Shtick crept its way into the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers dynamic with this later collaboration, in which he plays a psychoanalyst who is enlisted by a friend (Ralph Bellamy) to use his mind-reading powers to convince the friend’s reluctant beau (Rogers) to agree to marriage. In one sequence Astaire taps while at a practice tee (tap golfing!) and in another routine he and Rogers are captured in slow motion. Yet both seem like desperate ways to add a new wrinkle to their act (oddly, they lose some elegance at half the speed). Beyond that, Carefree is rife with distasteful chauvinism, perhaps best personified by the sequence in which a hypnotized Rogers dances at Astaire’s command. We all knew by this point she could manage just fine on her own, thank you very much.
