The climax of "Never Gonna Dance" took 47 takes in a single day and required many demanding spins of Ginger Rogers; her feet bled.
In "The Way You Look Tonight," Ginger Rogers is seen to be washing her hair. The crew tried various soaps, shampoos, and even egg white, but it always ran down her face too quickly. They achieved success with whipped cream.
The shadow dance idea for "Bojangles of Harlem" occurred to choreographer Hermes Pan and Fred Astaire during rehearsals, when three different light sources illuminating Astaire produced three shadows.
During rehearsals for the "Bojangles of Harlem" sequence, Hermes Pan noticed that three light sources were creating a group of Fred Astaire shadows dancing in perfect sync, and got the idea for the special effects shots in the dance. Astaire was filmed in silhouette, then tripled. The dance proper was then filmed against a process screen and combined with the shadow footage optically by RKO effects chief Vernon Walker. The effect was by no means perfect, however, as there is some "bleeding" of the image - the process screen shows through Astaire's hair at several points.