Fantle with Astaire (1978)                                         Johnson with Astaire (1978)

That Nimble Tread: Fred Astaire

July 1978

From the book: "Reel to Real: 25 years of celebrity profiles from vaudeville to movies to TV."

All contents copyright by Fantle & Johnson

In a seldom traveled part of the Beverly Hills business district, on Brighton Way -- one of the few boulevards without potted palm trees -- stands the nondescript office front of a building that contains the offices of several Certified Public Accountants. This would hardly excite interest except that an office on the third floor belongs to one of show business's most cherished legends -- Fred Astaire.

Clothed in the style of a man who has been repeatedly nominated as one of the world's best dressed, when we met him, Astaire was wearing a blue sport coat, wide red Christian Dior necktie, blue cotton pants, a red and blue designer belt and Gucci black leather shoes. (We also noticed that his chic attire had the distinct redwood odor of being recently liberated from a cedar trunk.)  He greeted us with a "Hi fellas, sit down" off-hand elegance that is his trademark in films. It was just the kind of introduction that at once put us at ease and deflated any notions we might have harbored on exactly how to interview a "certifiable living monument."

After all, Astaire is considered without exception to be the greatest dancer the movies have ever known. His 31 musical films spanning the years 1933 to 1968 have established a measuring rod of excellence by which all other musical comedy work is judged. Landmark movies such as the series of 10 films Astaire made with Ginger Rogers are today hailed as cinema classics and have been acknowledged as a major influence in the work of dancers/choreographers such as Gene Kelly, George Balanchine and Bob Fosse.

As Astaire settled into a nearby chair, we noticed that his ankles swelled out of his shoes like a couple of globular ballbearings. The effect seemed odd until we contemplated that after the better part of a century stomping the hell out rehearsal hall floorboards, any such

ankles -- bulbous or not -- would be fortunate if they were still attached to legs let alone be proportionately as slender as the rest of Astaire's lithe frame.

To break the ice, we asked Astaire if he had ever visited Minnesota. "About all that I remember positively is that my sister Adele and I performed in St. Paul and Minneapolis as children around 1909 (Astaire was nine years old then) on the Orpheum Theatre Vaudeville Circuit," Astaire said almost apologetically. We certainly couldn't fault him for not remembering 71-year-old specifics about two towns he probably only glimpsed from a stage-door exit.

But after a moment's contemplation he volunteered. "I do remember that the winter weather in the Twin Cities was bitterly cold. "We agreed that was the only specific thing about Minnesota that would endure over 71 years.

We mentioned that we had recently shown his 1948 film musical "Easter Parade," co-starring Judy Garland, to a St. Paul nursing home audience, and that immediately after the screening an elderly resident innocently asked us if it was one of our home movies.

The statement flabbergasted Astaire. "You mean she thought that you guys filmed it yourselves?" he asked incredulously. He cracked a thin, impish smile and gamely fought to retain a measure of self-restraint. But his composure finally shattered into laughter.  Eventually he collected himself and said that after a 50-year career of fielding detailed questions on every aspect of his films, this was the first time anyone ever mistook his work for someone else's home movie.

With disco dancing the national rage, we asked if he ever tripped the light fantastic in local Los Angeles nightclubs. Astaire replied that disco was just free-style fun and could not possibly be compared with the exhaustively rehearsed choreography of musical films. As if to make that point emphatic, he improvised a couple of dance steps (still seated in his chair). Astaire did a kind of scissors step crossing his feet back and forth while he thrust one arm out in front. At the same time, he twisted his other arm in back of his neck; his long, tapering fingers sprouting up behind his head like the eagle feathers on a Sioux warbonnet.

The agility of those legendary feet and his marvelously expressive hands demonstrated that Astaire had lost little of the precision that characterized numbers like his adagio with the wooden hatrack in "Royal Wedding" or his synchronized "golf dance" from "Carefree."

"After seeing 'Saturday Night Fever,' I voted for John Travolta as Best Actor at the 1978 Academy Award ceremony," Astaire said. Travolta's tense, sexually charged dancing, was, according to Astaire, an interesting extension of the delinquent character he portrayed.

A direct result of the nostalgia craze of a few years back was a rebirth of interest in the famous MGM musicals and, concomittantly, the effortless flair of Fred Astaire. However, with that rebirth came the inevitable crass commercialism that usually undercuts anything with real substance. In Astaire's case, this took the form of a rash of movie books and unauthorized biographies.

"My 1959 autobiography 'Steps In Time' is, and can only be, the definitive source on my career," Astaire explained. Because of this renewed exposure, he is continually hounded by interviewers and authors intent on asking questions for which he says he has long since forgotten the answers. Astaire said that one writer in particular, British author Michael Freedland, was quite insistent.

"He kept telephoning for days wanting a posed photograph of the two of us for the dust-jacket of a movie book he was writing about me. When I finally agreed to a short photo session, he arrived at my house with his wife and kids, but luckily without overnight luggage."

Astaire's tireless perfectionism has been praised with a trove of theatrical awards, including an honorary 1949 Oscar, the British Academy Award, four Emmys, three Golden Globes, and most recently his induction into "The Entertainment Hall of Fame" by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. While gratefully acknowledging these honors, Astaire's greatest pleasure is in recounting the track victories of several racehorses he has owned.

"My filly Triplicate won the 1946 Hollywood Gold Cup," he said proudly and then added with a conspiratorial whisper. "She beat Louis B. Mayer's mare in a hotly contested heat -- this when I was under contract to Mayer at MGM."

Our visit at an end, Astaire ushered us out of the office as unassumingly as he greeted us.  It reminded us of a certain air of nonchalance that we had first seen in a 1933 film called "Flying Down to Rio," when Astaire coaxed a lissome gal named Ginger onto a dance floor for the first time, and in the process singlefootedly revolutionized the Hollywood musical.

July 1978