A tribute to Fred Astaire

A tribute to Fred Astaire is a biography of Fred Astaire by Peter Carrick, published in 1984 by R. Hale. The Open Library record gives it 188 pages and names The Crowood Press beside R. Hale as a publisher. Its subject headings are dancers, biography, and motion picture actors and actresses, along with Astaire himself under the dates 1899-1987.

The catalog lists one other Astaire book from 1984, Bob Thomas’s Astaire, the man, the dancer, published by St. Martin’s Press. Both are classed as biographies. The full title of the Thomas book announces comments by Astaire, while the Open Library record for Carrick’s book mentions none.

For fans

Five of the Astaire books in the catalog carry earlier dates than Carrick’s. They are Astaire’s own memoir Steps in time (1959), Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers book (1972), Stanley Green’s film history Starring Fred Astaire (1973), and the biographies titled Fred Astaire by Michael Freedland (1976) and Benny Green (1979).

The later entries include more biographies: Roy Pickard (1985), Tim Satchell and Bill Adler Sr (both 1987), Sarah Giles (1988), Larry Billman (1997) and Joseph Epstein (2008). Two later titles are novels, Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Dancing in the Dark (1996) and George Baxt’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers murder case (1997).

A Google Books record lists a version on 5 cassettes and names Peter Carrick and Christopher Kay as authors. That record does not state what Kay contributed. The Open Library and Google Books records carry no chapter description and no reviews, so little is recorded about the book’s contents beyond its subject headings.