Gene Kelly movies." "Anchors Aweigh" became one of the most successful films of 1945 and Kelly was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. In "Ziegfeld Follies" (1946)—which was produced in 1944 but not released until 1946—Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire, for whom he had the greatest admiration, in the famous "The Babbitt and the Bromide" challenge dance routine. After Kelly returned to Hollywood in 1946, MGM had nothing planned and used him in a routine, black-and-white movie: "Living in a Big Way". The film was considered so weak that the studio asked Kelly to design and insert a series of
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers long period apart, Astaire and Rogers made only one movie together in 1938, the 80-minute "Carefree". During their time apart, Rogers appeared in the successful movie "Stage Door", while Astaire's career did not reach the same heights he had experienced with Rogers. The duo reunited, but "Carefree" marked a departure for their on-screen partnership, featuring Astaire in a role unlike his usual typecast persona, as well as less emphasis on the musical element of the film. "Carefree" was originally going to contain sequences shot in Technicolor, but RKO considered the cost prohibitive so it was filmed in black and white.