The Gay Divorcee is a 1934 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Mark Sandrich and starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

It is based on the Broadway musical Gay Divorce, written by Dwight Taylor, with Kenneth Webb and Samuel Hoffenstein[3] adapting an unproduced play by J. Hartley Manners.

[2] Guy Holden, a famous American dancer, is at a Paris nightclub with his friend, scatterbrained English lawyer Egbert Fitzgerald, when they both realize that they have forgotten their wallets.

Taking advantage of the situation, Guy teases her and attempts to free her dress, but ends up tearing the skirt at thigh level, angering Mimi.

He arranges for Mimi to spend a night at a seaside hotel in Brightbourne and to be caught flagrante delicto in a staged "adulterous relationship", a purpose for which he hires a professional co-respondent, Rodolfo Tonetti.

Accompanying his friend Egbert to the hotel, the besotted and unaware Guy encounters Mimi, who has warmed up to him, and admits that she attempted to contact the phone number that he gave her.

The unwitting waiter ultimately reveals that Cyril is an adulterer, having come to another hotel on previous occasions with another woman, thus clearing the way for Mimi to obtain a divorce and marry Guy.

According to Astaire's autobiography, director Mark Sandrich claimed that RKO altered the title to insinuate that the film concerned the amorous adventures of a recently divorced woman (divorcée).

[10] James Wingate, Director of Studio Relations for RKO, warned: "Considering the delicate nature of the subject upon which this script is based... great care should be taken in the scenes dealing with Mimi's lingerie, and... no intimate article should be used."

In one, the Hays Office insisted that RKO change the name, finding it "too frivolous toward marriage": while a divorcée could be gay or lighthearted, it would be unseemly to allow a divorce to appear so.

For subsidiary humor, there are Alice Brady as the talkative aunt; Edward Everett Horton as the confused lawyer ... and Erik Rhodes ... as the excitable co-respondent, who takes the correct pride in his craftsmanship and objects to outside interference.