Astaire

Astaire is a biography of Fred Astaire by Tim Satchell, published in 1987 by Hutchinson and given 309 pages in the Open Library record. Wikipedia’s bibliography for Astaire cites it as “Astaire, The Biography,” with London as the place of publication. Open Library files it under biography, dancers, motion picture actors and actresses, and motion pictures, with the subject heading “Astaire, fred, 1899-1987.”

Among the books on Astaire in the catalog, it shares its year with Bill Adler Sr’s Fred Astaire (1987, Landmark Books) and is dated one year before Sarah Giles’s Fred Astaire (1988, Doubleday). It is a biography by an author other than its subject, while Steps in Time (1959, Harper Paperbacks) is listed as a memoir by Astaire himself.

For fans

The library records

The Open Library record gives Hutchinson as the publisher, 1987 as the edition year and 309 pages as the length. A Google Books record lists the title as “Astaire: The Biography,” published in 1988 by Arrow, also at 309 pages. Wikipedia gives June 22, 1987, as the date of Astaire’s death. The Open Library record gives no month of publication, so it does not show whether the Hutchinson edition appeared before or after that date.

Beside the other books

The catalog lists eight books on Astaire dated before 1987. One is the 1959 memoir, one is Stanley Green’s film history Starring Fred Astaire (1973), and six are classed as biographies, among them Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972) and Michael Freedland’s Fred Astaire (1976). The full catalog title of Bob Thomas’s 1984 book states that it comes with comments by Astaire, and the title of Satchell’s book, as Open Library and Google Books give it, carries no such line.

Five books in the catalog are dated after it. Three are classed as biographies: Giles’s (1988), Larry Billman’s (1997, Greenwood Press) and Joseph Epstein’s (2008, Yale University Press). Two are novels, Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Dancing in the Dark (1996) and George Baxt’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Murder Case (1997). Neither the Open Library record nor the Google Books record carries a description of the book’s contents or a review, and Wikipedia’s entry on Astaire names it in its bibliography.