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Lady in the Dark (1944)

Film & TelevisionGinger RogersMusicMusicals
  • 1944

This Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin musical featured a song with a wonderful, dry joke about Vassar in the lyrics. It treats Vassar as a place for sexually active women—unusual to see that this early. The song itself was also used in the Julie Andrews film, Star! and the 1954 TV production of Lady in the Dark.  The scene is a dream sequence where the lead, Ginger Rogers, is beginning to understand the psychological underpinnings to her indecisiveness. It’s a trial scene set in a circus—and yes, it’s how the musical was really written.