LEN GOODMAN: Fred Astaire.
(WHISTLES)
The most inventive, stylish
and exciting dancer in the world.
Growing up in a grey, post-war London my great escape was the pictures.
And to sit there watching Fred Astaire in white tie and tails
gliding across the floor with effortless ease,
well, it just captured me. I was spellbound.
His technical precision,
the sharpness of his movements,
the jaw-dropping choreography
all set to the memorable music of Irving Berlin.
It's never left me.
Over a career of 76 years,
Fred Astaire was the ultimate entertainer
with 11 hits on the stage and 31 films.
Fred Astaire changed the history of dance forever.
He revolutionised how dance was shown on film.
And with Ginger Rogers,
seen here in Follow The Fleet,
led the most romantic dance duo ever
dancing in perfect ballroom harmony.
And look at his legacy.
Even some of Michael Jacksons signature moves
were influenced by his hero.
He even got the way he pushed his hat forward from Fred.
Fred Astaire. He makes it look so glamourous, so magical.
The key, for me...
When I go to the cinema I want to come out feeling better than I did when I went in.
And do you know what happens with Fred Astaire?
You walk in. (CHUCKLES)
You waltz out.
(JAZZ PLAYING)
FRED ASTAIRE: # Have you seen the well to do? #
1930s America - film is the most powerful medium of the modern age
and Fred Astaire its unlikely poster boy.
(LAUGHS) And here's why.
You can see here
in No Strings I'm Fancy Free from Top Hat
an elegance, glamour
and crucially the rhythm of Fred's dancing to Irving Berlin's music.
It's perfect.
It took weeks of relentless rehearsals
to make just five minutes of film.
What Fred does baffles me.
I want to find out
what exactly made Fred Astaire
such an electrifying dancer.
Just how did a shy boy from Nebraska grow up to be the most famous dancer in the world?
It was here, New York, in the early 20th century
that young Fred first got his love for music,
his obsession with rhythm and it's here that he first learned to dance.
Frederick Austerlitz, born at the turn of the 19th century,
was enrolled in the Alviene School Of Dancing
when he was just six years old.
Fred Astaire started dancing when he was a little whippersnapper unlike myself.
I didn't start dancing till I was 21.
Now, I tell people I had an injury playing football
and the doctor suggested that I went to rehabilitate myself.
That's a lie. It was all about girls.
Now, young Fred didn't start dancing because he was naturally gifted or keen.
He was neither.
He was dragged to dance school by his mother just to be a dancing partner
to his very pretty and very talented older sister, Adele.
The young Fred hated it and did everything to avoid lessons.
The only one thing Fred really enjoyed was hearing the rhythm as the teacher beat time.
This maybe one of the first clues for Fred Astaire's amazing flair for rhythm.
In this drum sequence
from Damsel In Distress
Fred revels
in the syncopated rhythms.
Sometimes hitting it dead on,
sometimes just before
sometimes just after.
Such exhilarating effect.
Fred's amazing sense of rhythm
was also inspired by a new dance phenomenon
that was taking turn-of-the-century New York by storm.
Do it again!
Jason Samuel Smith is an expert on the history of the new dance that hooked Fred -
tap.
Now, tell me, Jason, how did tap dancing begin?
What was its origins?
Well, tap dance started very much like hip-hop started in the inner city here.
Tap dance more or less started on the plantations
during slavery times.
It was a way for the Africans to express themselves through music and dance.
Most of their culture was taken - their names, their history,
their religion. So tap dance became a form of all of that culture balled up into one element
where it expressed music, dance, joy, pain, everything.
Who were his heroes? Who influenced him? There were a lot of acts at that time.
People like the great Bill Bojangles Robinson.
I think one of his primary influences was definitely John Bubbles.
He really had the crown.
He was rapidly improving and innovating
and adding all these different elements
that didn't exist before him. A lot of these black artists didn't have a platform
but Fred Astaire he acknowledged their existence and tried to give them credit
through the dance that he did. I can't tap dance but I'd love to give it a go.
All right, we'll do something like a Shu-ffle step.
Shu-ffle step. There you go.
(TAPPING) You're making it look smooth already.
I love it when they get that and they go...
Like the...little slide.
(LAUGHS) I like that, man.
By 1905, Fred and Adele were ready for their New York debut.
Their opening number
was the pair dressed as a miniature bride and groom
dancing on top of a wedding cake.
They made quite an impression.
Within a few years they were touring a vaudeville act throughout the United States.
Adele was eleven years old. Fred was just nine.
But, sadly for Fred, wherever they went all the reviews praised Adele but totally overlooked him.
Biographer Peter Evans thinks this might have had quite an effect on young Fred.
In the early stages it was Adele who was the star.
She had all the vivacity, the cheekiness, the natural talent.
Whereas he had to work at whatever talents or gifts that he had.
Fred had to work to perfect his dancing and that was the way that he could make his mark.
I can sympathise so much with Fred because when I first danced, I'd been dancing six months
and my partner, Cherry, had been dancing for 15 years.
Everything came hard to me.
I remember one of the dance teachers said, "Oh, Cherry, you're such a beautiful dancer.
Len, you're dancing like an oaf."
That's the sort of thing that happened with Fred Astaire. Absolutely.
He wasn't really yet the dancer that we know and love.
Fred was three years younger than Adele, so there was a height difference. Yeah.
How did they overcome that? Well, one of the ways was to get him to wear a top hat.
So the top of the hat was the same kind of height as she was.
In some of the shows that they were in he had to play the female.
And she had to play the male.
Oh, they swapped over? Yeah. Because of the height. Yeah.
There was all that fragility about Fred Astaire. I suppose that if you were living and working
in the shadow of a much stronger personality of whom you are in awe,
that sense of straining for achievement,
that sense of uncertainty about the standards that you are reaching
is going to remain with you for the rest of your career. Yeah.
From 1908 to 1922 Fred and Adele performed across America.
It was exciting but exhausting
as they moved from town to town competing with the other performers to get the top billing.
Fred later wrote, "We played every rat trap and chicken coop in the Midwest."
This was one lesson that Fred never forgot - success didn't come without hard graft.
Their new challenge was to break into musicals.
Glamourous Broadway was their goal.
But they needed the right dance routine and the right music to make them stand out.
Fred had caught the dancing bug and there was no going back.
Everything stimulated his imagination. New steps, new routines, new music - everything.
He made it his quest to search out the best music he could and there was no better place to come than here.
We're in New York - Tin Pan Alley. What more can you wish for?
Before radio, the only way popular songs could be heard was when they were played live.
So all the shops in the street that wanted to sell sheet music
used pianists to bang out the tunes on pianos.
You can imagine the din. That's how Tin Pan Alley got its name.
It would have sounded like hundreds of pots and pans clanking away.
It was here that Fred Astaire had a chance encounter with a young pianist that changed his life forever.
# GERSHWIN: Rhapsody In Blue
It was a young George Gershwin working as a humble son plugger.
He later went on to become one of America's most famous composers and pianists
writing Porgy and Bess and Rhapsody in Blue.
And it was Gershwin that helped Fred and Adele make it to Broadway
bringing out Fred's great love and talent for music.
For me, Fred Astaire was more than a dancer.
He was part of the orchestra. His body became an instrument.
His lower body was the percussion - always beating out the rhythm, sharp and clean.
His upper body was the melody - moving, free flowing.
Fred Astaire. He was the complete dancer.
I want to know is it the music that made the dance or the dance that made the music.
(PIANO CHORDS) # You say either and I say either
# You say neither and I say neither
# Either, either
# Neither, neither
# Let's call the whole thing off
# You say potato
# And I say pot-ah-to
# I say tomato
# And I say tom-ah-to
# Potato. Pot-ah-to
# Tomato. Tom-ah-to
# Let's call the whole thing off #
(LAUGHS) I think we're a hit. I think so too.
Now, early days. There's Fred Astaire, there's George Gershwin and they met.
What was it that made them such life- long friends?
They realised that they both had this incredible enthusiasm,
both being in their teens,
for contemporary music of that time which was considered a little dangerous.
We're talking about the beginnings of Jazz. Gershwin is writing these rags.
(PLAYS FAST RAGTIME)
Fred is inspired in a way that he's never been before.
At one point George says, "Fred, wouldn't it be great
if one day Ira and I write a score and you and Adele star in it?"
That's exactly what happened a few years later - 1924 - on Broadway in Lady Be Good.
Was it the music that made the dance or the dance that made the music?
Fred always started with the music first.
Let's say that Irving Berlin had this idea.
(PLAYS TOP HAT, WHITE TIE AND TAILS)
And Fred would say, "Let's see."
If he felt he could so something with that tune, they would develop the song. It was revolutionary
I never really felt that Fred Astaire had the most fantastic voice
and yet all these composers wanted to write for him.
He hated his own voice. He had 16mm prints of all of his dance sequences from his movies
and he excised every vocal that preceded them. He couldn't stand his own singing.
So he agreed with you.
You know, what I love is the way Fred Astaire could interpret the music.
He had great pitch. He had this conversation ability.
And his ability with rhythm... To bend a phrase and make it fill with tension.
So a song like They Can't Take That Away From Me is one that shows how he could phrase uniquely.
The song is written... # The way you wear you hat
# The way you sip...
Fred would sing...
# The way you wear you hat
# They way you sip your tea #
# The memory of all that
# Oh, no, they can't take that away from me #
He came to understand that he could express much more by doing less.
That was one of his secrets. Less is more.
By the 1920s there was a marked shift in Fred's dancing.
He was now beginning to outshine his sister.
But even so he would never shake the feeling that he had to work harder than Adele to see results.
He later wrote, "The only way I know to get a good show is to practice, sweat, rehearse and worry.
Adele called him Moaning Minnie as he constantly nagged for her to practice their routines.
He called her Good Time Charlie as she wanted to party non-stop.
He even resorted to bribing her with presents to get her to rehearse.
But it paid off.
They were a hit on Broadway and in 1923 they became the darlings of London society
performing in Stop Flirting.
The London critics went wild.
For a country scarred by the horrors of World War One,
Fred and Adele's witty, charming musicals were just the ticket.
It was a trans-Atlantic love affair.
Fred bought American musical comedies to London and London gave something back to Fred -
a great sense of style.
You wouldn't call Fred Astaire a good-looking guy.
He was hardly a hunk.
He had sticky-out ears, a bit thin on top, a bit skinny.
But there was something about him. It was the style, the elegance.
You know, they say clothes don't maketh the man
but in Fred's case, and mine, he got it just right.
Fred knew how his well-tailored clothes enhanced his posture and movement
and this striking dress sense made him into a thoroughly modern icon.
Ingeniously mixing old-fashioned English elegance with a new-world American sporty casualness.
And with it Fred was becoming a sought-after young man on and off the stage.
Fred met a 23-year-old girl at a golf party and he was totally smitten.
He said it was her gentle beauty, grace and charm that had him spellbound.
And the fact she couldn't pronounce her 'Rs'. I know somebody else like that.
Pw-rawn. Pw-rune.
Wr-ural. T-wry.
This girl was Phyllis Potter, a gorgeous New York socialite,
who, after two years of courting, Fred married.
Now, love is a wonderful thing but it can get in the way.
Fred was still mad keen to keep dancing but his sister was not.
Just as Fred and Adele were hitting the big time in London,
suddenly, in 1932, it all came tumbling down.
Adele had fallen in love with Lord Charles Cavendish.
Adele wanted to marry, retire from the stage and have a family.
This was a terrible blow for Fred who had never danced with anyone else in his whole life
and relied on his beautiful sister's talent and confidence as his partner.
After 27 years of the prefect dance duo, Fred danced one last time with his beloved sister Adele.
It was on the 5th March 1932 and from then on Fred had to go it alone.
(JAZZ PLAYING)
In 1933, at the age of 34, Fred was forced to take a radical step.
Traumatised by the loss of his beloved sister Adele as his life-long dance partner,
he decided to try something completely new -
Hollywood!
This is the main gates to Paramount Studios, formerly RKO.
And Fred must have driven through these gates thousands of times.
It was here that the best directors, producers, script writers, choreographers all got together.
This is where the magic happened. This was the golden age of Hollywood.
The ultimate dream factory had its heyday in the 1930s
capturing the hearts and imagination of the world
with glamour, luxury romance and fantasy.
It was the perfect antidote to the real economic misery of the time.
As on the streets the Great Depression spread fear, poverty and hunger.
It was at this time of extremes that Fred Astaire made it here.
But don't be fooled. Making it big doesn't just happen over night.
I left school when I was 15
and the day before I left school the headmaster said, "Goodman,
you'll always be a failure."
Well, here I am. I made it to Hollywood.
Eat your heart out, Mr Daniels.
Follow me.
This is where I film Dancing With The Stars.
Hair, gorgeous.
Fred came to a studio like this at RKO for his first screen test
and, surprisingly, Hollywood was similarly slow to recognise the talent of Fred Astaire.
The producers watched his performance and a note came back -
"Can't sing. Can't act.
Balding.
Can dance a bit."
But the legendary movie mogul David Selznick looked at it back and in the end decided to take a chance.
The result was this -
a slightly apprehensive-looking Fred Astaire
in his 1933 screen debut Dancing Lady with Joan Crawford.
# We've got the gang together #
But he was about to really shine when he met his new dancing partner.
When I watch dancers in here, some of them have got great rhythm,
others beautiful fluidity of movement, others style.
But for Fred it all came together when he met a little girl from Kansas.
Ginger Rogers.
Their first picture together was Flying Down To Rio in 1933.
The chemistry on screen and their dancing prowess
knocked the audiences and the movie producers off their feet.
I'm asking choreographer Bill Deamer why he thinks their relationship worked so incredibly well.
Interestingly you can see, even in this, how Ginger and Fred connect with the eyes. Yeah.
As actors. It's the first time you see the acting and the dance becoming one.
The thing is, Ginger Rogers was a great actress but she wasn't really known as a great dancer.
No. She had a basic dance training and he taught her the rest.
She understood the way he moved.
She said in a famous line, "I did everything Fred did..."
"But backwards and in heels."
Which is true.
The comedy in this number is quite unbelievable. The way he sets up the rhythms of the tap
and then they hit heads.
(HOLLOW BANG)
It's just genius.
He sets the gag up, get's the laugh and then they move on.
This is the film where you realise there is so much more to come.
# Is this a lovely day #
Isn't This A Lovely Day from Top Hat.
I think this is the first love scene in dance that really made the mark.
Look at the synchronicity.
Perfectly together. Absolutely.
What I love is the story telling that comes out in the dance.
There's all this technique going on but the acting on the top is still there and so prevalent.
There's a wonderful moment where he taps and he's trying her out.
And then she follows on and does a far more tricky step
and he looks to say, "We've got one here."
They're falling in love while they're tap dancing
and doing this wonderful intricate tap.
This scene shows every side of these as a couple. Absolutely.
Humour. Technique. Artistry. Yes.
Chemistry. Absolutely. Comedy
It's all there and there's always a little sexual tension in there.
I think it was Catherine Hepburn who said that Fred gave Ginger class and she gave him sex.
I wonder, did Fred make Ginger or did Ginger make Fred?
I would love to know what it was about Fred's dancing that got the very best out of his partners.
Although we always think of Fred and Ginger,
Fred ended up dancing with many other leading ladies -
Rita Hayworth,
Audrey Hepburn
and Eleanor Powell.
I'm off to meet one of them now -
Barrie Chase, who danced with Fred Astaire in 1958 for ten years -
to find out exactly what it felt like.
Fred said of her - "Barrie Chase. That girl can dance."
Barrie, I'm so thrilled to meet you.
I truly am.
Firstly, let me ask you, what was Fred Astaire like to dance with.
Heavenly.
Really? Yeah. Sure.
Fred always looked at his partner when he danced with them
and the partner looked back.
They had a relationship going. That's the connection.
And there was not that isolation of "I'm doing this." Or, "I'm playing to the audience
and once in a while I look at you."
The whole thing was that two people were having an experience
and it happened to be dancing.
When you needed that support or that arm that was supposed to be there,
it was always exactly where it was supposed to be.
He whisked you in such a way that you were just transported. You didn't feel the mechanics of it.
He wasn't a selfish partner. Oh, God no.
He never lost his temper. No, not really.
He once said to me, on the very first show...
And I was obviously very nervous waiting for the cameras to roll.
He looked at me and he said, "Don't be nervous, just don't make any mistakes."
That would make it worse for me. Yes, wouldn't it? Just a little bit.
Was he a hard task master? Everybody knows that he was a perfectionist.
He was only demanding that you give your very best, you do your very best, you work your very hardest.
Would you allow me to just hold you and you can tell me if this was how Fred would...
I'm not saying I can dance like Fred Astaire but I'd like to know if I had the same feeling. OK.
Could we do that? Yeah.
Can we do that?
So was he a tight dancer? All firm and... No.
Just... Easy. Yeah.
And I used to love him pivoting. Oh, he was a wonderful...
That's what I loved with Fred. You'd get slow and then suddenly he'd go into a pivot.
And then off again. Yeah.
The other little move I used to like is when he'd have her there and he'd turn her to there.
We need to rehearse this a little. And then roll her out and then back in.
Oh, yes. (BOTH LAUGH)
FRED ASTAIRE: # I could dance nightly
# Just holding you tightly
# My sweet #
Astaire and Rogers went on to make ten films together, all huge hits for RKO.
The Gay Divorcee. Swing Time. Shall We Dance?
All huge blockbuster hits.
And their premieres were in wonderful, old movie theatres just like this one.
Apart from a sensational new dance partner,
Hollywood opened up so many more opportunities for Fred
with up to eight dances per film,
Fred was free to unleash his creativity,
try out new ideas and perfect his lightning footwork.
I'm watching Top Hat, White Tie and Tails with choreographer Randy Skinner.
As you can see here, Fred Astaire's technique and clarity of movement is so perfect.
I want to find out how he achieved this.
I mean, his feet just flew
but there's all this upper body style down through the fingertips.
He was the first
that paid attention to not only what was happening below the knees
but the entire upper body.
With the toned hand you'll always have a toned arm. Exactly.
You can have a beautiful step going on
but if something's askew with the body that focus can go.
He was such a master at bringing that all together.
Fred labelled this himself "the outlaw style"
because he brought the worlds of ballroom,
ballet and tapping together for the first time.
That move where the leg went up. Like a jete.
Right out of ballet.
This is called a heel roll progression. Let me show you.
It's a basic step that everybody learns when you're five years old.
But what Fred does is he takes out the last heel and does a cane tap.
Removes a heel, hits a cane tap.
Brilliant. Brilliant.
When I watch Fred Astaire
my brain is looking at the technique and thinking how fantastic that is
but my heart is saying, "Look at this movement."
To get both is special. It's special.
It wasn't just Astaire's technique
that was impeccable.
What made Fred Astaire stand out was his desire to innovate.
He hated repeating himself.
And would continually strive
to bring something new to each film.
Be it dancing with weights in Royal Wedding
or dancing on roller skates
in Gershwin's Let's Call The Whole Thing Off.
What was incredible about Fred Astaire - it didn't matter what the circumstances were,
he would utilise that into a dance.
In this clip from Carefree
we see the wit and precision
of Fred Astaire's choreography.
Every step and every beat count.
There is no superfluous movement.
The choreography builds to a climax
and then stops.
He had wonderful coordination and such a fertile, inventive mind.
Hey, let's give it a go.
(JAZZ PLAYING)
(CHUCKLES)
(APPLAUSE)
By 1934, Fred, at the age of 35, was becoming a bit of a Hollywood star.
But where other stars might demand bigger dressing rooms or fancy cars,
Fred didn't want any of these. He just wanted creative control.
It was unheard of at the time.
Fred Astaire was about to take a radical step -
to revolutionise dance on film forever.
Once Fred became a hit in Hollywood,
he was given the rare privilege of complete creative control over the dance numbers.
He set about learning everything he could about the movie business.
He wanted to make sure those were as good as it could be.
Film historian Patricia Tobias has been looking into how Fred Astaire reinvented dance on film.
Dancing Lady, 1933. How did his technique for dancing in front of a camera change from that point?
In Dancing Lady, you can see him dance right out of the frame.
Immediately after that he said, "That's never happening again."
So he developed some guidelines that included where the camera should be placed.
It was two feet of the ground so he would look taller.
He created what was known at the time as the Astaire dolly.
It had an elevator so it could go up and down.
It took five or six people to work the thing.
It enabled the camera to dance. Right.
It enabled it to do anything he did.
He's always in the centre third of the frame. Always.
The camera keeps him there. If he dances this way, the camera pulls back.
It was very fluid.
It was straight forward. There was no sneaky bits of camera work.
And he was quite insistent on that.
After he did the Night And Day number with Mark Sandrich
they had a huge blow out
because Sandrich edited in
shots from under a table
and through Venetian blinds.
Fred said, "No." And he renegotiated his contract with RKO
so that he had complete control over those dance numbers.
And that's what's great. What you see is what you get. Yeah.
One of my frustrations on the dancing show is that they use so many different cameras.
You know, one minute you're looking at the wide and then you're just on the feet.
When you sit there as a judge you just watch the whole thing.
No one's ever talked about the fact that... Yes, he was a great dancer and a great piano player
and a great drummer.
No one has ever talked about that fact that he was actually a great film director.
He was in the cutting room. So those dances are not just Fred Astaire dancing
it's the camera dancing with him and he did that. It was a revolution.
Dance is all about romance. It's about chemistry. It's a magical thing.
And to create that magic there has to be a sincerity, an intimacy between the couple.
And if you don't get that, the audience finds out. I'm wondering just how difficult that is.
This is a rendition of Cheek To Cheek from the West End musical Top Hat.
# BERLIN: Cheek To Cheek
How hard is it to try to replicate the great Fred and Ginger?
Is it frustrating?
On the surface it's beautiful and flowing
but the feet are going 100 miles an hour.
Some of those rhythms are so tricky and I'm doing it in three-and-a-half-inch heels.
So I'm thinking, "Please don't fall over." You're sweating buckets trying to keep it all look elegant.
There's so much packed into it. You've got the lyrical upper line
but, especially when you're tapping, it's all about the clarity of beats
and the changes of direction. It really does take it out of you.
It always looks spontaneous. Exactly. As though they just met and it just happened.
You don't realise the hours and hours that they've taken to get there.
I think they went into the early hours trying to capture this.
It was something like 52 takes they went through. They had all of the drama with the dress.
What is that story?
Ginger had designed the feather dress and she was adamant that she'd wear this dress.
Fred didn't know anything about this and he wasn't a happy chap. The feathers were going everywhere,
as they do with this dress. When something's been freshly feathered...
They're dancing and they're flying off. Sticking to his black suit. They're in his mouth.
They're slipping over. He threw an absolute fit and said, "I'm not having this dress.
This will not work." They fell out quite badly. They were known for never fighting.
They never had a row and it was the feathered dress that tipped them over the edge. After that,
Fred always called her Feathers.
Fred Astaire was undoubtedly naturally gifted.
But make no mistake, he worked at his success.
He controlled how he looked, how he danced,
how he was filmed and he rehearsed until each step was perfect.
But Fred's phenomenal precision had its drawbacks.
Look at this clip from Swing Time.
Fred had wanted the dance
to be filmed in one take
but was forced to make an edit just here.
And add an earlier take instead
for the end of the dance
as after hours of filming such exacting, fast spins
Ginger's white shoes had turned pink with blood.
# A smooth criminal #
With such a string work ethic, amazing choreography and technique
it is no surprise to me that Fred Astaire has inspired some of the best dancers
of the 20th and the 21st century.
Michael Jackson dedicated the autobiography Moonwalk to Fred
and Fred repaid the compliment by saying,
"I didn't want to leave this world without knowing who my descendant was. Thank you, Michael."
Vincent Patterson choreographed Michael Jackson's music video Smooth Criminal.
It was inspired by Fred Astaire's complex dance routine
seen here in the 1953 film Band Wagon.
You can see how Michael chose a similar, smoky bar to set the routine,
a white suit to look like Fred,
and danced with the girl in red with the same staccato rhythm
as Fred danced with Cyd Charisse.
I always think great dancing is like a volcano
but there's a huge rock on it and it wants to explode but you won't let it.
And you lift it and let a little out.
And that tension is what I get when I watch Michael Jackson and Fred Astaire.
When he got up it was like lightning in a bottle.
It was so charged you couldn't believe it.
It seemed to me that that energy but harnessed was exactly the same energy that Fred had.
Let's have a little look at Band Wagon and see if we can see any similarities
between Michael and Fred.
I love this. Almost like a tango. Sharp, crisp, precise...
Very specific. Ba. Ba. Choo-ka.
That's what you get with Smooth Criminal. Oh, yeah.
That crisp, clean, movement.
# MICHAEL JACKSON: Smooth Criminal
The sharpness, the precision.
That little push of the hat. So much of it is sexy, it's smooth.
It's powerful.
And this little strut.
This is so Fred.
That cockiness. "I got the world in my..." Look at that.
(LAUGHS)
# Annie are you OK #
Every time we did something where there was a dance break
where he would employ his tap that he had learned from being a kid
he would always say, "This is for Fred."
The other thing that was very interesting
is that they both had this long body.
Michael was so thin like Fred with these long arms and these long legs. Knowing how to use them
either percussively or in a legato fashion.
Aa-ow!
What Michael did, what Fred did, was give the world a man dancing that anybody could fall in love with.
Anybody, you know. And inspire you, make you want to get up, make you want to dance,
make you want to move.
It would have been incredible had they had an opportunity to do something together. Can you imagine?
In 1939
Fred and Ginger danced their last waltz
in The Story Of Vernon And Irene Castle.
The sadness of this sequence
is reflected in the way Fred slowly spins
and then gently holds Ginger.
Ginger wanted to concentrate on her solo acting career
so Fred, once again, had to go it alone.
He went on to make many more films
but by the 1950s
the heyday of musicals in Hollywood
was coming to an end.
Now the weeks of intense rehearsals that Fred demanded
could no longer be justified with dwindling box office returns.
Fred Astaire danced in and out of retirement till he was 70.
He never wanted to stop dancing
but he couldn't face carrying on
if he couldn't dance to his own exacting standards.
I'm beginning to feel at last that I know the real Fred Astaire
but there's still one thing that's worrying me.
How could a man who was an absolute mega star...
World famous and yet was never really sure of himself.
And I find it amazing that this man that was loved by millions
could still feel, in some ways, insecure.
Odd, because Fred's Hollywood career had been such a success.
He had achieved everything his mother had hoped for.
Fame,
fortune,
artistic success.
But when his life couldn't get any better his beloved wife Phyllis contracted lung cancer and died
when Fred was 46.
This ended 21 years of a blissful marriage and left Astaire devastated.
He was left to bring up his children alone.
This is my father and me when I was about ten years old, I think,
at our ranch in the San Fernando Valley where we spent every weekend.
That's Caledonia our dog at the time.
I am such an admirer of your father.
How was he as a dad?
He was a wonderful father. He was very kind. He was very thoughtful.
He did have a temper but only if it was something that would affect his work or me.
If anybody said anything to upset me he'd go out and try to kill them.
He had to take over my upbringing when I was 12 because we lost my mother.
And I became a companion to him as well as a daughter.
Did you ever dance with your dad?
When I was 18 and a debutant
the father and daughter waltz started the evening off
and we were all to dance a certain way. My father and I went the wrong way.
Not to try to gain attention. We just did it wrong.
I think that put him off dancing with me for the rest... It wasn't my fault.
I didn't pull him the wrong way. He would have lead you. Yeah.
What amazes me... He was an absolute mega star
and yet there always seemed to be some bit of self doubt in his performances.
Was he a bit of a tortured soul in that respect?
Yes, he was. He was such a perfectionist and it was always,
"Are you sure that was all right?"
Yeah. He was his own worst critic.
Do you think in later life that he did feel a sense of achievement
that what he had done will last for centuries.
He did. He was aware of his work
and what he produced
but he was kind of shy and humble about it too.
What do you think was the secret of your father's success?
Well, I think it had a lot to do with working very hard.
He really was a dedicated worker.
How would you sum your dad up in one sentence?
Good and kind and wonderful.
That's the greatest compliment you can give anyone.
Good, kind and wonderful.
Fred Astaire is the most
interesting, elegant, inventive dancer I have ever seen.
I realise now that there is not one thing that made him a star.
It was how he choreographed his life.
As a boy, feeling second best to his older sister
instilled a life-long, gruelling work ethic.
His ear for music and rhythm
meant he could play with tempos and steps
in a totally new and thrilling way.
As this clip from Flying Down To Rio shows.
And his passion for seeking out the new
led him to revolutionise how dancing was shown on film.
He is a true artistic genius
and Fred's effortless elegance and stylish dancing
had the chance to shine at the perfect moment -
the romantic Golden Age of Hollywood.
On June 22nd 1987 at the age of 88
Fred Astaire died from pneumonia.
Just before he died, he made a last request
to thank his fans for their years of support.
I tell you, at my age, it takes a lot to get me excited.
But I am truly excited about this.
In this box we have Fred Astaire's tap shoes from the film Top Hat.
And I'm going to have the privilege of opening the box and looking at the shoes.
These are about 80 years old
so I don't want to do anything untoward.
(LAUGHS)
He had small feet.
Ginger Rogers probably stepped on them a few times during rehearsals.
Her frocks probably brushed against them.
Here they are in action
in the last number
from Top Hat.
Fred Astaire
playfully mimics
the up-tempo rhythms of Irving Berlin's score
with the sharp staccato of his taps.
I now have greater respect for Fred Astaire.
He spent his entire life perfecting these dances
so that we, the audience, could sit back and be transported
to the wonderful world of dance.
You know, in a way, these shoes symbolise what Fred Astaire was
and what made him such a fantastic dancer.
You see the polish, the elegance, the style of the tops
but beneath it all, all the hard work.
They're worn. They're tried.
The hours and hours of practicing, perfecting, getting it right.
The striving for perfection.
One of my absolute heroes of my whole life
and to be sitting here holding one of his dance shoes
is fantastic.
subtitles by Deluxe
FRED ASTAIRE : # Some day
# When I'm awfully low
# When the world is cold
# I will feel a glow
# Just thinking of you
# Just the way
# you look tonight #