack L. Warner as executive producer. The screenplay was by Charles Hoffman, Leo Townsend and William Bowers.

The music score by Ray Heindorf and Max Steiner was nominated for an Academy Award. The film features several of the best-known Porter songs, including the title song, "Night and Day", "Begin the Beguine" and "My Heart Belongs to Daddy".

The film stars Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Alexis Smith as his wife of 35 years, Linda Lee Porter Monty Woolley and Mary Martin appear as themselves and the rest of the cast includes Jane Wyman, Eve Arden, Alan Hale, Dorothy Malone, Donald Woods, and Ginny Simms.

The film is a highly fictionalized and sanitized version of Cole Porter's life, leaving out amongst other things references to his homosexuality. A later film biography of Porter, the 2004 De-Lovely with Kevin Kline, dealt more frankly with his sexuality.

The "Kitty Foyle" Dress

Kitty Foyle, subtitled The Natural History of a Woman, is a 1940 film starring Ginger Rogers. The film was adapted from the eponymous 1939 novel by Christopher Morley. Ginger is not dancing and Ginger is not adorned in glamorous ballroom dresses. She's a working girl! In fact, Rogers' dress became a popular style, taking the name of the film.

A Kitty Foyle is a dress style of the 1940s characterized by a dark fabric and contrasting (usually white) collar and cuffs. This dress has also been worn by characters such as Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl and Wednesday Addams.

Reminds me of impact of "Annie Hall" on 70s fashions. More about Kitty Foyle dress from the blogosphere:

If Wednesday Adams Digs the Kitty Foyle, Then So Do I

The Kitty Foyle crops up everywhere…notably on Christina Ricci as Wednesday Adams (god i loved those movies). Over the years, it’s taken the shape of a bow at the neckline (rather than/as well as a contrasting collar) and a bright coloured dress contrasted with white or another colour. But the classic b-n-w version always ends up resurfacing.

I don’t have a KF myself, but you’ve gotta love them. Clean and classy. Plus it gives you full licence to maximise the size of your coiffe, a la Ginger Rogers. MORE »

In 1940, Hollywood offered audiences the quintessential White Collar Girl: Ginger Rogers as Kitty Foyle:

The collar for example, was a sign, expressively nuanced by size, line, decorative quality, and shape; Kitty's small, neat, crisply starched, simple white collar expressed the ideal character of the working girl. Better yet, it effected metaphorical literalization through design. Life explained, "she wears the white collar which gave her kind its name." MORE »

Carefree's Big Kiss & more Astaire-Roger pecks

Carefree is the shortest of the Astaire-Rogers films, featuring only four musical numbers. Carefree is often remembered as the film in which Astaire and Rogers shared a long on-screen kiss at the conclusion of their dance to "I Used to Be Color Blind," all previous kisses having been either quick pecks or simply implied.

Astaire didn't like "mushy love scenes," and preferred that lovemaking between him and Rogers be confined to their dances. Because rumors sprang up that Astaire's wife wouldn't let him kiss onscreen, or that Rogers and Astaire didn't like each other, Astaire agreed to the long kiss at the end of "I Used to Be Color Blind", "to make up for all the kisses I had not given Ginger for all those years."

I thought I'd found the "Big Kiss" c/o obscureclassics but the link has been disabled due to copyright issues. Unable to find videoclip of the extended kiss; but here are a couple of Astaire-Roger pecks...

Swing Time (1936) Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Directed by George Stevens

This scene from The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle includes the song "Only When You're In My Arms", Vernon's proposal of marriage and a very rare kiss involving Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

They Can't Take That Away from Me

Shall We Dance is the seventh of the ten Astaire-Rogers musical comedy films. Astaire was not enthused by the proposal to blend ballet with popular dance, and it shows. Neither, it appears, was George Gershwin—who had become famous for blending jazz with classical forms—as he makes no reference to this concept in any of the songs. The extremely convoluted plot and the curious absence of a romantic partnered duet for Astaire and Rogers—a hallmark of their musicals since The Gay Divorcee (1934)—contributed to their least profitable picture to date—a clear indication that audiences might be tiring of the Astaire-Rogers' magic. Ginger, in particular, looks tired in the picture and had already requested a break from musicals.

Astaire often appears either dismissive or uncomfortable with the central ballet/popular dance idea. While he made further attempts—notably in Ziegfeld Follies (1944/46), Yolanda and the Thief (1945) and Daddy Long Legs (1955) it was his rival and friend Gene Kelly who would eventually succeed in creating a modern original dance style based on this concept. Some critics have attributed Astaire's discomfort with ballet (he briefly studied ballet in the 1920s) to his oft-expressed disdain for "inventing up to the arty". Nevertheless this film managed to produce another timeless musical number "They Can't Take That Away from Me."

"They Can't Take That Away from Me": The Gershwins' famous foxtrot, a serene, nostalgic declaration of love—one of their most enduring creations and one of George's personal favourites—is introduced by Astaire in one of the film's few genuinely touching and romantic moments. Rogers' reactions are a testimony to her considerable dramatic abilities. As with "The Way You Look Tonight" in Swing Time (1936), it was decided to reprise the melody as part of the film's dance finale. George Gershwin was unhappy about this, writing "They literally throw one or two songs away without any kind of plug". Astaire subsequently acknowledged the error, and finally put matters right in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), his final reunion with Rogers, creating one of their most admired essays in romantic partnered dance, and it remains the only occasion on film when Astaire permitted himself to repeat a song he had performed in a previous film. George Gershwin died two months after the film's release, and he was posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song for this song at the 1937 Oscars.

The Continental

Oscar-winning "Continental", from "The Gay Divorcee".