“As a dancer he stands alone, and no singer knows his way around a song like Fred Astaire.”

— Fred Astaire

Irving Berlin, quoted in Puttin' on the Ritz, BBC Programme Acquisition, 1999.

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

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P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster in Joy in the Morning (1947).

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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.

“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).

“I once said that fifty years from now, the only one of today's dancers who will be remembered is Fred Astaire.”

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

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.

“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.”

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

“Fred taught me a step because I said I can't let this experience be over without my learning something. He taught me the most wonderful Fred Astaire-like step, with an umbrella. It was a complete throwaway; it was almost invisible. It was in the way he walked. As he moved along, he bounced the umbrella on the floor to the beat and then he grabbed it. It was effortless and invisible. As a matter of fact, a few years later I was photographing Gene Kelly and told him that Fred Astaire had taught me this trick with an umbrella. And Kelly said, "Oh I'll teach you one," and he did, and the two tricks with the umbrella in some way define the difference between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, and, in my view, demonstrate who is the greater of the two artists. With Gene Kelly, he threw the umbrella way up into the air, and then he moved to catch it, very slowly, grabbing it behind his back. It was a big, grandstand play, about nothing.”

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Richard Avedon in Silverman, Stephen M. Dancing on the Ceiling. Knopf, 1996. ISBN 0679414126.

“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.”

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

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