Dancers From The United States

"Mr. Llewellyn paused. Mr. Trout had begun to float about the room like something out of Swan Lake, and Mr. Llewellyn disapproved of this. He was apt to be a martinet in his dealings with his legal advisers, demanding that lawyers should behave like lawyers and leave eccentric dancing to the professionals. A man, he held, is either Fred Astaire or he is not Fred Astaire, and if he is not Fred Astaire he should not carry on like him."

"There's nothing to beat these old English country houses." said Charlie, becoming lyrical. "All those parks and gardens and terraces and stuff. Makes you think of bygone ages and knights in armour and all like that. I saw one of these joints in a movie in Cicero once with Fred Astaire in it, and I remember thinking those guys have it pretty soft."

"But Adrian did not hear him. I have mentioned that during dinner, preoccupied with his thoughts, he had bolted his food. Nature now took its toll. An acute spasm suddenly ran though him, and with a brief 'Ouch!' of pain he doubled up and began to walk round in circles. Sir Jasper clicked his tongue impatiently. "This is no time for doing the Astaire pom-pom dance," he said sharply."

"As a dancer, I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire."

"The audience meets Mr. Astaire and The Gay Divorcee at their best when he is adjusting his cravat to an elaborate dance routine or saying the delicious things with his flashing feet that a librettist would have difficulty putting into words."

"I have never met anyone who did not like Fred Astaire. Somewhere in his sad monkey-sad face, his loose legs, his shy grin, or perhaps the anxious diffidence of his manner, he has found the secret of persuading the world."

"At its most basic, Mr. Astaire's technique has three elements - tap, ballet and ballroom dancing. The ballet training, by his account, was brief but came at a crucial, early age. He has sometimes been classed as a tap dancer, but he was never the hoofer he has jokingly called himself. Much of the choreographic outline of his dancing with his ladies—be it Miss Rogers or Miss Hayworth—is ballroom. But of course, no ballroom dancer could dance like this."

"A very distinguished colleague began his criticism of this show by asking what is Mr Astaire's secret. May I suggest that the solution hangs on a little word of three letters? Mr Astaire's secret is that of the late Rudolph Valentino and of Mr Maurice Chevalier — sex, but sex so bejewelled and be-pixied that the weaker vessels who fall for it can pretend that it isn't sex at all but a sublimated projection of the Little Fellow with the Knuckles in His Eyes. You'd have thought by the look of the first night foyer that it was Mothering Thursday, since every woman in the place was urgent to take to her bosom this waif with the sad eyes and the twinkling feet."

"Mr. Astaire is the nearest approach we are ever likely to have to a human Mickey Mouse; he might have been drawn by Mr. Walt Disney, with his quick physical wit, his incredible agility. He belongs to a fantasy world almost as free as Mickey's from the law of Gravity."

"I don't think that I will plunge the nation into war by stating that Fred Astaire is the greatest tap-dancer in the world."

"It was on tiny wheels with a mount for the camera that put the lens about two feet above the ground. On it rode the camera operator and the assistant who changed the focus and that's all. Fred always wanted to keep the camera in as tight as possible, and they used to shoot with a 40 millimetre lens, which doesn't give you too much leeway. So every time Fred and Ginger moved toward us, the camera had to go back, and every time they went back, the camera went in. The head grip who was in charge of pushing this thing was a joy to watch. He would maintain a consistent distance, and when they were in the midst of a hectic dance that's quite a stunt."

"He is a truly complex fellow, not unlike the Michelangelos and da Vincis of the Renaissance period. He's a supreme artist but he is constantly filled with doubts and self-anger about his work--and that is what makes him so good. He is a perfectionist who is never sure he is attaining perfection."

"Of all the actors and actresses I've ever worked with, the hardest worker is Fred Astaire. He behaved like he was a young man whose whole destiny depended on being successful in his first film. He rehearses between takes, after takes - there's no limit to his professionalism."

"As it turned out, you'd think that Fred had been playing serious drama all his life. He breaks your heart. We had to get rid of any signs that this was Fred Astaire, the dancer, and I even thought of putting weights in his shoes to eliminate that jaunty Astaire walk. But I didn't have to do anything. He worked it all out on his own—even to mussing the hair of his toupee to get rid of the sleek look of 'The Hoofer,' as he calls himself."

"The main point of Flying Down to Rio is the screen promise of Fred Astaire.... He's assuredly a bet after this one, for he's distinctly likeable on the screen, the mike is kind to his voice and as a dancer he remains in a class by himself. The latter observation will be no news to the professsion, which has long admitted that Astaire starts dancing where the others stop hoofing."

"Once after a dinner party, Gregory Peck and I drove Fred Astaire home. Fred lived in a colonial house that had a long porch with many pillars. When we dropped him off, he danced along the whole front porch, then opened the door, tipped his hat to us, and disappeared. Wow! Greg and I couldn't speak for a few minutes. It was a beautiful way to say thank you."

"You know, you so-and-so, you've a little of the hoodlum in you."

"Can't act, slightly bald, also dances."

"A: Nobody really. Well, actually, Fred Astaire."

"Q: What great singers of the past do you wish had sung your music?"

"By far the gentlest man I have ever known."

"Astaire really sweat - he toiled. He was a humorless Teutonic man, the opposite of his debonair image in top hat and tails. I liked him because he was an entertainer and an artist. There's a distinction between them. An artist is concerned only with what is acceptable to himself, where an entertainer strives to please the public. Astaire did both. Louis Armstrong was another one."

"You're the nimble tread/Of the feet of Fred Astaire"

"Our homeward step was just as light/As the tap-dancing feet of Astaire/And, like an echo far away,/A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square"

"Fred Astaire is the best singer of songs the movie world ever knew. His phrasing has individual sophistication that is utterly charming. Presumably the runner-up would be Bing Crosby, a wonderful fellow, though he doesn't have the unstressed elegance of Astaire."

"Astaire can't do anything bad."

"They climb the clouds/ To come through with airmail/ The dancing crowds/ Look up to some rare male/ Like that Astaire male."

"Fred Astaire once worked so hard/ he often lost his breath/ and now he taps all other chaps to death"

"When you talk about Fred Astaire, you talk about heaven. What more can I say?"

"For a guy who had retired ostensibly, your comeback represents the greatest event since Satchel Paige."

"There never was a greater perfectionist, there never was, and never will be, a better dancer, and I never knew anybody more kind, more considerate, or more completely a gentleman...I love Fred, John, and I admire and respect him. I guess it's because he's so many things I'd like to be and I'm not."

"He has a remarkable ear for intonation, a great sense of rhythm and what is most important, he has great style - style in my way of thinking is a matter of delivery, phrasing, pace, emphasis, and most of all presence."

"As a dancer he stands alone, and no singer knows his way around a song like Fred Astaire."

"There is no setup in Hollywood that compares with an Astaire picture."

"Except for times Fred worked with real professional dancers like Cyd Charisse, it was a twenty five year war."

"The history of dance on film begins with Astaire."

"When I was in the Soviet Union recently I was being interviewed by a newspaperman and he said, "Which dancers influenced you the most?" and I said, "Oh, well, Fred Astaire." He looked very surprised and shocked and I said, "What's the matter?" He said, "Well, Mr. Balanchine just said the same thing.""

"He was not just the best ballroom dancer, or tap dancer, he was simply the greatest, most imaginative, dancer of our time."

"It's unmatched perfection. It's a taste, understanding of his strength, and weaknesses in a way. He was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him."

"He's a genius...a classical dancer like I never saw in my life."

"What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face."

"He is the most interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our times... you see a little bit of Astaire in everybody's dancing--a pause here, a move there. It was all Astaire's originally."

"He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled."

"I remember when I was doing a film with Fred Astaire, it was nothing for him to work three or four days on two bars of music. One evening in the dark grey hours of dusk, I was walking across the deserted MGM lot when a small, weary figure with a towel around his neck suddenly appeared out of the giant cube sound stages. It was Fred. He came over to me, threw a heavy arm around my shoulder and said: "Oh Alan, why doesn't someone tell me I cannot dance?" The tormented illogic of his question made any answer insipid, and all I could do was walk with him in silence."

"He lacks confidence to the most enormous degree of all the people in the world. He will not even go to see his rushes. He’ll stay out in the alley and pace up and down and worry and collar you when you come out and say: ‘How good was so and so?’, and he’ll keep you for 45 minutes. It would be much simpler if he would go and look at them himself, you know? But he always thinks he’s no good."

"Oh, there's no such thing as my favorite performance. I can't sit here today and look back, and say, Top Hat was better than Easter Parade or any of the others. I just don't look back, period. When I finish with a project, I say 'all right, that's that. What's next?'"

"I have had to do most of my choreography. I would say most of it, with help from various choreographers I have worked with."

"What's all this talk about me being teamed with Ginger Rogers? I will not have it Leland--I did not go into pictures to be teamed with her or anyone else, and if that is the program in mind for me I will not stand for it. I don't mind making another picture with her but as for this teams idea, it's out."

"A four wood I hit on the 13th hole at Bel Air Country Club in June of 1945. It landed right on the green and rolled into the cup for a hole in one."

"There comes a day when people begin to say, 'Why doesn't that old duffer retire?' I want to get out while they're still saying Astaire is a hell of a dancer."