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Fred Astaire he was not, and when he realized that I didn’t fall for his charm, he began to cry.

Military comedies have a long and relatively peaceable history on screens small and large — Fred Astaire, Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis and Bill Murray all made them.

Esquire magazine, in 1960, listed him as one of the best-dressed men in America, along with Clark Gable, Fred Astaire and Cary Grant.

The film is famous for her and Astaire spoofing the newfangled movie gimmicks in the Cole Porter number “Stereophonic Sound,” including swinging from a chandelier.

While headlining at that hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, Paige was offered a starring role in the 1957 Fred Astaire musical “Silk Stockings.”