Fred Astaire / Steven Marans.
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 remarkabl...
Saved in:
| Online Access: |
Full Text (via De Gruyter) |
|---|---|
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New Haven, CT :
Yale University Press,
[2012]
|
| Series: | Icons of America.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | 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. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-191) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780300173529 0300173520 1282501410 9781282501416 9786612501418 6612501413 1441645594 9781441645593 |
| Language: | In English. |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Sep 2018). |