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Fred Astaire
(4)Here’s my GoodReads review (if you can call it a review) of Fred Astaire, the book, not the dancer (though I love the dancer):
Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein
My review
rating: 3 of 5 starsFred Astaire was poetry in motion. No matter how flimsy the plot, Astaire movies, especially those made with Ginger Rogers, leave you feeling happy just to have watched the man dance.
As some one in this book says, he could walk across the room with more grace than most men have when they dance. The book also says that no male dancer could ever show off a woman like Astaire, and I believe that.
I enjoyed every word of this good tempered light-weight book from Yale University’s “Icons of America” series. Just as in the Great Depression, Astaire movies cheered people up, so in this fraught time, just reading about him lightened my spirits tremendously.
For one thing, the book dishes no dirt. There doesn’t actually seem to be any to dish.
The biggest surprise the book held for me was in what high regard Astaire was held as a singer by the great jazz composers of the 30s: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, et al. George Gershwin more or less died with Astaire’s name on his lips. The thing seems to be that, maybe just because he didn’t have a really strong voice to show off, he developed a really great sense for the song itself, without embellishments.
Oh well. I gave the book only three stars because it really is a slight work, an encomium of less than 200 pages. It seems wrong to give it 4 stars in a list that contains so much weightier works.
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Fred Astaire, GoodReads, Icons of America, Joseph Epstein
4 Responses to “Fred Astaire”
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Rosalie November 6th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I have read that his vocal style was so admired by the great musicians of his time because of his fine sense of rhythm, and especially his phrasing. I notice this everytime I hear him sing, and since I learned this, see the phrasing in his dancing, too. — Ro
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Yes, Ro, I think that’s right. Because I’m not a musician, I missed that and only hear the reediness of his voice. I’m going to have to revisit the movies. I think he also liked to play with rhythms in his dance, coming in a little off the beat and such like. Very sophisticated.
I also read in the book that Cyd Charisse (I’m pretty sure it was she) said that Astaire had a better sense of rhythm than Gene Kelly, though Kelly was the more inventive choreographer.
She also said that after dancing with Kelly she was apt to be black and blue but Astaire never left a mark on her. He was suave but he was also sort of asexual.
One other thing Epstein said: those who prefer Astaire are Apollonian in bent and those who prefer Kelly more Dionysian. I am afraid I stand convicted of putting brain before passion. It’s a fair cop, though I would like it to be otherwise.
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I enjoyed this post, and the comments. Of course I was aware of the differences between Astaire and Kelly, but I hadn’t considered that preference for one or the other might say something about the viewer!
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@Andrea, I guess one needs to take Epstein’s remarks for what they’re worth. He also says that Astaire’s jazz dance, “Girl Hunt,” in The Band Wagon isn’t his best dance because it’s not his best genre. He compares it negatively with one of Kelly’s dances (also with Charisse? The “Broadway Melody” one in “Singing in the Rain?”) But I actually thought Astaire brilliant in that “Girl Hunt.” It was a spoof. Astaire could spoof. I’m not sure Kelly could.
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