Producer: Pandro S. Berman. Copyright 2 September 1938 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 22 September 1938. U.S. release: 2 September 1938. Australian release: 29 December 1938. 83 minutes.SYNOPSIS: If you believed Fred as a ballet master in "Shall We Dance", you shouldn't have a credibility problem here. He plays a psychiatrist. Ginger is a radio singer who consults him professionally, and we all know that patients fall for their psychiatrists, don't we? A somewhat hypnotized Ginger is then seen in a country club, and who is there, too? (Such suspense!) It's Fred, of course! The only trouble on the horizon is that she is already engaged to someone else, and that someone is also at the country club. (Where else!) But that hypnosis thing is making Ginger do strange things. She insults her radio sponsor, tries to shoot Fred (when she loves him), and can only be brought to her senses by a punch in the eye. She is suitably attired at the time in her wedding gown. Ginger and Fred walk (not dance) down the aisle to matrimony.NOTES: I always wondered what the difference was between an arranger and an orchestrator. So I asked Max Steiner: "An orchestrator is a man who takes a composition and puts it into orchestra parts. An arranger is a man who takes a melody, puts different harmonies to it and fixes it up, and usually ruins it. However, he is called an arranger. They should all be shot. The orchestrator just takes what he is given to do and if he has any ideas of his own, he had better not show them."Nominated for Hollywood's major annual awards for Art Direction (Polglase alone was nominated), losing to "Adventures of Robin Hood"; Best Music Score, won by Alexander's Ragtime Band; Best Song, "Change Partners and Dance", won by "Thanks for the Memory" from "Big Broadcast of 1938".Negative cost: $1,253,000. Initial domestic rentals gross: $1,113,000. Initial foreign rentals gross: $618,000. After paying distribution expenses, this resulted in a loss to RKO of $68,000, the first Astaire-Rogers film to actually lose money.COMMENT: Although it does have a couple of genuinely amusing moments, "Carefree" is saddled with a silly plot which unfortunately tends to take over the picture. It's well into the second reel before we strike the first musical number — a solo dance by Fred Astaire. The first duet is introduced in a dream sequence (originally planned for Technicolor but actually shot in black-and-white). But then it's a long dreary haul before the lavish "The Yam". This begins quietly enough with Ginger singing, developing into a spectacular ensemble executed through several rooms before ending up back on the dance floor. There nimble Fred entertains us with a series of dazzling lifts as he swings Miss Rogers over his leg (braced on a series of tables).Director Sandrich often gets the dialogue scenes over with in long takes. Unfortunately this doesn't solve the basic problem. What's needed are more songs, less talk. Also, although there's a happy support cast, the movie really needs an Eric Blore or an Edward Everett Horton to liven it up. Still Ginger Rogers has a meaty part which she plays with more than her usual skill and all her customary charm. Ralph Bellamy as usual does fine by the "other man".But when all's said and sung, frankly we couldn't give a hoot where the subconscious mind is located.

. . . created the Mom and Pop scheme for American Franchise Chains so that he could become a Billionaire (along the lines of current White House Resident Rump), giving him the freedom to "sample the goods" (or, in Rump's terminology, "Grab their pies," though the actual Presidential lingo uses a different P-word besides "pies" that common average normal people are not allowed to use in public) in order to swipe a more suitable "Trophy Wife" from one of his franchisee Pops while dumping the original spouse who Brung him to the Dance of Big Money (again inspiring Rump), CAREFREE does for Psychiatry what Kroc and Rump have done for billionaires. When you're a shrink, you can use your Tools of the Trade (hypnotism, the Power of Subliminal Suggestion, etc.) to have the patient of your choice Shrunkwrapped to go (bow and all)--even if she's your best friend's girl. Fred Astaire's treatment of Ginger Rogers in CAREFREE is enough to make Bill Cosby look like a courtly gentleman in comparison. Fred and Ginger fans will need a dialog-free alternate audio track to really enjoy CAREFREE.

No movie with Astaire dancing can be anything less than half decent to watch. Which is pretty much where 'carefree' is for me.The main point is that this is a Rogers & Astaire movie, not Astaire & Rogers. Astaire is the sidekick for this outing and the movie suffers for it. Instead of pizazz and style, we get cutesy, instead of extraordinary, we get ordinary.The standard of songs doesn't help.Oh and the use of slow-mo for a dance sequence seems, although maybe innovative, a bad misstep, robbing us of the fluidity that was so special.In short, there are better ways to spend an hour and a half.

If you attempt to look at the plot carefully (never a good idea in a musical) this is a rather repellent movie. The practice of Psychotherapy wasn't as well known or as well respected as it is today, and the film was clearly written by someone who seemed to think of it as some fad medical cure indulged in mainly by rich and foolish women. As such we get to see Fred Astaire, the therapist, subjecting Ginger Rogers, the patient, to all manner of barbaric (to modern eyes) treatments in order to find out why she won't marry his best friend. Eventually Astaire uses hypnosis to force her to marry him, and then force him not to. Clearly, movie doctors were not subjected to as severe a code of ethics as are real ones.Its a pretty typical outing for Astaire and Rogers. Astaire's dancing is extraordinary (the dance scene on the golf course is great, as is the one where he dances with a hypnotized Rogers). Rogers' comic timing is, as always, wonderful. The secondary characters are all two-dimension cut-outs, but they're entertaining ones. If the characters didn't have quite the same sparkle to their interplay, remember, this was Astaire and Rogers' eighth film together and artistic differences were beginning to create a strain.My biggest issue with this movie was the scene in which they sing the song "I Used To Be Colorblind". This was dream sequence, and it lasted about five minutes. "Carefree" is a black and white movie and the intent originally was to film the dream sequence in color a'la "Wizard of Oz". Apparently, somewhere in the production process, people balked at the cost and it was produced in black and white along with the rest of the film. Being filmed in black and white makes the song, and the entire sequence makes not one lick of sense, because the song is about how crisp and clear the world seems in color. Not only that, but since it was designed to be viewed on color film, not in black and white, the sets weren't designed with that same high degree of contrasts they would have if they had been designed to be viewed in black and white. As such, things in the dream sequence are LESS clear than in the rest of the movie, not more. I'm just appalled that the studio could spring for a few minutes of color footage for a film with such proved money-makes as Astaire and Rogers.