Fred Astaire
WARNING
You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com
Joseph Epstein
View Inside
Format: PaperPrice: $15.00
e-book
A portrait of America’s most graceful and elegant male dancer and how he came to represent the essence of style, suavity, and charm
Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire investigates the great dancer’s magical talent, taking up the story of his life, his personality, his work habits, his modest pretensions, and above all his accomplishments. Written with the wit and grace the subject deserves, Fred Astaire provides a remarkable portrait of this extraordinary artist and how he came to embody for Americans a fantasy of easy elegance and, paradoxically, of democratic aristocracy.
Tracing Astaire’s life from his birth in Omaha to his death in his late eighties in Hollywood, the book discusses his early days with his talented and outspoken sister Adele, his gifts as a singer (Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern all delighted in composing for Astaire), and his many movie dance partners, among them Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, and Betty Hutton. A key chapter of the book is devoted to Astaire’s somewhat unwilling partnership with Ginger Rogers, the woman with whom he danced most dazzlingly. What emerges from these pages is a fascinating view of an American era, seen through the accomplishments of Fred Astaire, an unassuming but uncompromising performer who transformed entertainment into art and gave America a new yet enduring standard for style.
Joseph Epstein is the author of, among other books, Snobbery, Friendship, and Fabulous Small Jews. He has been editor of American Scholar and has written for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Commentary, Town and Country, and other magazines.
“[Astaire’s] gift was to lift people’s spirits from their drab circumstances in a realm that was entirely magical . . . Joseph Epstein, with erudition, wit and panache, sets out to explore the magic and how it was achieved.” — Francis Phillips, Catholic Herald
“[A] witty, graceful … delightful book.” - Richard Edmonds, Birmingham Post
‘Epstein paints a charming picture of an understated man.’
“An IndieNext Pick” from the American Booksellers Association
Publication Date: October 6, 2009
2 b/w illus.
