You can’t help but like this movie, and there are three reasons for that: Fred Astaire, 11 songs to words and music by Irving Berlin, and a fair amount of comedy between the numbers tying the film together. This is the fourth time Fred Esther and Ginger Rogers have starred together, but the first time the script was written specifically for them. “The Cylinder” is the quintessential Esther-Rogers musical with a silly script about love. The action takes place in London. American singer and dancer Jerry Travers (Esther) falls in love with the beautiful Dale Tremont (Rogers), and she falls in love with him. He was dancing at the hotel for his manager and woke up the beautiful woman retiring to sleep on the floor below. She went up to her room and the acquaintance took place.

Trouble begins when Dale is informed that Jerry is the husband of her friend Madge (Broderick), whom she has never met. Angry, she rejects his advances, eventually escaping to Venice with Madge. Jerry and Horace Hardwick (Horton), Madge’s real husband and producer of the show in which Jerry performs, follow them to Venice, and the general confusion is further compounded when Dale tells Madge that Horace has been unfaithful to her. Dale marries her clothing designer, Albert (Rhodes), and Jerry never gets a chance to justify himself.

But no worries: faithful butler Horace (Eric Blore) saves the day. Curiously enough, Blore’s caricatured image of the Italian so offended Italian officials, including Mussolini himself, that The Cylinder was banned in Italy. The film grossed 3 million and was the highest-grossing film of the decade.