“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.

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Fred Astaire 73

American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and televisio… 1899–1987

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“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.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Robert Benchley in "Hail to the King!!" The New Yorker, November 29, 1930, pp. 33-36. (M).

“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 (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

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

“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 (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

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

“And all at once I lost my breath
And all at once was scared to death
For all at once I owned the earth and sky.
Now I've met Miss Jones
We'll keep on meeting till we die,
Yes, Miss Jones and I.”

Lorenz Hart (1895–1943) lyricist

Have You Met Miss Jones?

“He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Tarquin of Cheapside"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

“At its most basic, Mr. Astaire's technique has three elements - tap, ballet and ballroom dancing. The ballet training, by his account, was brief but came at a crucial, early age. He has sometimes been classed as a tap dancer, but he was never the hoofer he has jokingly called himself. Much of the choreographic outline of his dancing with his ladies—be it Miss Rogers or Miss Hayworth—is ballroom. But of course, no ballroom dancer could dance like this.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Dance critic Anna Kisselgoff, in Shepard, Richard F. "Fred Astaire, The Ultimate Dancer, Dies," The New York Times, 23 June 1987.

“Our sky has lost another star,
The earth has claimed its own,
And into dread eternity
A glorious one is gone.
He who could give departed things
So much of light and breath,
He is himself now with the past —
Gone forth from life to death.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(29th September 1832) On the death of Sir Walter Scott
The London Literary Gazette, 1832

“All Christ's public acts were consecrated by prayer, — His baptism, His transfiguration, His miracles, His agony, His death. He breathed away His spirit in prayer. " His last breath," says Philip Henry, "was praying breath."”

John Ross Macduff (1818–1895) Scottish religious writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 66.

“This that I say is so great bliss to Jesus that He setteth at nought all His travail, and His hard Passion, and His cruel and shameful death.
And in these words: If that I might suffer more, I would suffer more, — I saw in truth that as often as He might die, so often He would, and love should never let Him have rest till He had done it. And I beheld with great diligence for to learn how often He would die if He might. And verily the number passed mine understanding and my wits so far that my reason might not, nor could, comprehend it. And when He had thus oft died, or should, yet He would set it at nought, for love: for all seemeth Him but little in regard of His love.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

“How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.”

Robert Browning After

After.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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