Astaire, the man, the dancer

Astaire, the Man, the Dancer is Bob Thomas’s biography of Fred Astaire, published in 1984 by St. Martin’s Press. Its subtitle, as Open Library records it, calls the book a life of Astaire and credits “comments by Fred Astaire” to the star himself. It suits a reader who wants a biographer’s account with the subject’s remarks credited alongside it.

The nearest comparison is Astaire’s own memoir, Steps in Time (1959), which came 25 years earlier. Thomas’s book also follows Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972) and Stanley Green’s film history Starring Fred Astaire (1973). Peter Carrick’s A Tribute to Fred Astaire appeared in the same year, 1984. Later biographies include Tim Satchell’s Astaire (1987), Sarah Giles’s Fred Astaire (1988) and Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire (2008).

For fans

The publisher’s account

The Google Books record for a 2001 New Millenium edition carries a publisher’s description that opens in January 1933, with Astaire, then a young Broadway star, arriving at RKO for a screen test. It quotes the reaction of one official: “Can’t act Slightly bald. Also dances”. The description credits him with nearly eighty years of work across every major entertainment medium, while Wikipedia’s Astaire article gives his career as 76 years. It says the book captures his elegance and mystique, and it calls the book a tribute to Astaire and his art. The description does not mention the comments by Astaire that the subtitle credits.

The screen-test story

Wikipedia’s Astaire article treats the test report as Hollywood folklore and says that both the report and the test are now lost. It gives one version in which he also cannot sing and “Can dance a little.” Pandro S. Berman, producer of the Astaire and Rogers pictures, claimed the story was unknown to him in the 1930s and surfaced only years later. The same article says Astaire insisted the report had read “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Also dances.” With the report lost, its wording cannot be confirmed.

Beside the earlier biographies

The 2001 description bills the book as “the first complete, up-to-date biography.” Three books classed as biographies came out before it: Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972), Michael Freedland’s Fred Astaire (1976) and Benny Green’s Fred Astaire (1979). The description names none of them.

The editions on record

Open Library lists an edition published in November 1985 under the name St Martins Mass Market Paper. The bibliography in Wikipedia’s Astaire article cites a 1985 London edition from Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Neither that entry nor the Google Books description records how the book was written or how reviewers received it.