The Gay Divorcee is probably best remembered for featuring the first Oscar winning best song, 'The Continental', which is catchy but perhaps overplayed in the movie, that production number near the end is 15-20 minutes long. An adaptation of the Broadway musical The Gay Divorce, the title was changed to The Gay Divorcee under the studio logic (in this case RKO) that while a divorce should not be depicted as happy a divorcee might be, today of course any connotation of the word 'gay' can potentially be applied to a divorce.
This is an Astaire/ Rodgers vehicle with a somewhat complicated plot, Fred is Guy Holden a famous America dancer traveling Europe with his good friend a lawyer named Egbert (Edward Everett Horton). At disembarkation in England he meets, falls head over heals in love with, but makes a bad impression on Mimi (Ginger) who is there to meet her aunt Hortense (Alice Brady). Unbeknownst to Guy, Mimi is actually married, but seeking a divorce from her older geologist husband with whom she does not live, but who is refusing divorce because Mimi comes from money and he uses her as a kind of personal credit card (those high living geologists). In course of the story Egbert becomes Mimi's lawyer and hits on the idea of faking an affair in an effort to force Mimi's husband to seek a divorce as a face saving measure. But who to play the other man in this scenario.... ultimately not who you think.
Seeming inconsequential in many ways The Gay Divorce is still a lite, enjoyable story, a likable movie with a fun cast, some nice musical numbers and occasionally wry humor. Edward Everett Horton who principally played a lot of small film roles is here the secondary male lead, he's pretty amusing in this and even gets to have a musical number with a pre-star Betty Grable called ' Let's K-nock K-nees'. This is a movie where the casting elevates fairly mediocre martial into something that is memorable and a film which I would happily see again. ***1/2
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