“I don't think that I will plunge the nation into war by stating that Fred Astaire is the greatest tap-dancer in the world.”
Robert Benchley in "Hail to the King!!" The New Yorker, November 29, 1930, pp. 33-36. (M).
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Fred Astaire 73
American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and televisio… 1899–1987Related quotes
“As a dancer, I out-Fred the nimblest Astaire.”
P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster in Joy in the Morning (1947).
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.
“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.
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.
Rudolph Nureyev quoted in Cooke, Alistair. "Fred Astaire Obituary", Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 1987.
from Lorenz Hart's lyric to "Do it the Hard Way" from Pal Joey.
“I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into war.”
Alleged statement about his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (1918)
Attributed
“I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.”
As quoted in New York Times (25 October 1970)