Rafter Romance

This has the same leading cast as "Professional Sweetheart", even the same director. It was lost for years because it was in legal rights limbo when Turner Classic Movies got the rights to it and five other films, but I digress.

The setup is simple but purely precode. A man (Norman Foster) and a woman (Ginger Rogers) -Jack and Mary - are forced by their landlord to move into the same attic together, with Mary having the premises at night and Jack having them during the day. Each has to be out of the attic 15 minutes before the other arrives "home" so that they never meet. The reason for this was that they were both behind on their rent with no real chance of catching up. Thus the landlord can rent their old rooms out to people who can pay the rent plus he gets rent for what has now been an unused part of the house - the attic - and Jack and Mary are not homeless. A win win.

Now the two have never met, but tensions rise immediately when Mary overhears Jack calling her a "skinny old maid". They play pranks on each other that escalate to the point we are in Looney Tunes territory. Meanwhile Jack and Mary have actually met on the street, and have begun to fall in love. What will happen when they each find out who the other is? Watch and find out.

As in many precode films, nothing really indecent goes on, yet this film would not have been allowed to be produced just a year later. The most extreme thing you see is Ginger Rogers in various stages of undress, and Jack seems to be in some kind of "boy toy" situation with Laura Hope Crews' character, Elise. He is an artist working as a night watchman and she is a rich woman who seems to want to "keep" him, although he is not willing to let it go that far.

This is Peter Benchley's biggest role so far in a film. Here he plays Mary's lecherous boss who is making the moves on Mary and at least one other girl in his employ. Not exactly the role I am accustomed to seeing Benchley in, and yet he still plays it with his signature dry wit.

The most shocking thing to audiences today, probably? The landlords, the Eckbaums, are Jewish, and they have a son that they tell to stand in the hall and wait for one of the tenants to get home, there is a message for this person. Well like so many teens he gets bored and starts doodling on the wall. What does he doodle? Swastikas! How odd.

Fun find! Two hip young people trying to make a go in NYC in 1933. After not paying their rents for 3 months the landlord moves them into the same attic apartment as their schedules are opposite. It's a great peek at urban life in 1933 with drunken work picnics, a lecherous boss, a high society cougar, a telemarketing office and two witty and sassily dressed 20 somethings trying to make it in the big apple. And it's shot in and around the city. As other reviewers have mentioned - the landlord is stereotypical Jew and there's a stereotypical Italian selling flowers on the street. Not so nice. But this is pretty typical in Hollywood, even now isn't it? The landlord is actually a very likable fellow. He's not one dimensional and you laugh at the crazy antics and his great acting - NOT because of anything "Jewish". And as mentioned - there's another really interesting moment when the landlord's teenage son is writing swastikas on the chalkboard near the phone. He gets a smack on the head for it and he exclaims "But it's good luck!" It is not "making a joke of Nazism" but is in fact pointing out the interesting dilemma for that time. Previous to the Nazis adopting the symbol it DID denote good luck and it was (and still is) a positive icon for many races and religions. This movie foreshadows the evilness the symbol would become, especially to Jewish families. And for an American film to be blatantly anti-Nazi so early means smart writer/director. I'm really glad I got to see this film after its 50 years of purgatory.

There's a feeling of deja vu to the plot of RAFTER ROMANCE about two people who aren't aware of each other's identity until they fall in love, but in 1933 it must have seemed quite an original idea.

At any rate, it gives GINGER ROGERS and NORMAN FOSTER a nice chance to show what they could do with light comedy and tender romance. They play two roommates who work different shifts but who eventually meet and fall in love. (Shades of YOU'VE GOT MAIL and other such stories). And oddly enough, ROBERT BENCHLEY would be making a play for Ginger as a lecherous wolf, just as he would some ten years later in THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR when he suggested she slip into something more comfortable.

After a series of pranks and misunderstandings, Foster and Rogers find each other at the company picnic and promptly fall in love.

Watch for LAURA HOPE CREWS (Aunt Pittypat of GWTW) as a woman who wants to "keep" Norman Foster--and GUINN WILLIAMS as a brawny taxicab driver.

Summing up: Good fun with an early look at Ginger.

Ginger Rogers was a first rate actress, and one of the funniest when she wanted to be. This film has her renting an apartment and having trouble with her rent. Her boss (Robert Benchley) is a sexist pig who demands a date. Several times.

Money forces her landlord to make her share her attic apartment with a painter (Norman Foster) – he gets days, she gets nights – and the two build certain assumptions about each other and dislike each other, sight unseen.

Sight seen, though they don't know they're sharing an apartment, they fall in love.

Laura Hope Crews is funny as the drunken woman of means who is constantly trying to seduce Foster, and George Sidney is delightful as the landlord.

Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams puts in an appearance as the protective cabbie.

All in all, a delightful film. Good plot, delightful acting, and – pre Hayes code – we get a glimpse of Miss Roger's legs. I'm sorry, but for all her splendid talent, we must not forget the God-given asset which carried her through so many later films with Freddy Astaire.

The father was NOT upset due to a reference to Hitler but he was upset that the boy was scribbling on the walls. the swastika was, at one time, a good luck charm and could be found in many cultures around the world. Today, of course, it refers to nothing but Hitler and his atrocities, but in 1933 it had nothing to do with Hitler.

This was a great movie, and was before the censors got into cutting some scenes. Her bare back in one scene and showing her undressing must have been outrageous to many at that time.

Movies went from that freedom to almost no freedoms to almost unlimited freedom today. Ain't it a wonderful life ????