Joseph Epstein,
Fred Astaire.
Yale University Press, 2008
(Review copy supplied by Yale University Press)

The question that engages Joseph Epstein concerns Fred Astaire’s enduring magic: why his movies still shimmer with glamour, 50 years after his time, when what he did may not have been all that worth doing in the first place. (The question may likewise be asked of Epstein, essayist and author of books on ambition, divorce, and snobbery: if Astaire’s achievement was built on froth, fantasy and the flimsiest of story lines, why take on Yale University Press’s invitation to write about him as one in a series on “Icons of America”? The series’ other portraits include Martin Luther King, the Empire State Building, and the hamburger.)

Epstein acknowledges the odds against iconic stature. The man wore a wig, his face was too long, his nose was slightly dented, he didn’t have much of a torso or a discernible rear end. But he made a good living by spinning about in tap shoes, twirling beautiful women around a ballroom floor, and singing in a less than commanding voice. How did he do it?

Epstein’s intriguing thesis is that in a democratic society that goes ga-ga over royalty, Astaire fused aristocracy with the democratic ideal: for all his elegance in top hat and tails, Astaire was always the American boy next door, “slightly big city wise guy, but also gee-whiz small town” (p. 57), endlessly enthusiastic about the girl, the song, the dance.

Too slender to be a biography, certainly not as fact-heavy as, say, Bob Thomas’s Astaire: The Man, The Dancer(St Martin’s Press, 1984), Epstein’s book does lead off with a few obligatory details about Fred’s parents, his sister Adele, dancing classes, the brother-and-sister act’s early years, and success in London, where they captivated Prince Albert, Fred acquired a valet, and Adele landed a British lord and broke up the act. It dutifully records both the best known stories of Fred’s entry into Hollywood, like the never authenticated screen test verdict of “Balding. Can’t sing. Dances a little,” and more obscure tidbits about Adele’s sexual venturesomeness. One such morsel is Epstein’s claim that George Gershwin’s last uttered word was “Astaire” (p. 153). If true, it is curiously omitted in biographies of George and/or Ira Gershwin by Isaac Goldberg, Charles Schwartz, Joan Peyser, Deena Rosenberg, and Philip Furia.

But don’t look to Epstein for a compendium of established fact. His account of the Astaires’ fivefold rise in pay at the Orpheum theatre circuit, for example, suggests a smooth progression, expedited by rave reviews and backstage visits by Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, and Noel Coward (pp. 5-12). Bob Thomas tracks a more uneven journey, including opening night failure and cancellation at a vaudeville theatre on Broadway, lean bookings with small-time circuits, and being stuck at $150 a week for close to a decade.

The book’s strength and charm lie in its graceful evocation of what it was about Astaire’s style and performance that enabled him to overcome his improbable looks and create his magic.

First, clothes sense. In England he learned to be a fashion plate, yet never conveyed the impression that much thought went into his sartorial choices. Epstein dwells on effect:

[B]owties … suggested good humored jauntiness . On him a boutonniere looked not excessive but dashing … Alone among American actors, he wore ascots without seeming pretentious … sport jackets … seemed pliant, richly textured, and buttery soft. (pp. 39-40)

then reveals the effort beneath the effortlessness:

He ordered his suits on Savile Row. Before he wore them, he’d throw them against the wall a few times. “Get that stiff squareness out,” he said. (p. 43)

Next, felicitous timing. In Epstein’s view, musical comedy consists of songs and energetic dances strung out over a preposterous plot, requiring suspension not merely of disbelief but of rationality (pp. 45-46). In the musical’s heyday, audiences eager to forget the Depression’s bleakness flocked to this ebullient theatre of the absurd, where Astaire dressed nattily, danced dazzlingly, and won the girl, helped along by a constellation of songwriters whose songs have turned out to be immortal.

The symbiosis between singer and songwriter was all the more remarkable since Astaire’s voice lacked resonance and range. But George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin composed with Astaire in mind; as Berlin noted, “You gave Astaire a song, and you could forget about it. He sang it the way you wrote it” (p. 153). For songs like “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” Astaire’s pellucid diction and impeccable timing create the definitive rendition.

On dancing, Epstein’s paean to swirling leaps, tap spins, struts, lunges, back kicks, barrages, arabesques, saunterings and syncopations is probably meaningless if one hasn’t seen them on screen, and superfluous if one has. There seems little to add after Margot Fonteyn, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine acknowledged Astaire’s genius, and Rudolf Nureyev called him “the greatest dancer in American history.” (p. 171).

Epstein’s wit is most enticing in the chapters on Astaire’s dance partners, his great rival Gene Kelly, and why Ginger Rogers, more than anyone else, was sublimely suited to him.

No two hugely gifted dancers were more different, on-screen or off, than Astaire and Kelly. Astaire was country-club urbane, always charming in the one character he always played. Kelly was proletarian, aggressive, muscular, and danced more varied roles. Kelly was the more inventive choreographer; Astaire had better coordination and rhythm. Astaire made it all look easy; Kelly showed how hard he worked, so some of his numbers seem a tad too long. Epstein cites other authorities to bolster his case. Dilys Powell: “Astaire for elegance, Kelly for command.” Pauline Kael: “Kelly bleeds and Astaire doesn’t” (p. 73). Then Epstein awards game, set and match by a surprisingly lopsided margin: “Apollo 35, Dionysius 21” (p. 74).

On dance duets, Epstein’s eye for incongruity adds substance to what everyone already knows: Fred was most superb with Ginger, even if she wasn’t his most technically proficient partner, or even one he liked very much. The others fell short in one way or another. Rita Hayworth was more suited to someone more tempestuous. Eleanor Powell was essentially a soloist. Jane Powell was too small, Vera Ellen too sweet, Leslie Caron too chunky, and Audrey Hepburn couldn’t keep up. Cyd Charisse comes in for praise – beautiful, smolderingly sexy, sensational legs, dramatic as befits a ballerina – but what disqualified her as the perfect partner was “a want of lightheartedness, of sauciness, of wit … too earnest, too sexy, even too beautiful to meet the job’s requirements” (p. 127). But surely he cavils: lighthearted and saucy are all over the place in her “All of You” number with Astaire in Silk Stockings, and beautiful is exactly what’s required when they go “Dancing in the Dark” in The Band Wagon. She remains the only partner who didn’t leave you feeling shortchanged if you kept your eyes on her when they danced.

But even if their box office appeal waned over time, Ginger Rogers was Astaire’s partner nonpareil. Epstein assembles an array of critics, choreographers and contemporaries to establish unanimity on this point – Merce Cunningham, John Mueller, Sheilah Graham, Benny Green, Katherine Hepburn. Arlene Croce said it best: their chemistry and acting created “genuine screen personalities against which each could play off the other, for wit, laughs, conflict, romance” in a duet style that would never be equaled in dance or movie history (141).

Garson Kanin claimed that Astaire’s magic could not be explained, only felt. Astaire himself probably never wanted to: “I’m just a hoofer,” he insisted (77). Still and all, Epstein’s extended essay, on sartorial style, song delivery, dancefloor wizardry, partner control, and boulevardier charm, is a winsome and beguiling attempt to parse the quintessence.

Jaime S. Ong.