Customer Reviews

Astaire and Rogers

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When I first moved to New York City, there was a theatre in the West 80's (now demolished, alas) called The New Yorker which was a revival house, pure and simple. To my knowledge, no new movies were ever shown at The New Yorker. I saw my first Depression age films there. Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, Henry Fonda, Dick Powell, Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert and Preston Sturges were some of my heroes. But it was after a retrospective of all the black and white musicals that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers did from 1933 ("Flying Down To Rio") til 1939 ("The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle") that I was hooked. I couldn't get enough of Astaire and Rogers.

I think I saw "Top Hat" ten times over a period of that many years. It is still one of my favorite movies, as is "Follow the Fleet" in which Rogers, surprisingly, sings one of her only two solos in all of their films...Irving Berlin's delightful "Let Yourself Go." I always laugh when I see "Shall We Dance" and, to this day, I don't really understand the plot of "Carefree." Nor do I care.

There have been many wonderful books about this dancing, singing, sweetly romantic & comic couple who were obviously a big antidote to the sad, penny-pinching days in the 1930's when most women could not afford a gown seemingly made entirely of feathers nor did most men walk around in tails each night. Floors in most homes were not black and white shellacked diamonds, nor did most people pilot their private airplanes in order to dance the night away in Venice. Astaire and Rogers brought glamour and happiness and sexiness to their public. And they were fun.

Edward Gallefent's relatively brief but thoroughly researched book does not so much put emphasis on the miraculous musical numbers written by the best in the business (besides Berlin, there were scores written by the Gershwins and Jerome Kern and Cole Porter.)nor the choreography by Astaire and his collaborator, Hermes Pan, which has, in my mind, never been bettered.

Instead of concentrating on these numbers, Gellefent has written a scholarly, academic book about the "hidden" symbolic meanings in the gestures, character names, dance steps, etc. which, in his mind, makes this irreplaceable team, "important." Well, they already were "important" before Gellefent examined their every minute move. They were important because they were two of the best entertainers movie nuts like me ever saw and, luckily, we can still see them on videotape and DVD's and, hopefully one day, in a new or renovated theatre devoted to movies of the first half of the twentieth century.

If you are looking for books on Astaire and Rogers, I suggest you try ASTAIRE DANCING by John Mueller or STARRING FRED ASTAIRE by Stanley Green and Burt Goldblatt or, best of all, Arlene Croce's THE FRED ASTAIRE AND GINGER ROGERS BOOK which comes complete with one of those clever "flip-the-pages-quickly-and-watch-them-DANCE." Their like will never pass this way again.

I adore Fred Astaire and his artful genius. Nobody does it better. Ginger is his best dance-partner, for certain. But this book is the dryest, most boring recitation of dead data that I have ever read. It is almost worthless, even for the most avid Astaire devotee. These two vibrant stars deserve better than this dismal book. And they get it; if you can find, "Astaire Dancing" by John Mueller, the ultimate Astaire/Rogers book, (pricey but spectacular) buy it. It is everything the Astaire/Rogers fan could possibly want.

As a huge Astaire/Rogers fan I found this book to be nothing more than a collection of over analyzed run-off with a few interesting tidbits thrown in. There's very little entertainment in the reading. One get's the impression this book was authored by Sigmund Freud. Different maybe, but yuck.

Gallafent reviews the films of Astaire and Rogers, both those they made separately and those they made together, from their first pairing through the late forties. Gallafent makes a plausible case for continuity and development from one musical to another. Even as you find his arguments logical and believable, you know Hollywood doesn't work that way. Few people expect or want anything more from an A & R movie than the unalloyed pleasure of the singing and dancing. Gallafent even manages to connect the films Rogers did without Astaire (of which there were many more than I had realized). In spite of his quirky premise, Gallafent is interesting and entertaining throughout, and the book is chock full of stills from the films.

This book is more about the careers and images of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers from 1934-49 than it is a study of their movies together and their dancing. If you are a dance enthusiast and want to read a detailed account of their dances, this is NOT the book for you.

However, I am not a dance person, but I like classic Hollywood films, and I found this book interesting. It shows how the Fred&Ginger films share some concerns with screwball comedy, how World War II affected the images of both stars, and how stars age in the public eye. Gallafent isn't the most graceful of writers, and I got confused in his discussion of "Once Upon a Honeymoon," but I thought he did a good job connecting the Fred&Giner phenomenon to other developments and careers in classic Hollywood.

I agree with Meriam -- this book is SO DRY, SO UNBELIEVABLY ANALYTICAL it's ridiculous. In fact, I would suggest that if anyone who has never seen an Astaire/Rogers film managed to get through this book, they would never WANT to see one. How anyone could write about Astaire and Rogers without expressing the sheer joy, fun, and overall entertainment value of their work is beyond me, but Gallafent has managed to do it big time. And verbose? The author uses 100 words to describe what could be said in 10. What a complete waste of print, paper, and time.