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Fred Astaire (Icons of America)

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The apparent premise and presumption of Joseph Epstein's book "Fred Astaire" is that the magic of Fred Astaire will be analyzed, described and explained to the reader. In the words of Mr. Epstein: "Whence derived Fred Astaire's sublimity, his magic? That is the great, happy question at the center of this little book." While Mr. Epstein is a witty and sometimes pleasantly irreverent writer, this slim volume of mostly recycled information falls far short of answering this question.

The initial attempt to define Mr. Astaire's magic is directed at the physical appearance of this "most attractive of men". Epstein begins this exercise by spending an inordinate number of pages describing and belittling Astaire's physical features, while admiring his clothes. However, he describes at the outset that Astaire was like a male version of "belle laide" : homely feature-by-feature yet stunning in totality. By his own words he therefore admits that this exercise is pointless. It is doubly pointless since nothing is said that has not appeared elsewhere or is not obvious from watching the films.

Recognizing after two chapters, that perhaps the force of Mr. Astaire's personality may be important to explaining his attractiveness, Epstein spends more fruitless pages trying to define his great charm; to pin down the indefinable. Charm is a characteristic that needs to be experienced and words are simply not adequate, as Mr. Epstein himself handily proves. During this discussion he says time and time again, that by his definition, Astaire is "not at all sexy". Of course, Epstein's definition of sexy includes features such as brutality, manly reticence, handsome features, and ample height and muscle. He fails to comprehend that romantic, gentle and graceful sensuality can also be sexy and that Fred Astaire excelled at projecting these qualities and has had, and continues to have, great appeal to women.

Mr. Epstein then proceeds to brutally spear the genre of musical comedy, mainly on the basis of "absurd scripts". To illustrate the point he provides examples from plot summaries of many Astaire films. Not only is this rather tedious, it is also unnecessary since he says absolutely nothing new. In my opinion, judging musicals on the basis of plots is not the best criteria since plots are usually the least important aspects. It is the execution that is critical, and that depends on successfully melding superior acting, singing and dancing against a background of lovely music and imaginative staging. The integrity of Mr. Astaire's acting, whether in dialog, song or dance, makes almost any character and situation plausible within the film's context no matter how irrational or absurd-seeming. Mr. Epstein is also somewhat puzzled by how the nonsense of the musicals can charm and be unforgettable. But he does finally concede that this "frivolity" (as he calls it) can produce uncomplicated happiness and joy.

Another surprising conclusion is that Mr. Astaire's acting abilities were limited to light comedy. He says that it is "unimaginable for Astaire to play heels" and that "being mean or dispirited was not in his range". In making these assertions, Mr. Epstein reveals his unfamiliarity or lack of understanding of many of Astaire's roles. Mr. Astaire has in fact successfully projected those very traits in post-1939 films like "The Barkleys of Broadway", "The Pleasure of His Company", "The Sky's the Limit", "On the Beach" and even in the 1936 movie"Swing Time". Mr. Epstein should have done more research.

The concluding section of the book is devoted to examining how to categorize Fred Astaire. He is being measured by Mr. Epstein for the roles of genius and icon. According to Mr. Epstein's judgment he qualifies as an icon, but not as genius. It seems that to be a genius "by any serious definition" it is necessary to produce something that others cannot immediately appreciate. So even though Mr. Epstein recognizes that Fred Astaire elevated popular entertainment into art, his deficiency was that it was too appealing to mass audiences. Although there is no question that Mr. Astaire's innovative artistry appealed to children and other unsophisticated people, it was also lauded by the most discerning of professionals in the dance and ballet world, as Mr. Epstein himself notes. The complexity and layers of meaning in his dances are still being unraveled and are not yet completely understood. In fact, Fred Astaire did not aspire to create art. He did what he did to please himself, and us, with his drive for perfection, amazing musicality and creativity, and a surplus of talent, charm and style. All he did was to produce magic.

I bought this for my husband who is a huge Fred Astaire fan. He has read every book about him, so I thought this would be great. A new book he's never read! He hated it from the beginning. I thought it couldn't be that bad, but it was. He spends half the time just quoting from other sources. The other half unfairly criticizing Mr. Astaire. I thought this was a book written by someone who LIKED him. In the end, he comes around to it, but I doubt many people would read long enough to get there. A complete waste, and a terrible gift.

If one is looking for a brief biography of Fred Astaire, this book by Joseph Epstein is definitely not the place to start. While Epstein does include some biographical material, he purports that he will try to answer the question of what made Fred Astaire so magical and beguiling. Yet he fails in even answering that.

"Fred Astaire" begins promisingly enough with some early biographical information about the dancer, but it is quickly derailed by Epstein's focus on the qualities that supposedly made Astaire so magical. He concentrates on Astaire's eccentric features and frame, his style and choice of clothing, his aristocratic airs, and his unique singing voice and ability. The best information that Epstein manages to squeeze into his critique of Astaire is the information regarding his various dancing partners and a comparison with Gene Kelly, but even that information seems all too scant.

Epstein's writing style can best be described as flogging a dead horse. In order to make sure the readers understand his comparisons he must carry them to the nth degree (and for no purpose whatsoever). The material is redundant as Epstein seems to cover the exact same material in several different chapters. Each chapter is taken up with a lot of quotes rather than narrative or new information, and some of his choices of comparison seem rather odd for a volume about Fred Astaire and his movies and talent. For someone who is supposedly a fan of the dancer, Joseph Epstein seems awful disparaging, which makes "Fred Astaire" a rather depressing read rather than a joyful or magic one.

Alexander Woollcott was dazzled by a dance act on Broadway in 1918. The often acid-tongued reviewer praised "... that nimble and lack-a-daisical Adaire named Fred. He is one of those extraordinary persons whose sense of rhythm and humor have been all mixed up, whose very muscles of which he seems to have an extra supply, are facetious." Woollcott spelled the name wrong, but he got the praise right, and everyone knew about Fred Astaire once movie musicals came in vogue. _Fred Astaire_ (Yale University Press) by Joseph Epstein is not a biography, although it contains many biographical details. It is a small personal volume of essays, insightful and appreciative, about a performer who reached perfection, and was beloved by critics and the public. There is research here, and many quotations from others who have admired Astaire's work, but Epstein, who is a lecturer, editor, and author of essays and books not about Hollywood, has taken the tough assignment of coming to an understanding of Astaire's greatness. "After one has identified Fred Astaire's multiple and several steps and manifold moves," writes Epstein in a typical inclusive and lyrical manner, "his swirling leaps, his lifts, crazy-legged noodling, skips, hops, leg jabs, tap spins, struts, lunges, back kicks, tap barrages, high-stepping, stamping, darting, soft spins, arabesques, hip flips, saunterings, cross-overs, knee-and-pelvis jerks, strolls, turning jumps, steps done with a slight retard, syncopations, quick circling steps - after one has noted all these and the scores more of different moves he made, one still hasn't accounted for the magic in his performance. Can it be pinned down?"

No, the magic cannot be pinned down, not completely, but it can be completely appreciated. Even Astaire didn't profess a deep understanding of it. "I'm just a hoofer," he'd say. If perfectionism is a flaw, he harnessed it for his performances and for those of his fellow dancers. Of course there is a great deal about his partnership with Ginger Rogers here, and comparisons between her and the other partners he had before and after. They may not have liked each other much, but they hid any respectful chilliness between them, acted convincingly as if they were becoming infatuated in each film, and it worked. They were pros. For all the superb dancing, Epstein spends a welcome chapter on Astaire's singing. "Standard descriptions of Astaire's singing voice include the words _reedy_ and _wobbly_. Some said that his full vocal reach was only an octave, but if so, within that octave he could get an awful lot accomplished." Songwriters liked him to deliver their songs, and wrote specifically with Astaire in mind. "You gave Astaire a song and you could forget about it," said Irving Berlin. "He knew the song. He sang it the way you wrote it. He didn't change anything. And if he did change anything, he made it better." Epstein is surely right when he says that at least part of the secret was Astaire's perfect diction, a clarity which got the songs across with intimacy. "His diction also enabled him to bend words nicely to the rhythms of songs, so that "umbrella" emerges as "um-ber-ella" with no harm done." (If that reference to that pronunciation doesn't make "Puttin' on the Ritz" go through your head, you need to see _Blue Skies_ again soon.)

Astaire made it all look effortless; of course there was a huge amount of effort given to make such an impression. He had charm; as Epstein says, you can easily enjoy Gene Kelly as a heel in _Pal Joey_, but you cannot imagine Fred Astaire playing a heel. "He did frivolous, charming, happy; mean or too dispirited wasn't in his range, was probably even against his nature." You can also see Gene Kelly performing in street clothes, but Astaire was never better than in his tuxedo. The formality was never a drawback, for you were on Astaire's side in the movies. "He was this little guy, skinny, with big ears, a long chin, and too wide a forehead, whose only chance is to get the girl onto the dance floor, where he will let his feet do his seducing for him." The plots of his musicals may have been silly (Epstein is surely right that the more frames that simply had Astaire dancing in them, the better was the movie), but they often involved his being the underdog due to no fault of his own. He was an aristocrat, but an American version; he may have been in a tux, but he was not snooty but glamorous, not cynical but likeable. He was somehow attainable; you can imagine yourself being just as snappy in a tux as Astaire was (it's just a suit), and you can imagine yourself dancing just as well (it's just hoofing). No, you'll never pull it off, but what is Hollywood for if not for inspiring a dream or two? Epstein's delightful, flowing prose is just the mirror needed for reflections on one of the greatest of American entertainers.

A useless compilation of topics that have been tackled many times by a great number of (by far) better specialists over the years (John Mueller, Arlene Croce, Hannah Hyam). We can still wonder why M. Epstein has written
this book. It would have been very interesting to devote the whole book to Astaire's abilities as a composer, singer, pianist, and drummer, rather than writing on subjects that have been already dissected in books by a lot of competent and qualified specialists. There is absolutely no originality in this book. M. Epstein mentions Gene Kelly (a comparison without interest), Astaire's partnership with his sister Adele(if you have never read about the subject, you must only be eight years old)and his other partners (how many times have you already read that?). Not to mention Astaire's partnership and his relationship with Rogers, a chapter in this book full of inacurracies, cliches and personal feelings of animosity against Rogers that appear really sad and pathetic to the reader. Unfortunately, neither Astaire nor Rogers is still alive to read that. You'd better watch the documentaries released by the BBC "The RKO Story, Tales from Hollywood" (1987) or "Fred Astaire, Puttin'On His Top Hat" ( Educational Broadcasting Corporation,1980), with their testimony to their professional relationship.

Part of Yale University's Icons of America series, this fascinating Joseph Epstein study of Fred Astaire and his success is not a biography and contains nothing "juicy" about his personal life. Astaire himself did not share personal information. As "tough guy Chicago journalist" Mike Royko says, "He did his work, went home, closed the door, and said: `That's it, world. You get my performance. The rest belongs to me.'" Epstein instead concentrates on how Astaire became an "icon," analyzing the secrets of his success as a dancer and singer--what made him a man that other men wanted to emulate and made women want to love.

Born in 1899 as Frederick Austerlitz, Fred was three years younger than his beautiful sister Adele, who was expected to be the family's star when his mother took both children to New York from Omaha. With a succession of mentoring dance teachers, their song and dance act became successful enough they eventually went to England, where they became a huge hit and often went to dinner with Prince George, later King George VI, after performances. After Adele's marriage to Lord George Cavendish, Fred was on his own.

His unprepossessing appearance, combined with his fanatical attention to detail--exactly the right way to hold his overly large hands to keep them from being distracting, when to raise his eyebrows for emphasis--made him a very different performer from Gene Kelly, who was far more athletic, and Epstein gives fascinating descriptions of Astaire's dance partners. Ginger Rogers, with whom he appeared in ten films but with whom he was never close, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Leslie, Vera Ellen, Betty Hutton, and Judy Garland, who was the only one during his career in the 1930s and 1940s to supersede him in billing. Later he performed with Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron, Cyd Charisse, and a few others, their dance characteristics described in detail, and the plots of their films analyzed.

Songwriters, especially Irving Berlin and the Gershwins, regarded Astaire as one of the great interpreters of their songs, and many wrote specifically for him and for his films. Admired by all choreographers, he was praised by George Balanchine, who called him "terribly rare...like Bach, with the same concentration of genius." He was also praised by Rudolf Nureyev as "the greatest dancer in American history." Even though he transformed entertainment into art, was recognized as brilliant in both dance and song, and achieved enormous personal popularity, however, Astaire the determinedly private man, remained an enigma throughout his life. As author John O'Hara says, "He takes a job, he works and works on it until he is ready, and then he delivers." Epstein conveys the importance of Astaire in this fascinating study, but Astaire remains an enigma as a person. n Mary Whipple

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Fred Astaire (Icons of America)
I was sadly disappointed by this book--the author has taken Fred Astaire and dissected him like a frog. I wanted to read about the magic of Fred Astaire--I kept reading in hopes that the author would kiss the frog and let him turn into the prince he really was...but, alas, that never happened.

Anyone wanting to read a biography of Fred Astaire should look elsewhere. Mr. Epstein doesn't really offer us Astaire but rather his own less than amusing observations about clothing styes, charm, etc. Where one or two lines about a top hat, for example, might suffice, Mr. Epstein offers whole chapters. He tries very hard to be chatty and sophisticated but the result generally falls flat. Any biographical information is shamelessly quoted from other sources. The facts as well as the movie plots and descriptions presented are often incorrect which makes it clear that not enough research was done. The whole book has the feeling of a commission that was dashed off in a hurry and the result is too smug in tone to be informative and too shallow and lacking in real wit to be entertaining or insightful. In the end it's actually rather annoying.

The other folks whose reviews appear on this page seem to have read a different book from the Fred Astaire (Icons of America) that I finished. I thought it was a complete waste of the publisher's investment. There is no new material. There are errors in recounting plots of the films that made me certain the author had no familiarity with them. Two photographs--one as a frontispiece and the other at the beginning of the first chapter--left me wondering if they simply forgot to put the rest in. Really odd! About the tone of the book, I hope I never see such a disrespectful, slovenly work again. At the end the author says no one has been able to dig up any dirt about Fred Astaire, yet (not in so many words); it seems inconceivable to this author that a man could be a film star and not have nasty gossip come to light after his death. What a creep! Sorry, buddy. After the 100% solidity of the opinion that Fred Astaire was one of if not the greatest entertainer of the 20th century, you can't come along and say any different. It would be nice to discover something new about Fred Astaire, but this guy didn't do it. He wasn't even looking in the right places. And honey, don't waste my time writing at length about Gene Kelly in a book on Fred Astaire. Kelly simply is not in the same class.

I've been an Astaire fan for over 40 years, brought up by an Astaire fan, and as I wanted to be a dancer when I was younger, I've read a lot about Astaire, dance, musical comedy. When I saw a new book I thought perhaps there might be something fresh here. There isn't. Recylced information that has been done better elsewhere. The writing gave me pause, as well. Hackneyed phrases, and a very uneven tone: sometimes colloquial, other times citing Balzac, James and Tocqueville. Couldn't quite pin what he was aiming for. The book was written for a series on Icons of America, so perhaps that was the reason for the light coverage? But I would definitely skip this. It did feel like I was wasting my time, but I kept reading anyway. Not I can confirm it. It was a waste of my time.