Plot Synopsis (continued)
Back at the hotel, fashion model Dale must explain
to Alberto Beddini, her pompous dress designer, who exactly is sending
her the roomful of flowers. Although it seems unlikely by this point,
she exclaims (happily) that she knows her admirer, but knows him
only as "Adam": "I've seen him, I've talked to him.
I've danced with him." He reminds her that she has promised
to go with him to Italy to meet her confidante friend Madge Hardwick
and model his clothes, but she refuses: "Alberto, up to the
present, our relationship has been purely a business one. But if
you start interfering in my personal affairs, I'll go back to America
and live on the dole."
Dale receives a telegram from Madge in Venice, suggesting
that she look up her husband, Horace Hardwick (Jerry's boss) who
is staying at Dale's hotel in London:
Beddini (reading): 'Come ahead stop stop being a
sap stop you can even bring Alberto stop my husband is stopping
at your hotel stop when do you start stop.' I cannot understand
who wrote this.
Dale: Sounds like Gertrude Stein.
At the hotel desk that evening, Dale inquires about
Horace Hardwick, Madge's husband, learning that he has Room 404,
the room above hers. The clerk points him out as Hardwick, with a
briefcase and cane, crosses the hotel's mezzanine. By the time Dale
gets closer, Jerry has taken Horace's briefcase and cane and Horace
has departed, so she naturally mistakes him for Horace. Naturally,
she is furious - she believes her admirer is Horace, the heartless,
philandering husband of her best friend Madge Hardwick. Thus begins
the key plot development of mistaken identity and romantic complications
that isn't resolved until later in the film.
When Jerry greets Dale in the lobby, their encounter
creates a slight scene in front of the elevator:
Jerry: Cab miss?
Dale (sarcastically): When a clumsy cloud meets a fluffy little cloud.
Dale slaps him, and understandably rebuffs any further
romantic advances and interests from him, believing he is Horace
- a married man. He is completely astonished by the rapid turnabout
and doesn't understand what has happened to cause it.
Horace is worried that the widely-publicized slap will
affect the show:
"One breath of scandal will ruin the show." Dale is also
infuriated by what she mistakenly perceives to be scandalous:
I hate men. I hate you [to Beddini]. I hate all men...How
could he have made love to me when he was married all the time?
And to Madge of all people.
She is also uncomfortable at the idea of traveling
to Italy to the Lido where Madge is, by accompanying her Italian
dress designer Beddini to model clothes. But then she decides to
go to Venice anyway to tell Madge what has occurred:
"Maybe she ought to know." Meanwhile, Horace is concerned
that scandal will break over the incident involving Jerry and the girl.
He assigns his valet, dimwitted Bates (Eric Blore) to trail Dale Tremont
wherever she goes. Dale ends up fleeing the hotel with her couturier
to romantic Venice, trailed by manservant Bates. Jerry discovers that
Dale has left town when he speaks to the hotel maids putting the flowers
into the rubbish in her vacated room.
In
his dressing room following the first act of Horace's London show,
Jerry is disconsolate:
"Women do strange things sometimes, don't they?..." A telegram
that was sent to Horace from Madge in Italy reveals Dale's destination
and whereabouts, and ironically reveals that Madge had invited both
Dale and Jerry to Italy to introduce them to each other. Horace paraphrases
the telegram's contents to Jerry:
All kinds of good wishes for our success. Sorry that
we can't fly down to Italy after the performance to meet her new
friend. Says her little friend is in London, staying at my hotel.
Her name is Tremont.
Overjoyed, Jerry ecstatically demands that Horace charter
a plane to take them to Venice for the weekend so that he can follow
Dale's flight.
Exuberant, Jerry sprints toward the stage and performs
the second act of the London show - the quintessential tuxedo-clad
dance and title song "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails." This
routine is the centerpiece of the film's dance numbers - a solo performance
and famous Astaire classic, backed by a top-hatted, tuxedoed, male
chorus. Jerry rushes on stage, still carrying the telegram in his
hand.
The stylish backdrop for the number is suggestive of
a Parisian street with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The chorus
struts and lunges back and forth, and then separates in two for Jerry,
who makes his way forward to the front of the stage. The chorus closes
behind him as he begins the title song by reading the telegram invitation
to a formal party, pretending it is a prop for his number:
I've just got an invitation through the mail.
Your presence requested this evening is formal
Top hat, white tie, and tails.
He acts out dressing for the formal affair, putting
on his top hat, straightening his white tie, and brushing off his
tuxedo tails, as the chorus line of top-hatted men behind him stands
at a slight angle watching him:
Oh I'm puttin' on my top hat
Tyin' up my white tie
Brushin' off my tails...
I'm steppin' out, my dear
To breathe an atmosphere
That simply reeks with class
And I trust
That you'll excuse my dust
When I step on the gas
Jerry and the chorus pace to one side, and then to
the other. When they pause behind him, he lets go a tap dance barrage,
whirls, and then waits for the chorus to repeat the movement. Then,
the chorus disappears from the stage in three directions (to the
rear and two sides), leaving him to solo tap dance with his tapping
cane, circling around it, and using it in creative gestures and moves.
The music slows and stops, and the lights are lowered. Suddenly,
he becomes a lonely man threatened by his strange and darkened, shadowy
environment. He expresses many different emotions and feelings, snapping
from one to another: friendliness, wariness, startled surprise, crouching
to express readiness in the presence of menace, confidence.
On the horizon behind him, the chorus reappears. Methodically,
he uses his cane as a weapon - a gun - and his taps represent gun
blasts. He mimes shooting at them - first singly, then in groups
of two's and three's, then in machine gun bursts of fire. He also
fires in various poses - from the front, from behind his neck, while
turning, and over his shoulder. The final dancer/target dodges his
bullets, so he resorts to using his cane as an invisible bow and
arrow to finish it off. The tap dance ends on one final barrage of
twirling taps, a quick lunge at the audience, and a closing curtain.
The clever transition dissolves from this scene to
the next with the orchestra's reprise of the title song. The Lido
in Venice is gleaming and shimmering, a glowing white set of Art
Deco structures, white gondolas, islands, arched bridges and winding
canals. There, Dale tells Madge about the flirtatious attentions
of the man she presumes is Madge's own husband. Madge assures Dale
that "Horace's" attentions to her mean nothing - "Horace
flirts with every attractive girl he meets. It doesn't mean anything." Of
course, a calmly amused Madge doesn't realize that Dale is speaking
about Jerry.
When Jerry sees Madge upon arrival in Venice, she asks: "How
did Dale strike you?" He replies, tongue in cheek: "Right
between the eyes." With Madge's approval, Dale decides to frighten "Horace" (Jerry)
into marital responsibility:
"I'll make him remember me in a manner he'll never forget."
Dale: Madge, have you any objections if I scare your
husband so that he'll never look at another woman?
Madge: Dale, no husband is ever too scared to look.
Dale goes to Horace's/Jerry's shared room and kisses
him, inventing a story about their past affair a year earlier in
Paris. Jerry has no idea what she is talking about, but plays along
with a bewildered look on his face. When Dale reports back to Madge
on her conversation, Madge wonders about her husband:
"I wonder if you've seen something in Horace that I've never seen."
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