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Fred Astaire (Icons of America)
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| Part No: | 0300116950 |
| Manufacturer: | Yale University Press |
| MFG Part: | |
| Customer Rating: | 4.0 / 5.0 |
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Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire investigates the great dancer’s magical talent, taking up the story of his life, his personality, his work habits, his modest pretensions, and above all his accomplishments. Written with the wit and grace the subject deserves, Fred Astaire provides a remarkable portrait of this extraordinary artist and how he came to embody for Americans a fantasy of easy elegance and, paradoxically, of democratic aristocracy. Tracing Astaire’s life from his birth in Omaha to his death in his late eighties in Hollywood, the book discusses his early days with his talented and outspoken sister Adele, his gifts as a singer (Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern all delighted in composing for Astaire), and his many movie dance partners, among them Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, and Betty Hutton. A key chapter of the book is devoted to Astaire’s somewhat unwilling partnership with Ginger Rogers, the woman with whom he danced most dazzlingly. What emerges from these pages is a fascinating view of an American era, seen through the accomplishments of Fred Astaire, an unassuming but uncompromising performer who transformed entertainment into art and gave America a new yet enduring standard for style.
| A BIG Disappointment | 2008-11-17 | 1 / 5 |
| 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. Esptein: "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.
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| A great bio by a brilliant essayist | 2008-11-16 | 5 / 5 |
| | Joseph Epstein is a superb commentator and author. Even-handed, even brilliant. This is a superb bio that -- unfortunately for the dirt mongers -- shows Fred Astaire to be a great entertainer and dancer and a very decent man. I am conversant with this genre and with several of the great dancers and film entertainers of the 30s and 40s. I am a good friend of the lady whom was a close chum of the deelicious Eleanor Powell and knew many of the Hollywood Stars. This book is an easy reading, enchanting, five-star tour de force. It is a celebration of life. Let the grungy nit-pickers pic nits and stay out of the way. For aficionados of this era, culture, and history, this is first class, must read. |
| Now and Then | 2008-11-03 | 5 / 5 |
| The inspiration for this paean to Fred Astaire can be found in Epstein's introduction. The sorry state of contemporary popular culture has prompted him to celebrate Astaire's inimitable style in his own inimitable style: hard work, integrity and meticulous attention to detail. In the darkness of the Great Depression, with W.W.II looming, escape was possible at the movies. A model of innocence and beauty provided by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers fantasies offered respite from the woes of the day.
After assasinations, a lost war,911, a world in economic chaos, and general social disintegration, there is no such refuge. The movies and now television depict the sadness and ugliness of the present. Epstein's appreciation of Astaire's "democratic aristocracy" is important because it shows us what we have lost and what we must recover.
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| "Without Adele as his partner at the beginning...Fred Astaire might have [become] a suburban husband, selling swank cars." | 2008-10-27 | 4 / 5 |
| 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 ever to supersede him in billing, all became part of his "act" in films. Later he performed with Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron, and Cyd Charisse, 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
Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited (Icons of America)
Gypsy: The Art of the Tease (Icons of America)
King's Dream (Icons of America)
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (Icons of America)
Alger Hiss and the Battle for History (Icons of America)
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| A Different View | 2008-10-24 | 1 / 5 |
| | 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. |
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