Rudolph Nureyev quoted in Cooke, Alistair. "Fred Astaire Obituary", Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 1987.
Fred Astaire: 73 quotes2 likes
Famous Fred Astaire Quotes
Jerome Robbins in Heeley, David, producer and director. Fred Astaire: Puttin' on his Top Hat and Fred Astaire: Change Partners and Dance (two television programs written by John L. Miller), PBS, March 1980. (M).
From P.G. Wodehouse's Do Butlers Burgle Banks? (1968).
op. cit., p. 6.
Fred Astaire on his proudest achievement in Lewis, Jerry D. "Interview : Fred Astaire." Glendale Federal Magazine, Summer 1982, pp. 8-10. (M).
Bing Crosby in a letter to John O'Hara as quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 p. 242.
Fred Astaire Quotes about dance and ballet
H.C. Potter describing the "The Astaire dolly", as quoted in Croce, Arlene. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, W.H. Allen, London, 1974. p. 127. ISBN 0491001592.
Cyd Charisse in Charisse, Cyd; Martin, Tony; Kleiner, Dick. The Two of Us, New York: Mason/Charter, 1976. ISBN 0-884-053636.
from Astaire's autobiography Steps in Time, 1959, p. 325.
From P.G. Wodehouse's Bachelors Anonymous (1973).
“Either the camera will dance, or I will.”
Fred Astaire in Winge, John. "How Astaire Works." Film and Theatre Today, January 1950, pp. 7-9. (M).
Gene Kelly interviewed in Hirschhorn, Clive. Gene Kelly, A Biography. W.H Allen, London, 1984. p. 117. ISBN 0491031823.
Fred Astaire Quotes about thinking
Mikhail Baryshnikov at the 1978 Kennedy Center Honours for Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, as quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0-09-173736-2 p. 255.
Bing Crosby in Crosby, Bing. Liner notes for Attitude Dancing, United Artists Records, UAS29888, 1975. (M).
Ginger Rogers in Evans, Harry. "Ginger, Leila, and Fred." Family Circle, May 8, 1936. (M).
Vincente Minnelli quoted in Schickel, Richard. The Men Who Made The Movies. New York: Atheneum, 1975. (M).
Ginger Rogers (M) op. cit.
G. Bruce Boyer in "Shall We Dress?" Forbes, May 3rd, 1999.
Fred Astaire: Trending quotes
from Eric Maschwitz's lyrics to A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square with music by Manning Sherwin
“You can get dancers like this for 75$ a week.”
Johnny Considine, MGM associate producer, on viewing Astaire's screen test. Source: Burton Lane as quoted in Green, Benny. Fred Astaire. London: Hamlyn, 1979 and reaffirmed by Lane in Lane, Burton. Letter to John Mueller, March 3, 1983. (M).
Adele Astaire on Astaire's performance in Gay Divorce. Source: "He Worries, Poor Boy." Variety, March 18, 1936, p. 3. (M).
Fred Astaire Quotes
Hermes Pan, Astaire's principal choreographic collaborator, quoted in Davidson, Bill. The Real and the Unreal. New York: Harper and Bros., 1961. p. 186. (M).
From P.G. Wodehouse's Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972).
Pauline Kael, responding to Croce in her review of Croce's The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, writing in The New Yorker, November 25, 1972, as reproduced in Kael, Pauline. Reeling: Film Writings 1972-1975, Marion Boyars, London - New York, pp. 58-59. ISBN 0-7145-2582-0.
Mikhail Baryshnikov in an interview http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0205/05/lklw.00.html on Larry King Live, CNN. 5 May 2002.
Ginger Rogers quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. . p. 132.
“I guess the only jewels of my life were the pictures I made with Fred Astaire.”
Rita Hayworth in Hallowell, John. "Rita Hayworth: Don't Put the Blame on Me, Boys." New York Times October 25, 1970, sec. 2, pp. 15, 38. (M).
Oscar Levant in Levant, Oscar. The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. New York: Putnam, 1965. (M).
Variety. Flying Down to Rio, December 26, 1933. (M).
Theatre critic James Agate in a review of a 1933 London performance of Gay Divorce as quoted in Cooke, Alistair. "Fred Astaire Obituary", Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 28, 1987.
Fred Astaire, interviewed by Dan Navarro for American Classic Screen Magazine, September/October 1978.
“The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.”
Gene Kelly in Heeley, David, producer and director. Fred Astaire: Puttin' on his Top Hat and Fred Astaire: Change Partners and Dance (two television programs written by John L. Miller), PBS, March 1980. (M).
“Astaire can't do anything bad.”
Jerome Kern quoted in Bordman, Gerald. Jerome Kern: His Life and Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. p. 142. (M).
Bing Crosby in a letter to Fred Astaire, c.1948, on Astaire's return in Easter Parade, as quoted in Astaire's biography, Steps in Time, United States, 1959. p. 293. ISBN 0815410581.
Rouben Mamoulian in Lecture and discussion at University of Southern California, December 7, 1975. Tape recording, Special Collections, University of Southern California. (M).
Fred Astaire in a letter to his agent Leland Hayward dated February 9, 1934. He went on to make a further nine musical films with Rogers. (M).
Sometimes misattributed to Astaire. In fact, it's just a scripted line (written by Blake Edwards and Larry Gelbart) from The Notorious Landlady. Astaire delivers the line to Jack Lemmon.
Misattributed
“You're the nimble tread/Of the feet of Fred Astaire”
from Cole Porter's lyric to "You're the Top".
from Lorenz Hart's lyric to "Do it the Hard Way" from Pal Joey.
Graham Greene reviewing Follow the Fleet in The Spectator 1936 and quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 , p. 81.
“Come on, Fred, I'm not your sister, you know.”
Claire Luce, (Astaire's first dance partner after his sister Adele retired, urging Astaire to turn on the passion during rehearsals for Gay Divorce) in Telephone interview with John Mueller, June 7, 1981. (M).
Adele Astaire op. cit.
“As a dancer, I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire.”
P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster in Joy in the Morning (1947).
“As a dancer he stands alone, and no singer knows his way around a song like Fred Astaire.”
Irving Berlin, quoted in Puttin' on the Ritz, BBC Programme Acquisition, 1999.
“(Cary Grant) is, along with Fred Astaire, the best-dressed actor in American movies”
Benjamin Schwarz in " Becoming Cary Grant http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/01/becoming-cary-grant/5548/" The Atlantic, January/February 2007
Richard Avedon in Silverman, Stephen M. Dancing on the Ceiling. Knopf, 1996. ISBN 0679414126.
Fred Astaire in "Reminiscences of Fred Astaire", Interview with Ronald L. Davis, Beverly Hills, July 31, 1978, SMU Oral History Project on the Performing Arts. (M).
Gene Kelly quoted in Shipman, David. The Great Movie Stars, The Golden Years. Crown Publishers, New York. 1970. pp. 25-29 as referenced in Billman, Larry: Fred Astaire - A Bio-bibliography, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1997. ISBN 0-313-29010-5 p. 351.
“By far the gentlest man I have ever known.”
Frank Sinatra on Astaire as quoted in Barnes, Clive. "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails - Fred Astaire dead at 88," New York Times, June 23, 1987 as reproduced in Billman, Larry. Fred Astaire - a Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Press, Connecticut, 1997, p. 300.
“When you talk about Fred Astaire, you talk about heaven. What more can I say?”
Johnny Green to Mike Steen in Steen, Mike. Hollywood Speaks! An Oral History, G.P. Putnam's, New York, 1974.
Fred Astaire in Time. "The New Pictures: 'Blue Skies'". October 14, 1946, p. 103. (M).
“If I was black and blue, it was Gene. If I didn't have a scratch it was Fred.”
Cyd Charisse on how her husband would know with whom she had danced, quoted in Aloff, Mindy. Dance Anecdotes: Stories from the Worlds of Ballet, Broadway, the Ballroom, and Modern Dance. Oxford University Press, 2006. p. 196 ISBN 0195054113.
Dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, in Shepard, Richard F. "Fred Astaire, The Ultimate Dancer, Dies," The New York Times, 23 June 1987.
“Can't act, slightly bald, also dances.”
Fred Astaire's version of the lost infamous screen test report in his interview on 20/20 with Barbara Walters, ABC, 1980 and reaffirmed by Astaire in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 , p. 78.
from Lorenz Hart's title number to On Your Toes.
Fred Astaire on his role in Silk Stockings in Smith, Cecil. "Astaire prefers the 'Good Old Days' of the present." Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1957, sec. 5, p. 3. (M).
Artie Shaw on his collaboration with Astaire in Second Chorus (1940) as interviewed in Fantle, Dave and Johnson, Tom. Reel to Real. Badger Books LLC, 2004, p. 304. ISBN 1932542043.
From P.G. Wodehouse's Mulliner Nights (1933).
Arlene Croce, in Croce, Arlene. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, W.H. Allen, London, 1974. p. 7. ISBN 0491001592.
George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. "Balanchine, An Interview". Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M).
Alan Jay Lerner in Lerner, Alan Jay. On the Street Where I Live. New York: Norton, 1978. p. 89. (M).
George Balanchine, quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 p. 33.
“I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.”
Fred Astaire to Henry Ephron, screenwriter on Daddy Long Legs, as quoted in Ephron, Henry. We Thought We Could Do Anything: The Life of Screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron, New York: Norton, 1977, p. 131. (M).
“You know, you so-and-so, you've a little of the hoodlum in you.”
Jimmy Cagney to Fred Astaire during rehearsals of "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" from Top Hat as quoted in Astaire's autobiography, Steps in Time, p8.
Gene Kelly on the subject of social dancing, in Lawrenson, Helen. "It's Better to Remember Fred." Esquire, August 1976, pp92-96, 106, 109-110. (M).
“A: Nobody really. Well, actually, Fred Astaire.”
Stephen Sondheim in an interview with David Patrick Stearns, Classical Music Critic, The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 19, 2009 https://archive.is/20130630031503/www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20090219_An_upbeat_Sondheim__offering_answers.html?viewAll=y
Kirk Douglas in Douglas, Kirk. Let's Face It. Wiley, 2007. ISBN 9780470084694, p. 26.
“There is no setup in Hollywood that compares with an Astaire picture.”
Irving Berlin to George Gershwin quoted in Jablonski, Edward, and Stewart, Lawrence D. The Gershwin Years. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961, p. 250. (M).
Rouben Mamoulian, quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0091737362. p. 200.
“He's a genius…a classical dancer like I never saw in my life.”
Mikhail Baryshnikov in "Interview with Mike Wallace", 60 Minutes, CBS Television. February 18, 1979. (M).
