Fred Astaire: Trending quotes (page 2)

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“The fact that Fred and I were in no way similar - nor were we the best male dancers around never occurred to the public or the journalists who wrote about us…Fred and I got the cream of the publicity and naturally we were compared. And while I personally was proud of the comparison, because there was no-one to touch Fred when it came to "popular" dance, we felt that people, especially film critics at the time, should have made an attempt to differentiate between our two styles. Fred and I both got a bit edgy after our names were mentioned in the same breath. I was the Marlon Brando of dancers, and he the Cary Grant. My approach was completely different from his, and we wanted the world to realise this, and not lump us together like peas in a pod. If there was any resentment on our behalf, it certainly wasn't with each other, but with people who talked about two highly individual dancers as if they were one person. For a start, the sort of wardrobe I wore - blue jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers - Fred wouldn't have been caught dead in. Fred always looked immaculate in rehearsals, I was always in an old shirt. Fred's steps were small, neat, graceful and intimate - mine were ballet-oriented and very athletic. The two of us couldn't have been more different, yet the public insisted on thinking of us as rivals…I persuaded him to put on his dancing shoes again, and replace me in Easter Parade after I'd broken my ankle. If we'd been rivals, I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to make a comeback.”

Fred Astaire

Gene Kelly interviewed in Hirschhorn, Clive. Gene Kelly, A Biography. W.H Allen, London, 1984. p. 117. ISBN 0491031823.

People , World , Shoe , Way

“I guess the only jewels of my life were the pictures I made with Fred Astaire.”

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).

Life

“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.”

Fred Astaire

Oscar Levant in Levant, Oscar. The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. New York: Putnam, 1965. (M).

World

“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.”

Fred Astaire

Variety. Flying Down to Rio, December 26, 1933. (M).

Dance , Flying

“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.”

Fred Astaire

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.

Secret , Sadness , Sex , Night

“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.”

Fred Astaire

Vincente Minnelli quoted in Schickel, Richard. The Men Who Made The Movies. New York: Atheneum, 1975. (M).

People , World , Confidence , Thinking

“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?”

Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire, interviewed by Dan Navarro for American Classic Screen Magazine, September/October 1978.

“The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.”

Fred 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).

History , Dance

“Astaire can't do anything bad.”

Fred Astaire

Jerome Kern quoted in Bordman, Gerald. Jerome Kern: His Life and Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. p. 142. (M).

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

Fred Astaire

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.

Guy

“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.”

Fred Astaire

Rouben Mamoulian in Lecture and discussion at University of Southern California, December 7, 1975. Tape recording, Special Collections, University of Southern California. (M).

Success , Dependency

“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.”

Fred Astaire

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).

Idea

“The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style”

Fred Astaire

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”

Fred Astaire

from Cole Porter's lyric to "You're the Top".

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

Fred Astaire

from Lorenz Hart's lyric to "Do it the Hard Way" from Pal Joey.

Death

“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.”

Fred Astaire

From P.G. Wodehouse's Bachelors Anonymous (1973).

Dance

“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.”

Fred Astaire

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.

Hate , Secret , Thinking , Perfection

“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.”

Fred Astaire

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.

World , Law

“I have no desire to prove anything by it. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance.”

Fred Astaire

from Astaire's autobiography Steps in Time, 1959, p. 325.

Dance

“Come on, Fred, I'm not your sister, you know.”

Fred Astaire

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).

Sister