Today is Fred Astaire's 103rd birthday, and so, I'll be deicating today's blog entry to him. All information has been taken from the famed Fred Astaire.net. Fred Astaire (1899-1987), originally Frederick Austerlitz, was born on May 10th in Omaha, Nebraska and died on 22 June in Los Angeles, California. He was and still is, by common consensus, the greatest dancer to ever grace the silver screen, and has been hailed as an American icon, a genius and grace personified.
Fred successfully combined different forms of dancing into a unique, highly artistic, expressive and technically flawless individual style. Admired by ballet dancers and hoofers alike, he broke down barriers between so-called 'high' and 'low' art, refusing to obey artificial boundaries in his constant quest to create beautiful, entertaining dances.
He also revolutionised the art of the movie musical, moving it away from the 'backstage musical' stories and the marching ensemble choreography of Busby Berkeley, to more intimate movies with greater variation in storyline, where the dancing was integral to plot development and advancement. Dancing became more than just entertainment; it instead spoke more about people, places, emotions and thoughts than could be expressed via speech. If a picture speaks a thousand words, then imagine the impact of 24 pictures per second, each profound and deeply moving, accompanied by music.
Behind the camera, Fred also overturned conventional wisdom. His dances spoke strongly for themselves, and so he did away with the cuts, edits, transitions and reaction shots that characterised musical numbers up till then, and showed his dances in continuous shots with little editing.
His great timing and his creative mind also dreamed up numerous special effects that enhanced his dancing, enabling him to express the impossible. Thus, we see him outdancing his own shadows in Swing Time, dancing with an entire chorus of himself in Blue Skies, in perfect timing with live firecrackers in Holiday Inn, with animated shoes in The Barkleys of Broadway, and in midair in The Belle Of New York. In one of his most famous sequences, he defies gravity to dance on the walls and ceiling in Royal Wedding.
Fred Astaire was, however, more than just a dancer. He was a skilled actor, garnering an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in A Supporting Role in The Towering Inferno, winning several Golden Globes, among them Best Actor for Three Little Words, winning numerous Emmy Awards for various television shows and movies (1959's An Evening With Fred Astaire still holds the record for most Emmys for a single show), as well as Academy Awards from many other countries such as Britain and Italy.
He also introduced more standards than probably any other singer, and had many hit singles, including several #1 hits. At one point in 1936, he occupied all three top spots in the list of best selling records!
Fred was also a wonderful songwriter (one composition, "I'm Building Up To An Awful Let Down" reached #4 on the charts), a stylish trend-setting dresser and a best selling author with his autobiography, Steps In Time, which he personally wrote in longhand.
Most of all, he is remembered as a gentleman, with absolute humility, free of airs, and never saw himself as anything more than just a man who made his living dancing. He was, by all accounts, a devoted husband and a wonderful father who kept his private life private and his family out of the intense scrutiny of the public spotlight. Even now, so many years after his death, there has never been even a hint of scandal involving his name, although his decision near the end of his life to marry a woman less than half his age created controversy and dissension within the family. The worst that has ever been said of him was that he was a tireless perfectionist who demanded as much from his co-stars as he did from himself, often reducing them to tears.
Perhaps the most important thing about Fred is his position today, many years after his passing: that of a role model. He was a man born with immense talent, who had an equally immense willingness to work hard to succeed; a man who had the world at his feet but was completely unconscious of his own greatness; one of the most recognisable faces in the world but intensely private and humble; a man who was on first name basis with royalty but whose closest friends were commoners; and a human being, who despite his flaws and failings, through hard work came to epitomise all that is beautiful about the human spirit with style, grace and humanity. For this alone, Fred is worth celebrating.
For more info, refer to FredAstaire.net, you're one-stop for all your Astaire needs.
Posted by Ming at May 11, 2002 05:43 PM*cough* plagiarising *cough*
Posted by: PJ at May 13, 2002 02:41 PM