Ah, Fred and Ginger. I watched many of their movies repeatedly as a child, and it's been years since I have revisited them. Thanks to the power of TiVo and a marathon of their movies, I've been reliving their splendor. Of course, as an adult, I have a different perspective; for instance, I was somewhat disappointed with Shall We Dance. This mostly has to do with the fact that the famous couple don't dance together until about the one hour mark of the movie. That makes for a lot of patient indulgence on the part of the viewer, who is probably watching because he or she wants to see Astaire and Rogers dance together.

In this movie, Fred Astaire is an American dancer named Peter Peters who is well-known as a "Russian" ballet dancer named Petrov. He enjoys more traditional and fun dancing on the sly. Rogers plays Linda Keene, a famous dancer, who captures Peter's attention, and he's determined to meet and fall in love with her. Unfortunately, when someone tells her that Petrov would like to meet her, she isn't interested in an infatuated Russian ballet dancer. He overhears her saying this and decides to play the part of an exaggerated Russian, not exactly impressing her. After their meeting, he eavesdrops and learns that she's sailing to America the next day, so he follows, and is at her heels every second on the boat. When tabloid rumors fly that the two are married, it makes things difficult, especially since Linda is engaged, and needs the public to understand that she's not married to Petrov before she marries her fiance; but Peters encourages the rumors instead.

Accompanying Astaire as always is Edward Everett Horton, who plays his manager. The hotel manager is played by the wonderfully funny Eric Blore, who can't quite figure out which man should have the key to Linda's room. The two spend their time running after our famous couple, and along with other supporting cast, do a fine job.

If there's one thing I remember from my childhood, it's Fred and Ginger singing "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and tap dancing on roller skates. Let me repeat that: tap dancing. on. roller skates! They were insane, as well as insanely talented. This whole segment in Central Park is wonderful, and makes the whole movie worthwhile. In case the title of the song doesn't mean anything to you, that's the one that goes, "You say po-tay-toh and I say poh-tah-toh, you say toh-may-toh and I say toh-mah-toh..." Classic music by Gershwin pervades the whole movie, but apparently people didn't learn to really appreciate it until years later, and this movie wasn't much of a success.

I think I can see why it wasn't a big hit, but think there are plenty of redeeming qualities to make Shall We Dance worth a viewing for anyone who likes the famous dancing couple and hasn't seen it.

I think I've given up the idea of scanning all the Little Nemo strips and posting each one on its 100th anniversary. I just don't want to commit to a project like that right now.

I'm still not done writing about Little Nemo, though, because I keep finding examples that show what a visionary Winsor McCay was. Here's one from January 27, 1907. Click on the image below to see a full-size version (thanks to elfortunawe for the suggestion about uploading these scans to Wikimedia Commons).

This strip isn't particularly outstanding in terms of story, but what really grabbed my attention is the three-panel sequence at the bottom. Notice how McCay uses the entire tier to create a wide view of the staircase, which the characters climb as they move across the panels. It's a technique I see often in the comics by some of my favorite characters, and I always think the effect is striking.

First of all, it allows the artist to create an impressive establishing shot without sacrificing the space he needs for story and character development. Second, it gives a feeling of continuously flowing time. Normal panel transitions, such as those in the top tier of the same page, tend to chop time up into discrete moments. By using the bottom three panels to show the same characters moving across a single landscape, it feels like a single unbroken sequence, and gives the impression of unbounded time.

Like I said, I love the effect this type of panel sequence creates and have observed its use by some of my favorite comics creators of today. It's never really occurred to me to wonder who invented it. I can't be positive that Winsor McCay was the first, but I think this makes a strong argument. I'd definitely like to know if there are any earlier examples.