TOP HAT

...And the women are thoroughly appealing: spunky Ginger Rogers, sultry Rita Hay-worth, elegant Irene Dunne, wholesome Vera-Ellen...

...And he was remarkably humble about his achievements, both in his films and in his life...

...Unlike many Hollywood leading men, Astaire was no Lothario: He and Rogers didn't kiss until Carefree, their eighth film together, and even then only in a dream sequence...

...Warner Brothers' Dick Powell and Busby Berkeley musicals stressed the hard work but missed the elegance...

...In Follow the Fleet, he's a sailor on leave chasing Ginger Rogers, and in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, he and Ginger work their way up from penury in Paris to huge popular success in America...

...This pattern of hard work, devotion to family, and perseverance is a constant theme in Astaire's life and stands in strong contrast to his breezy public persona...

...He also introduced the practice of integrating the movies' musical numbers into their stories, using them to advance the action and comment on the character relationships...

...He selected the songs and designed the dances, and vaudeville's grueling schedule spurred him to reshape and refine the act and exercise his inventiveness...

...Astaire's insouciance, grace, and command of his environment are all right there...

...Everything in his films, especially the early ones, is right and lovely, with a feeling of lightness and freedom...

...In fact, his 1937 portrayal of ballet dancer Petrov in Shall We Dance...

...The Band Wagon, probably his best film, explicitly considers the nature of artistry and finds that behind all great or even good art is a lot of sweat and hard work...

...We can see the hard work and self-discipline that go into one of his song-and-dance numbers...

...From the beginning, critics were aware of his charm but completely unable to identify its source...

...In vaudeville Astaire also developed his lifelong affection for and study of black dancers, especially Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, with whom he danced in Texas during 1914...

...he never seemed more democratic than when he was aristocratic...

...He's equally charming portraying a Mickey Spillane-style detective in The Band Wagon's "Girl Hunt" ballet, dancing on the walls and ceiling of a drab hotel room in Royal Wedding, performing "A Couple of Swells" as a seedy tramp with Judy Garland in Easter Parade, arguing with Ginger Rogers in Central Park in Shall We Dance?, or even punching Ginger in the eye (for her own good, of course) in Carefree...

...And, at the same time, it's impossible to watch Fred Astaire without almost believing that you can possess them—that you too could be Astairian...

...even Joan Fontaine seems almost charming beside him in A Damsel in Distress...

...Can't sing...

...His character in the 1935 Top Hat is typical: The debonair young Jerry Tra-vers, cane in hand, shimmers onto the screen in top hat, white tie, and tails, to dance and sing, "I'm steppin' out, my dear, / to breathe an atmosphere / that simply reeks of class," while a line of supporting dancers in evening clothes becomes a shooting gallery for his pantomime with the cane...

...Working in seclusion with only a pianist and the choreographer Hermes Pan, Astaire typically designed and then filmed the dance scenes before the rest of the film was shot...

...Thanks to all this hard work at making his art look easy, Astaire was a huge star before he appeared in his first film, Dancing Lady, in 1933...

...He fought on every front, and in the cutting room he was a terror...

...His sister, Adele, born two years earlier, was a prodigy of singing and dancing, and Astaire's parents, Frederic and Johanna, invested much of their hard-earned money in lessons for their talented children...

...Astaire opted for a simpler approach that kept the characters at the forefront, insisting that he and his partner be presented full figure in extended takes with elaborate camera movements (to follow the characters better) but no cuts, tricks, or complicated edits...

...In The Band Wagon, playing Tony Hunter (a character clearly based on Astaire himself), he says, "I am not Nijinsky...

...He insisted on forty-seven takes of "Never Gonna Dance" while dawn approached and Rogers's feet bled through her shoes...

...We can watch him pursue his leading lady through a comically elaborate maze of misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and missed connections...

...It's impossible to watch Fred Astaire without longing to possess his appeal, his elegance, and his class...

...Gene Kelly, a powerful, athletic dancer, likewise could not connect with audiences as firmly as Astaire...

...And the highly popular Nelson Eddy and Jeannette MacDonald operettas were artistic and passionate but lacked Astaire's controlling vision and often descended into sentimentality...

...His characters have solidly American names like Lucky Gar-nett, "Bake" Baker, Huckleberry Haines, Guy, Danny, Josh, Johnny, and Jed...

...He demanded perfection, putting himself and Ginger Rogers through one hundred hours of rehearsal for the sequence of roller-skating to "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off...

...Although the costumes, sets, and settings of his films, especially the early ones, often had a sophisticated, European flavor (sometimes treated rather puckishly as in A Damsel in Distress), Astaire's persona is very American: ambitious, hard-working, and persistent...

...The dances of Astaire and his partners always aimed at revealing undercurrents of passion...

...The hard work paid off...

...As Billman observes, "Whether through intuition or tutoring" by Johanna, Astaire thought "of his work as 'Work' rather than some charismatic 'Art' he created magically...

...Because of the rather primitive ability to integrate sound in the early 1930s, dance sequences tended to be merely photographed stage scenes or elaborate spectacles broken up into numerous shots to make things easier for the editors...

...But the form their praise took indicates the extent to which even they believed in the ease and effortlessness of his onscreen persona...

...To this day, few seem able to mention Astaire's dancing without using words like "effortless...

...Beauty and elegance, grace and charm, are just a matter of having the right attitude and being light on your feet: The undiscovered Audrey Hepburn is waiting behind the counter in the bookstore down the street, the down-to-earth Ginger Rogers is looking for a seat on the next train, the upper-crust Irene Dunne is just around the corner with something in her eye and needs to borrow a handkerchief...

...caused a significant drop in box-office receipts although the film was quite good...

...Can dance a little...

...Fortunately, studio head David Selznick saw Astaire's potential and hired him, eventually giving him total creative control over the musical sequences of his films, an unprecedented arrangement...

...He was just as winsome performing "Let^s Call the Whole Thing Off" with Ginger Rogers on roller skates, singing and dancing in a ship's boiler room in Shall We Dance?, driving a hansom cab in Top Hat, rocketing through a penny arcade in The Band Wagon, and dancing in a fake beard in a beatnik bar in Funny Face...

...He was equally chaste with his other leading ladies, and his screen romances replaced the typical singing and dancing romantic leads—Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Mac-Donald—with spicier, wittier, and more realistically rocky relationships...

...In fact, a common motif in his films is another character's lack of self-control— especially Miss Rogers' inability to govern her emotions—causing trouble for Fred...

...Astaire's movies revel in the splendid Art Deco designs of Van Nest Polglase and the surface elegance that wealth can bring: fine hotels, fancy nightclubs, cruise ships, golf courses, sculpted gardens, women in glittering gowns, and men in evening dress...

...It's hard to imagine a chain of dance-instruction studios named after Gene Kelly or Bob Fosse, but Astaire's chain of studios were profitable for many years...

...Thus, at the beginning of Swing Time, we see Fred playing dice with his dubious partners in a scruffy music and dance act, and after his losses, he hasn't a penny in the world...

...But one could pick any of dozens of other moments in his films: singing "'S Wonderful" on a raft with Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face, dancing up to Heaven with Vera-Ellen in Belle of New York, singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" in morning coat, ascot, and spats in Blue Skies, or performing "The Continental," S.T...

...This is the paradox of Fred Astaire: He never seemed more accessible than when he was sophisticated...

...We can even marvel at his unsurpassed physical control in his wonderful dance numbers...

...The dances are exquisitely choreographed by Astaire and Hermes Pan and executed by Astaire and his brilliant partners...

...In pursuit of romance, especially with Ginger Rogers, Astaire played the distinctly American role of salesman, perpetually making new pitches until he wears down the customer's resistance...

...Unlike free-spirited Adele, Astaire resisted most social temptations and "began to retreat inside himself, creating the work ethic with which he would strive toward perfection...

...I am Mrs...

...Karnick is editor in chief of the Hudson Institute's American Outlook magazine...

...The Piccolino," "Cheek to Cheek," and "Easter Parade...

...Astaire wasn't often poor in his films, of course, but he is almost always shown as having earned any money he has...

...Ernst Lubitsch and other directors of the time had all the froth and elegance of Astaire's films, if not more, but their musicals are largely forgotten because they lacked the other side of Astaire...

...But we also know it's going to work out in the end—easily, gracefully, and charmingly—because he is, after all, Fred Astaire, as lightfooted and light-hearted as anyone could be...

...He was as relentlessly inventive as in his vaudeville days, incorporating moves from jazz, tap, and even ballet, adding immensely to the movies' dance repertoire...

...He takes on solidly American jobs: businessman, photographer, soldier, sailor, small-time entertainer, con man...

...Even while that slim dancer—with his slightly too-short figure, slightly too-large head, and slightly too-sad eyes—was teaching the anti-egalitarian lesson that the wealthy and the cultured are absolutely right about the superiority of their beautiful and elegant lives, he was also teaching the profoundly egalitarian lesson that anyone can h^'ve it...

...Astaire family friend Larry Billman notes in Fred Astaire: A Bio-Bibliography that the father's "constant support, careful and vigorous career planning and never-ending, unobtrusive love are substantial portions of the foundation from which Fred and Adele Astaire would rise...

...Even the servants dress better than most modern Americans...

...Johanna moved the children to New York City, where she tutored them daily, and Adele and Fred quickly rose to prominence in vaudeville, eventually reaching great success on Broadway and the London stage...

...Striving toward a standard of perfection is something everybody can do, but expressing oneself through dance is a daunting notion, and Astaire's aristocratic grace and ease proved much more deeply democratic in their effect than Kelly's determined efforts to create dances for the masses...

...The Band Wagon includes a self-ref-erentially comic sequence in which Astaire's Tony, goaded by pompous theater director Jack Buchanan to play an angry-young-man type berating Cyd Charisse for her idealism, clumsily attempts to overcome his character's powerful self-control...

...In The Sky's the Limit, he's a World War II fighter pilot on leave pursuing Joan Leslie—with whom he has a debate about the importance of work in a man's life, with Fred (posing as an easygoing drifter) ironically taking the playboy's side of the argument...

...Certainly the critics were quite aware that Astaire's apparent effortlessness was the result of much hard work and his celebrated blitheness the product of extraordinary self-control and craftsmanship...

...When Adele retired, in 1932, Fred carried on without losing a beat...

...Alexander Woolcott characterized him as "incredibly nimble and lackadaisical" and "one of these extraordinary persons whose senses of rhythm and humor have been all mixed up, whose very muscles, of which he seems to have an extra supply, are downright facetious...

...The songs scintillate, composed by George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Comden and Green...

...Slightly bald...

...Walter Winchell dismissed him as "personable and talented...

...Hunter's little boy, Tony, song-and-dance man...

...Astaire's characters and story lines were directed as well toward making the sublime look easy...

...Drawing on the culture of his childhood, Astaire established self-control and persistence as the sources of both his and his characters' success...

...Croce notes that Astaire "forced camerawork, cutting, synchronization, and scoring to ever higher standards of sensitivity and precision...

...Vaudeville was a hard grind, and the audiences not easily pleased—particular-ly since Astaire was not beautiful, especially in his youth...

...Arlene Croce, in the 1972 Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book, concludes: "Everything comes easy to him...

...Fred Astaire's delicate balance between passion and self-control is what creates his cool elegance and makes his films still interesting after sixty years...

...Far from being typical stage parents, the Austerlitzes were intelligent, well-educated, and cultured...

...The grooming and hairstyles are perfect...

...Astaire revolutionized how Hollywood filmed dance and in the process radically advanced the art of movie musicals...

...In Funny Face, he punctures Audrey Hepburn's devotion to a parody of the French existentialists: "Even philosophers want to be kissed...

...He was shorter than his sister, slightly built, and equipped with a thin, rather reedy voice...

...In the technique pioneered by Busby Berkeley, the dancers would take a few steps, then there would be a cut to a reaction shot of a bystander, then a few more steps, a shot of the ingenue's ecstatic face, and so on...

...The famous report on his first screen test, written by RKO studio official Burt Grady, underscores the dancer's lack of obvious personal appeal: "Can't act...

...As anyone could be...

...The extraordinary persistence and self-control that bring his characters success in both work and romance, and never without a lot of perspiration over both, is the under-appreciated aspect of As-taire's achievement...

...I am not Marlon Brando...

...And by the 1950s—^with choreographers like Bob Fosse and astonishing sequences like The Pajama Game's "Steam Heat"—movie dance grew further and further separated from anything that an average person might be able to do...

...The image of Astaire as the suave sophisticate chasing rich women, playing golf, drinking martinis in Art Deco nightclubs, or betting on horses is actually uncommon among his screen roles...

...But Astaire's appeal was not constrained by the songs or the settings...

...Fred Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in a clapboard house in Omaha, Nebraska, in May 1899...

...Karnick Fred Astaire—classy, charming, elegant—^was born one hundred years ago this spring, and by the time of his death in 1987, he had become one of the most vivid cultural images of the century...

...Kelly liked to play earthy characters in proletarian settings, but his energetic, muscular, and above all clearly arduous dance sequences made dance seem a thing for professionals rather than the masses...