The line about doing everything Fred Astaire did backwards and in high heels did not come from a 1930s critic but from a 1980s comic strip, Frank and Ernest. This episode looks past that shorthand at the life of Virginia Katherine McMath, born in 1911 in Independence, Missouri, kidnapped twice by her father before her mother Lela secured custody, and raised in the wings of a Fort Worth theater where Lela worked as a critic. It follows her Charleston contest win at 14 that launched a vaudeville tour, her Broadway breakthrough in Girl Crazy, and how she and her mother maneuvered out of a restrictive Paramount contract.

The conversation then covers the RKO years with Fred Astaire, from Flying Down to Rio through nine films that replaced Busby Berkeley spectacle with full-body long shots, and why dance historian John Mueller credits her acting  ...