Rafter Romance (1933) User Reviews

A cute romantic comedy and an odd historical document

[jchokey · 7/10 · 11 March 2003]

This is a cute romantic comedy from the 30's. An enterprising landlord arranges to rent the same top-floor apartment to a man who has a night job and a woman (played by a young Ginger Rogers) who has a day job. He lives/sleeps there during the day; she does during the night. The two protagonists don't actually know each other, except through the increasingly hostile notes that they leave to each other about the upkeep of the apartment. (It starts off with mild stuff like "Clean up the sink after you shave", and gets increasingly angry from thereon.) Eventually the two become bitter enemies, even though they have never met in person-- or so they think. As one might predict, it just so happens that the two meet and fall in love in the course of their lives outside the apartment-- and they don't realize that they are actually in love with their despised 'roommate' until the very end.

Though hardly classic cinema, this is certainly a cute and entertaining comic romance. Also, it has a couple of curious bits of cultural history built into it. The first is that Ginger Roger's character is a telemarketer-- and this is, to my knowledge, the first representation of that very modern profession in the cinema. The second is that there's a very strange reference to Nazism in the film. At one point, the landlord's somewhat dim-witted son draws a swastika on one of the doors as he's heard it means 'good luck'. The landlord (who, like is son, is clearly meant to be Jewish) is of course, furious. The odd thing is that this little incident was obviously intended to be funny (though I think most contemporary viewers will find it jarring or troubling). I think that just shows that this movie was made at during the narrow period of time when Nazism's anti-semitism was known in the U.S., but could still serve as a foil for laughter; it had not yet been recognized as the truly terrible force that it really was. As such, that makes this movie a curious historical artifact as well.

Breezy Romantic Comedy Shows what the Hayes Code Lost

[MetroMike · 7/10 · 26 February 2007]

This delightful romantic comedy, unseen since 1959, shows how fresh and funny movies could be in 1933, the last year before the Hayes Production Code clamped down on the film industry and enforced mandatory wholesomeness -- banning anything that might "lower the moral standards of those who see it," including almost any reference to sex.

Many pre-Code films look antiquated and creaky today, as the characters earnestly discuss sex, adultery, divorce, and other Serious Adult Topics. This one plays it all for a farce, with Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster forced by economics to share the same attic apartment in 12-hour shifts, him by day and her by night. They never meet and communicate only through increasingly nasty notes and pranks, coming to despise one another as roommates even as they're unknowingly flirting and falling in love in the outside world.

At the same time, Rogers is trying to fend off the amorous advances of her boss (Robert Benchley), who sees a man entering her room as she's leaving with him and apparently assumes she's turning tricks on the side, while Foster is trying to discourage an elderly millionaire (Laura Hope Crews) who wants to take him away from his sordid life and bring him home with her as her boy-toy. In the final denouement, they're explaining to everyone that they're "not married, just living together," while trying to decide whether they actually love each other or hate each other. (Love, as you might suspect, wins out).

Funny, silly, sweet and great slice of life

[bk913 · 8/10 · 6 December 2008]

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.

A cute little precode film

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 15 May 2019]

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.

Sure, it's not GREAT, but it's still a lot of fun and well worth your time

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 5 April 2007]

This is one of the "lost but found" films shown on TCM on 4/4/07. Apparently this and two other films shown that night were held out of public release due to litigation concerning royalties and now the powers that be at Turner Classic Movies have taken care of the licensing issues. Of the three films shown that night, none of them were great treasures but all three were excellent--very solid examples of the type of films RKO made during the era. Normally, when you think of RKO in 1933, you think KING KONG or Astaire and Rogers as a team, but there were other good films that might rank just below them in quality and entertainment.

RAFTER ROMANCE was made just before Ginger Rogers began her starring films with Fred Astaire. Although she had done a few movies before this, she was not an A-list star and often appeared in B-pictures or in supporting roles. Here she is teamed with the relatively unknown actor, Norman Foster--befitting her status at RKO at the time. However, despite this technically being a "lesser" film, it was marvelously entertaining and fun provided you could suspend your sense of disbelief and just enjoy. Sure, the possibility of a man and a woman sharing an apartment and never meeting and hating each other BUT also meeting in real life and fall in love because they don't realize they are roommates is pretty tough to swallow. But it is no nicely handled and fun that you probably can look past this and just enjoy it on a superficial level.

By the way, the landlord (George Sidney) was great. Sure, he was very stereotypically Jewish, but he was pretty funny and not particularly offensive. Also, when his dim-witted son was drawing a swastika on the wall "for good luck", seeing his dad slap him up side the head was a pointed and very interesting comment about the rising anti-semitism of the Nazis in Europe.

Enjoyed this 1933 Classic Comedy

[whpratt1 · 7/10 · 24 March 2008]

Had no idea that I was going to enjoy this old time 1933 comedy film starring Ginger Rodgers, (Mary Carroll) who lives in a rooming house and has fallen behind in her rent for about three months. Mary's landlord tells her she must moved out of her apartment and move upstairs in the attic until she finds a job. However, the landlord does not tell her she has to also share the attic apartment with a man named Jack Bacon, (Norman Foster) who is an artist-night watchman who has also fallen behind in his rent. Mary works during the day time and Jack shares the apartment in the day time and leaves at 8PM in the evening when Mary comes home. The two of them do not know each other and do not like each others habits or ways of living. During the day they meet and have no idea they are both sharing the same apartment. This is a very delightful comedy and worth watching. Enjoy!.

On TCM's "lost and found" schedule...but a minor discovery...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 4 April 2007]

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.

No reference to Hitler at all

[chaz-16 · 7/10 · 4 April 2007]

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 ????

Six "Lost" Films Revived

[theowinthrop · 9/10 · 6 April 2007]

It is a happy moment when something that has been absent for awhile returns in good shape. On Wednesday, April 4, 2007 Turner Classic Movies (hosted by Robert Osborne) played (for the first time in sixty years) three of six films that had been out of circulations due to some complicated court settlements involving RKO studios and their producer Merriam Cooper. All the films are from well preserved negatives, so these films looked fresh as well.

Whether they hold up as well as they did in the 1930s is another matter. I happen to like them, but they are not missing gems - it's not like finding one of those great "Holy Grails" like the complete GREED or the complete Welles' MAGNIFICENT AMBERSOMS". These were serviceable comedies and dramas of the age of our grandparents, and have the flaws of those films as well as the best merits of the Hollywood system near it's peak.

RAFTER ROMANCE is typical of the positive and negative aspects of these films. An early Ginger Rogers movie, it reminds us that prior to turning out to be the perfect dancing partner to Fred Astaire Ginger was usually playing smart, tough working girls in comedies (sometimes being too agreeable - as in her role of "Anytime Annie" in 42ND STREET just before this film was made). Rogers has come to New York for a career, and is in Greenwich Village (the outsider's view of the raffish village back in the 1920s or 1930s - no Gay types seem visible). She is rooming in the "Eckbaum" Arms rooming house, run by George Sidney (Mr. Eckbaum) and his wife and son Julius. Sidney got permanently typecast as Jewish after appearing in a series of "Abie's Irish Rose" mixed ethnic silent comedies in the 1920s called "THE COHENS AND THE KELLYS".

Sidney's not bad as far as caricatures of Jews go. He mangles language a little - tolerably so (we still understand him). He uses some Yiddish terms. He is money grubbing, but with the taxes on his rooming house it's understandable - he's constantly knocking the pay phone to retrieve coins, with indifferent success. However, he does show anger once - his idiot son starts drawing swastikas on the wall of the hallway, and Sidney lets him have it (a first perhaps in American films). He's also kindhearted. He has let Ginger and another roomer (Norman Foster) stay on far longer than most landlords without paying all their rent. But his wife convinces him he has to alter this.

What the screenwriters did is actually a bit of plagiarism, which I am surprised nobody caught. In 1866 Maddison Morton wrote a farce called BOX & COX about two men, one who works at night and one who works at day, who both (unknown to each other) rent the same room in a boarding house (until they accidentally meet when one gets an unexpected holiday). This farce was made into a one act musical operetta retitled COX & BOX by F.A. Burnand and Arthur Seymour Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) which is how it survives today (like CAVALLARIA RUSTICANA and PAIGIACI, COX & BOX is usually on a double bill with Gilbert & Sullivan's TRIAL BY JURY: it is the only non-Gilbert & Sullivan work that Savoyards like to watch).

Sidney moves Rogers to the attic loft that Foster lives in. From 8:00 P.M. to 8:00 A.M. Rogers may use it as her own. From 8:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. Foster can use it. Needless to say neither is happy at the arrangement. They never have met, so they are soon sniping at each other. The reader can see where this will lead.

Rogers finally gets a telemarketing job for a refrigerator firm owned by Robert Benchley. She does well, but she has to fight off Benchley's amorous interests. Foster is a night watchman, but he is also a struggling painter. He has attracted the attention of Laura Hope Crews, a wealthy woman who is also a dipsomaniac. He has repeatedly refused to have her make him her boy toy (much to Sidney's chagrin, as it would pay off the debt that Foster owes him). By chance Rogers and Foster meet in the streets of the city, and a romance begins - but at the same time they are unconsciously sniping and sabotaging each other as the rival, unseen roommate.

Benchley was just starting his film career, and in his opening scene his fumbling with some papers to explain to the new girls how to do their sales pitch reminds us of his classic "THE TREASURER'S REPORT" which began his acting career. He was not quite as paunchy here as in later films, but certainly no Adonis. Ms Crews' alcoholic dowager is miles from "Aunt Pittypat" in GONE WITH THE WIND, but is a distant cousin of her drunken mentalist working with Clark Gable in IDIOT'S DELIGHT. She has a distinct distaste for boarding house landlords.

Guinn "Big Boy" Williams has a role that probably was a little longer originally. He's a taxi driver who takes a brotherly interest in Ginger. They apparently meet when she is buying herself a hamburger at an all night stand. Later he helps her derail Benchley's attempts to make an evening's dinner - theater date into a boring flop. He also shows up at the conclusion of the film to assist in the genial mayhem.

It's also nice to note (in a bit part) our old friend Bud Jamison - away from his foes The Three Stooges for awhile - as the winner of a fat man's contest at a picnic.

A Moment Captured

[atlasmb · 6/10 · 7 June 2016]

Ginger Rogers arrived at RKO Studios in April 1933 after they had signed her to a three-picture deal. Her first film there was "Professional Sweetheart". The director was William Seiter and her leading man was Norman Foster. Ginger said Seiter had a tremendous sense of humor and was a joy to work with. She had flirted with Foster in her first film at Paramouht.

After "Don't Bet on Love" and "A Shriek in the Night", Ginger's contract was picked up for another year, she was presented with the script for "Rafter Romance", to be directed by her old friend Bill Seiter and starring Norman Foster. She said it was like "old-home week again". This "B" picture was filmed just months before the big break of her career. In September, she would start filming "Flying Down to Rio", in which she would dance with Fred Astaire, effectively changing the arc of her career and her life.

"Rafter Romance" is a typical big-city story about young adults trying to make ends meet during the difficult economy. Mary (Ginger Rogers) and Jack (Norman Foster) are tenants in the same apartment building. When they can't pay their rents, the landlord, Mr. Eckbaum (George Sidney) ingeniously realizes they could share the same apartment since one works day hours and the other works the night shift.

It's a somewhat racy premise for its time, but the film was made in the pre-Code era--that brief but glorious period when studios were allowed freer expression. Accordingly, the film includes some suggestions of nudity and impropriety that were typical of pre-Code films.

The film lasts a mere 73 minutes and the story is not demanding, but the actors acquit themselves well. No doubt they enjoyed the filming, having a natural chemistry. The Eckbaum family provides a warm, but humorous, backdrop for the action.

In one scene, the Eckbaum son-who always seems to be hanging around--is drawing swastikas in chalk on the wall near the lobby phone. In 1933, the Nazis would have figured prominently in world news. Their eye-catching symbol was, no doubt, fascinating to youngsters, so it makes sense that he might scribble it as graffiti. Before long, the menace of Nazism would become more apparent.

Cute Romantic Comedy Starring a very young Ginger Rogers

[HarlowMGM · 8/10 · 20 April 2008]

RAFTER ROMANCE is a delightful little comedy rescued from the legalities that kept it out of circulation for over 40 years by Turner Classic Movies (thanks folks!) starring a pre-stardom Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster. Looks to me like a ton of people may saw this little gem anyway because it has a number of bits that seem to have influenced later pictures such as a running gag about the climb up stairs in a New York apartment (used most famously in BAREFOOT IN THE PARK) and it's main theme - a couple are in love but hate their unseen roommates, completely unaware that it's each other, which was used in reverse (coworkers hate each other but fall in love with their unseen pen pals who happen to be that hated foe) in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER and it's remake YOU'VE GOT MAIL.

This movie has many charming moments and proved Ginger with one of her first showcases for her sparkling comedy talent although the lovely star is not always photographed flatteringly. Norman Foster has for decades been best known to movie buffs as Claudette Colbert's first husband rather than for his actual film work, thanks to TCM we can now see his fairly prolific career as a leading man in the pre-code era, often cast as a weak heel or (as here) a middle-class answer to Robert Montgomery. Both stars give terrific performances and there's lovely "falling in love" moments in a canoe at the company picnic that are quite romantic. (I agree with another reviewer that the trash laden picnic tables left by Ginger' coworkers is a rather startling glance at America in it's pre anti-litterbug days.)

In the supporting cast, Laura Hope Crews stands out as artist Foster's aging benefactress who wants a more intimate relationship with her protégé. Legendary humorist Robert Benchley is also around as Ginger's boss at the "ice box" company with no so secret designs on his Ginger himself.

As another viewer comments this is one of the first films with it's characters set in the world of telemarketing and it rings true some 70 years later with it's long-winded phone sales pitches, apparently hostile and blue responses (unheard on film but clearly received judging by the employees' faces) by the receiptents of these unsolicited calls, and one of the funniest bits in the film, albeit unintentional, has Benchley urging his employees to "put a smile in your voice", a phrase most definitely still in use today when training employees for work in this and similar phone-oriented fields.

Remake of 1932 European musicals

[duganek · 27 April 2004]

This is a B Hollywood rip off of the plot of two very stylish 1932 European musicals: Ich Bei Tag und Du Bie Nacht (Me by Day and You by Night), directed by Ludwig Berger and produced by Erich Pommer. Score by Werner R. Heymann. German version starred Käthe von Nagy and Willy Fritsch. Simultaneously filmed French version was "A moi le jour, à toi le nuit" (For me the day, for you the night) with von Nagy in same role and hero played by Henry Garat.

I haven't had the pleasure of seeing Rafter Romance, so I don't know if they bought the rights to the music, but probably not. One of the charms of the European version is that the hero works nights (thus needing a bed by day) as a projectionist, so the story occasionally switches to the one on screen. In the end, when the lovers discover they have been bedmates and decide to marry, they honeymoon in the cinema audience, watching a huge mittel-Europa operetta wedding on screen.

Cast elevated lightweight comedy

[a_chinn · 6/10 · 2 October 2017]

Breezy lightweight comedy about male/female roommates, Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster, sharing an apartment but never seeing one another due to their work schedules. It's nothing classic, but it's enjoyable enough, largely due to the very likable cast, which also includes George Sidney and Robert Benchley, who also appear in the film.

Love In The Attic

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 4 April 2007]

The Depression was hard times folks and people made due the best they could economically. Goes for landlords and tenants in Rafter Romance.

Landlord George Sidney decides to help Ginger Rogers out and double his income besides. He's got a tenant in Norman Foster who works as a night watchman where he also gets to do his painting at his real vocation as artist. Rogers is having a bad time financially so Sidney gets the bright idea to rent her the attic apartment that Foster lives in and sleeps days. She'll take it for twelve hours also.

Of course this being the thirties proprieties must be observed and Sidney and his whole family will make sure they're observed. No contact of any kind between the two tenants.

But this is Hollywood and I think you can figure out the rest.

Besides those mentioned look for good performances by Robert Benchley as Ginger's wolfish boss at what would now be called a tele-marketing agency. And also from Laura Hope Crews who plays a drunken society woman who would very much like to keep artist Foster as a private boy toy.

Times have certainly changed. Quite frankly as long as I don't wreck the place, do no illegal activity, and pay my rent on time, my landlord could not care less who I might have as company at a given moment. I'm not sure today's audience would really get what was happening here in Rafter Romance.

The laughs though are still in place and ready to be enjoyed.

Two Bugs in a Rug, But Not Very Snug!

[movingpicturegal · 9/10 · 5 April 2007]

Delightfully fun romantic comedy about Jack, behind on his rent, Mary, behind on her rent, and the well-meaning landlord who comes up with an idea for a rather novel arrangement for the two - to share Jack's attic apartment. Mary has a job selling ice boxes, Jack works the night shift, so Mary gets the apartment from 8 P.M. to 8 A.M. and Jack from 8 A.M. to 8 P.M. - and the two of them hate each other instantly and pull mean tricks on each other (stuff like putting his suit in the shower and cutting her bed so it collapses), though have never actually met. But wait! They do meet each other one day in front of a local delicatessen, and like each other, but have no idea they are actually living in the same apartment.

Sounds like a plot we've all heard before - but this film was really, really cute and fun to watch. Ginger Rogers is gorgeous and funny as Mary, Norman Foster gives a steady, likable performance as Jack, and Laura Hope Crews really steals the scenes she is in playing a rich, drunken old dame who wants to "help" handsome Jack's career (he also happens to be a struggling artist) - she is hilarious. Okay - here's a few observations: how come Mary and Jack have never, ever seen each other before even though they have been living in the same brownstone on separate floors for at least long enough to both be overdue on the rent (you would think they would have at least passed each other on the stairs or out at the curb or maybe on the weekend a few times), and how about that company picnic where everyone has left except our two stars and ALL the garbage and trash from the picnicking is just left behind on the tables! Ah well - all in all, I found this to be a very enjoyable, funny, well done film.

Growing up, I thought all she did was tap dance.

[mkilmer · 8/10 · 3 June 2007]

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 Apartment above The Shop Around The Corner

[1930s_Time_Machine · 5/10 · 16 September 2023]

Ginger Rogers' second picture for RKO is a much better and more entertaining one than her first, PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART. It won't make you laugh but it will make you smile.

The three main leads are all very endearing, even Norman Foster comes across as someone you think you'd get on with thanks to decent direction from William Seiter and a believable script. We've also got the requirement for a classic rom-com: a likeable couple who think they hate each other but you know they'll get together in the end. This is one of those pictures which you can tell within two minutes that you're guaranteed to get a happy ending.

I am struggling however to think why anyone would want to watch this. It's a typical rom-com which is absolutely fine but it's nothing special. There are a handful of these types of films from this time, such as THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER which had a very similar plot, which are fantastic but this isn't one of them. There are literally hundreds of "pretty good" films as entertaining as this which if you feel like something light and non-taxing is as good as any. (It is however much better than a lot of so-called 1930s comedies!)

If you're a Ginger Rogers fan then she's of course lovely in this and if you've seen PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART then it's worth seeing just to prove that she could do better. Maybe you want to get a feel of 1933 by seeing what struggling RKO were trying to fill their theatres with in 1933 - along with that big gorilla! Back then, films like this were the equivalent of simply finding something on the TV, like an old episode of Friends etc to amuse yourself for an hour or so.

Telemarketing in 1933? Who knew?

[vert001 · 9/10 · 26 February 2016]

I first saw RAFTER ROMANCE a few years ago as a break from all the Akira Kurosawa films I'd been watching on TCM. In a rather odd coupling, Turner Classic Movies had decided to play all of the Japanese director's films during its Ginger Rogers Month, and all the promos I'd been seeing about Ginger finally made me decide to take a break from the next modern day Japanese version of HAMLET or KING LEAR or MACBETH (or Gorky's THE LOWER DEPTHS for that matter). Something called RAFTER ROMANCE seemed like it would be quite a contrast. It was, and it was a lot of fun, too.

Instead of going over the plot again, I'll mention two scenes. The swastika incident has inspired some comment. The swastika had long been a good luck symbol in much of the world, including among the Hindus as well as the aboriginal American Indians. Clearly the boy is using it as such in the scene in RAFTER ROMANCE. It's not surprising that an adolescent wouldn't have been keeping up with the contemporary political developments in Europe. His father, however, judging by his accent, must have originally come from the Old World, and it's not unlikely that he would have been familiar with recent European events. Thus the landlord associated the swastika with the Nazis and was unhappy to see it on the walls of his apartments, a reaction that his son did not immediately understand. It seems to me to be a sly political commentary, surely the only one that we see in the charming romcom RAFTER ROMANCE.

True the plot about two people sharing an apartment without ever meeting one another doesn't make any sense (what happens on weekends or holidays?), but how many airtight plots do we ever come across? RAFTER ROMANCE moves quickly, contains likable characters, has some genuinely funny scenes (anything featuring Laura Hope Crews, anything featuring the telemarketing office, Ginger's 'date' with Robert Benchley), a few that aren't so funny but nothing that is notably awful, and a pair of leads (Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster) who fit easily together in what is their third and last movie as co-stars. Though there's considerable talent all around her, it's Rogers who holds it all together, and RKO must have been very pleased in seeing what they had in her.

Though it's a small, simple picture, RAFTER ROMANCE does supply some surprises. Did you know there were telemarketing companies in 1933? I sure didn't. Neither their spiel nor the reactions to their cold calling seems to have changed much. But most surprising was that shower scene, or I should say the prelude to it. When Ginger slipped off the jacket of that business suit she was wearing my jaw dropped at the sight of her bare back! I mean, no blouse underneath, only a silk scarf crossing over her breasts? Somehow I doubt that was a common costume for the well-dressed office girl of 1933, but I guess that's why they call them pre-Code!

The Woven Stories

[tedg · 5 February 2008]

If you've read a couple comments, you know the story. At least the obvious parts. Man and woman sharing apartment on different schedule. Hate and love, with love winning.

But there's a story about stories that matters more. I'm attuned to these triple narrative devices. Its a particularly complex sort of triple symmetry fold that I first noticed in "2001." Its particularly Jewish in formation, going back 740 years that I know.

Here are the three: We have the kindly Jew who is a benevolent "arranger." He shuffles lives spatially. At the end, when things turn out well, he and his wife turn to each other and remark on how well his arranging has worked. Its the last thing we see.

We have the guy. He's an artist. That should be enough said, but his devotion to his particular story is underscored by a rich drunk matron who wants to support him. For reasons assignable only to his controlling his own story, he turns her down.

We have the girl, Ginger. Now her storytelling role is written as a stretch. She gets a job as a telemarketer where she has to convincingly read a script. It happens to be one associated with domestic life (refrigerators) which is plainly absent in the apartment where the thing is staged.

The stories are all about sex and love. Its honest, lovely precode sex.

The three stories clash in spots (some writing is involved) but braid to our satisfaction at the end.

I believe that this triple braid was reused many times. This is the earliest I know, but I am sure readers can help me find earlier ones in film.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

"Wha... on the 4th floor? It couldn't be!"

[OldieMovieFan · 10/10 · 24 February 2024]

Ginger Rogers made an astonishing 10 films in 1933, 3 of them all time classics ('42nd Street,' 'Gold Diggers of 1933,' and 'Flying Down to Rio') and nearly all of them still hold up today. That's basically one movie each month!

If you watch them in sequence, you can see a steady improvement in her acting and screen presence, and much of that improvement is due to her first important partner of the 1930s, director William Seiter. They made five films together and, in one of the greatest metamorphoses in screen history, Ginger transformed from a B-movie leading lady to a superstar.

'Rafter Romance' was the second movie that they made together, after 'Professional Sweetheart' (Ginger's offering for June, 1933) and already under his direction we can see her emotional range expanding. The movie itself is a good story, tapping into the classic 'Seventh Heaven,' and Rogers teams up with Norman Foster, her co-star in three movies of the early 1930s.

Foster didn't stay in acting very long, instead he moved to directing, but he worked with many of the great actresses of the day: Clara Bow, Claudette Colbert, Janet Gaynor, Carole Lombard, and his favorite co-star, Ginger Rogers. It's easy to compare his screen presence and timing with Ginger's famous second partner of the 1930s, Fred Astaire. Of course, Foster was no Astaire - didn't sing or dance - but his performances do have a similar light, breezy feel and they fit together well with Ginger's perfectly natural acting.

George Sidney, Robert Benchley, and Laua Hope Crews turn in their patented performances. But of the role players it is Guinn Williams who receives the laurels, for his funny modern-day impersonation of the dashing Knight Errant, striding forth from his chariot (he's a cabbie) to defend the Damsel from her various perils.

It's a really fun movie, simple and goofy and lighthearted. It's a B film, sure. But when you put it on that basis, 'Rafter Romance' is one of the best B films ever made.

To this reviewer, Rogers made 4 all-time great movies in 1933!

Hitler comes to Hollywood

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 4/10 · 3 April 2005]

A previous IMDb reviewer has stated that 'Rafter Romance' is a 'rip-off' (that's the other reviewer's term) of a German musical called 'Me By Day, You By Night'. Apparently that reviewer is unaware that *both* of these films have borrowed their premise from 'Box and Cox', an English play written by John Maddison Morton in 1847. This play deals with two tradesmen who rent the same room from an unscrupulous landlady, each man believing himself the sole tenant. Because the two men have different work schedules, the ruse is not discovered straight away. This play was once so popular in Britain that 'to Box and Cox it' became a common term for an arrangement in which two people willingly shared accommodations meant for only one person.

The innovation of 'Rafter Romance' (and its predecessor) is that the two tenants are now a man and a woman, who inevitably develop a romance. As is usual in these cornball movies, the guy and the gal detest each other until they fall into each other's arms. Hoo boy.

The landlord in this film is played by George Sidney, a character actor who specialised in playing Jewish stereotypes that were meant to be sympathetic. George Sidney was never as annoying as the odious Harry Green (the Jewish equivalent of Stepin Fetchit) but Sidney's depictions of Jewish characters are still exaggerated and embarrassing to watch.

The single most notable thing about 'Rafter Romance' is that, to my knowledge, this is the earliest Hollywood film to make reference to Hitler and the rise of Nazism. At one point in this movie, landlord Eckbaum (Sidney) discovers his teenage son Julius engaged in chalking swastikas on the walls. Eckbaum and his son are clearly meant to be Jewish. Admittedly, nobody in Hollywood in 1933 had any real idea of what Hitler was planning for the Jews in Europe ... still, it's surprising to see a film depicting a Jewish teenager who thinks that swastikas are a joke. His father is, quite properly, angered by this display of the Nazi symbol.

A very shameful aspect of Hollywood history is the documented fact that all of the major Hollywood studios continued to do business with the Third Reich as late as 1939. Hollywood's leading ladies were medically documented as 'Aryan' so that their films could be distributed in Nazi Germany and Austria. For the same reason, Hollywood's leading men were documented as 'Aryan and uncircumcised'. Except for Darryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox, all the Hollywood studio executives who colluded in this policy were Jewish ... but clearly had no objection to doing business with Hitler. I'm surprised that 'Rafter Romance' contains a scene depicting swastikas unfavourably, as this sequence would have rendered the film Verboten in Germany and Austria. (Maybe the scene was cut out for German release: it isn't crucial to the movie's plot.) Apart from this, the movie contains nothing notable. Robert Benchley does his usual unfunny befuddled characterisation: I've never understood the appeal of this man. I'll rate 'Rafter Romance' 4 out of 10.

Night and Day, You are the Tenant....

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 8 March 2013]

A far-fetched set-up is in order for this romantic comedy similar to "The Shop Around the Corner", about two people who meet, at first can't stand each other, and eventually discover that they are connected in a rather unique way. He's a night security guard who needs a place to sleep during the day (apparently working seven days a week) so landlord George Sidney convinces broke tenant Ginger Rogers to share her apartment with him, she working by day while he sleeps, and him gone when she gets home. By chance, they meet each other (not knowing what their shared apartment roommate looks like) and slowly fall in love after a shaky start.

A breezy pre-code comedy with some nice art direction for the apartment, witty dialog and a fabulously comic Laura Hope Crews as a clumsy drunken slob, this is memorable for a sequence where Rogers strips down to her lingerie, revealing a lot and hiding little. Rogers shines in scenes where she's promoting the refrigerators she's trying to sell, and sarcastically dealing with the eccentrics around her. Foster, better known as one of Claudette Colbert's husbands and Loretta Young's brother-in-law, is a light-hearted romantic lead who holds his own against the rising star Rogers who was about to shoot to the top of the box office as the dancing partner of Fred Astaire. In spite of the illogical premise, the film is quite enjoyable, much so that RKO remade it only three years later as the weaker "Living on Love". Crews's character, obviously a wealthy alcoholic out to make Foster her paid lover, played a similar character in the Bob Hope comedy "Thanks for the Memory", and her character bears more than a passing resemblance to the more sophisticated character that Patricia Neal played in "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

Mildly Diverting Comedy.

[rmax304823 · 5/10 · 6 December 2008]

It's the depression and everyone is hard up except the very wealthy. (Plus ca change...) Ginger Rogers is a working girl forced to share an attic or loft with Norman Foster, an artist who refuses to take any money from the society matron (Laura Hope Crews) who pursues him. George Sidney is Mr. Eckbaum, the slightly frantic landlord who tries to keep everything going. He arranges it so that Rogers, who is a telephone salesgirl by day, and Foster, who has a job as a night watchman, never meet. Trying to keep the place "respectable," you know.

Well, the two roomies who don't know each other take a long time to meet. In the meantime, leaving nasty notes for one another and playing painful pranks, each comes to loathe the other.

But -- guess what! -- they meet accidentally outside their attic, assume false identities for different reasons, and fall for each other. This plot, I'm sure, goes back farther than "You've Got Mail" or "The Shop Around the Corner." I honestly don't know how far back in the mists of ancient history it goes. When did they invent rentals? It's a bit slow at first. George Sidney is funny, though, as the wisecracking Jewish landlord. His son Julius brings him a bowl of noodle soup for the famished Rogers but spills some on the carpet. "Ahh, next time I ask you for TWO bowls of zoop -- one for the lady and one for the carpet." If you don't think that's funny, I ought to warn you that that's about as good as it gets.

Robert Benchley is in it too, as the amorous boss of Rogers at the Icy Air Refrigerator Company, but his particularly Ivy League brand of humor may be an acquired taste. Except for "Foreign Correspondent," come to think of it, where his non sequiturs were superb. Guinn (Big Boy) Williams also appears in the small role of a comic taxi driver.

Foster isn't much of an actor but Ginger Rogers is delightfully piquant as a tough but vulnerable proletarian. She has a wonderful figure, which she gets to display, but her movements are stiff and no one could have predicted that within the next few years she would be a partner in the most famous dancing team in the world.

Everything about the movie is smooth and logical and never rises above the level of "nice" -- slightly amusing, slightly warm, and with a happy ending.

Rogers on Her Way Up

[dougdoepke · 15 August 2012]

Mildly amusing little pre-Code comedy. The premise is promising—a guy (Foster) and a girl (Rogers) share an upstairs flat at different times of day, and so they never meet, at least as co-tenants. But they do meet casually without knowing the other person is the one sharing the flat. The thing is that as co-tenants they've developed a dislike for one another, but as acquaintances, they're becoming romantically involved. So what will happen when each finds out who the other person really is. Sounds complicated, but the premise does set up a lot of clever comedic possibilities, especially when the archly befuddled Robert Benchley is added to the mix.

The movie has its amusing parts, yet doesn't rise to a memorable level. The trouble is that Foster (Jack) has neither the charisma nor the comedic talent needed to match the scintillating Rogers (Mary). At the same time, director Seiter fails to provide the bounce a good comedy needs. And in a supporting role the middle-age Crews (Elise) unfortunately over-acts in theatrically unfunny fashion. Thus it's left to the incomparable Rogers to carry the movie, which she does while making the entire package worth watching. All in all, the result amounts to an okay programmer, but one that unfortunately doesn't live up to potential.