"NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT" (1937)

The 1937 film musical A Damsel in Distress, adapted from a novel by P.G. Wodehouse and starring Fred Astaire, had an English setting and RKO Pictures asked George and Ira Gershwin to write songs that sounded British. The resulting film score included two future jazz standards, "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" and "Nice Work If You Can Get It." At the time "Nice work if you can get it" was a popular phrase in England. Philip Furia and William Lasser in America’s Songs describe the source of inspiration for the song title, "Although the title phrase sounds as if it were newly minted during the Depression, Ira Gershwin said he took it from a cartoon in the British humor magazine Punch in which two London charwomen discuss the daughter of a mutual friend who, as the first charwoman confides, "has become a ‘ore." "Nice work if you can get it," the second replies."
Astaire introduced more standards to the Great American Song Book, including "Nice Work If You Can Get It," than any other performer. In A Damsel in Distress he first sang the song with a chorus, followed by a tap solo in which he danced and played around a drum set. The innovative dance sequence was shot in one continuous take using an early version of the zoom lens, received rave reviews and still is considered a high point of the film. The song was an immediate hit, appearing on the pop charts five times in two years. In 1937 a recording by Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm peaked at #8, followed by Teddy Wilson and His Orchestra with Billie Holiday at #20. In 1938 Fred Astaire’s recording rose to #1 and Maxine Sullivan’s reached #10. In 1939 the Andrews Sisters’ recording reached #12. "Nice Work If You Can Get It" was the only song from the film to make the Hit Parade, where it appeared eight times, twice in second place.
Currently there are over 1000 covers of "Nice Work If You Can Get It." In American Popular Song, Alec Wilder discusses the reason for its popularity with musicians, "It’s a very clever song. The contrast between the smooth, unrhythmic first four measures and the exploding measures that follow is very satisfying. The restatement adds a quarter note triplet in the last half of its third (and eleventh) measure, a charming variant, whether or not the result of an extra syllable in the lyric." He did have one mild criticism, "The release is one of the best Gershwin ever wrote. I’m slightly embarrassed, however, by its cadence, since it is a somewhat lordly allusion to a phrase from "I Got Rhythm." No doubt the Gershwins were right: everyone did know the earlier song. But it does seem a bit like boasting." Wilder could call it boasting, but Ira Gershwin just may have been indulging in a common lyricist ploy, recycling a line from another song he wrote; the phrase to which Wilder alludes is "Who could ask for anything more" that first appeared in "I Got Rhythm."
Fred Astaire already was a star on Broadway when he came to Hollywood in 1933, but the phrase "Nice work if you can get it" could have served as the epitaph for his attempt to break into pictures if it wouldn’t have been for Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, because Astaire nearly flunked his first Hollywood screen test. Although the report of his test for RKO Pictures, "Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little." may be more a piece of Hollywood folklore than factual, the test wasn’t promising. Wikipedia cites Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, as stating in a memo "I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test." Selznick was right to take a chance on Astaire, who now is ranked as the fifth greatest male star of all time by the American Film Institute.
Teamed with dancing partner Ginger Rogers and choreographer Hermes Pan, Astaire revolutionized Hollywood musicals. By the time he starred in A Damsel in Distress, he and Rogers had made seven musicals together that were box office hits. However, A Damsel in Distress was a movie in distress; it was the first Astaire film that didn’t make money for RKO Pictures. Although it featured superb Gershwin songs, Astaire’s singing and dancing, the comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Hermes Pan’s choreography that won an Academy Award for Best Dance Direction, it had a serious flaw: no Ginger Rogers. After completing their seventh musical in five years,Rogers was feeling burned out and ready for a break from musicals; she began work on the non-dancing film "Stage Door" while Astaire went on to A Damsel in Distress. A new partner had to be found for him, but the popularity of the Astaire-Rogers pairing was such that almost anyone taking her place could expect to receive a cold welcome from fans. Experienced actresses were not eager to be placed in that position and Joan Fontaine, a 19 year-old starlet born in England and recently signed by RKO, was chosen. Unfortunately, she could neither sing nor dance, and even Astaire’s vaunted ability to make any partner look good wasn’t enough. In later years, Fontaine was able to joke that the picture had set back her career by four years. Coincidentally, just as Selznick had rescued Astaire’s film career after the bad screen test, he rescued Fontaine’s career by starring her in the 1940 Oscar winning film Rebecca, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Astaire went back to working with Ginger Rogers in the 1938 RKO film Carefree.
In early 1937 George Gershwin began to complain of blinding headaches and the impression of smelling burned rubber. It was discovered that he had a malignant brain tumor and he died in July of 1937 at the age of 38 while A Damsel in Distress was in production. His death had to be a severe personal loss for Fred Astaire, whose friendship with Gershwin began in 1916 in New York City when he was looking for a composer to write a song for his touring vaudeville act. At the time, they vowed that some day they would work together, and in 1924 Astaire and his sister Adele starred in the Gershwin hit Broadway show, Lady Be Good. The pairing of Astaire’s dancing with Gershwin’s music was so felicitous that drama critic Alexander Woollcott later wrote, "I do not know whether Gershwin was born into this world to write rhythms for Fred Astaire’s feet or whether Fred Astaire was born into this world to show how the Gershwin music should really be danced." That was the beginning of many successful collaborations between Astaire and Gershwin that ended with Gershwin’s untimely death, and, according to Astaire's letters to his sister Adele, Gershwin whispered Astaire's name before passing away.