Fred Astaire

Larry Billman’s Fred Astaire, published by Greenwood Press in 1997, is what the publisher’s description calls a reference book on Fred Astaire. Google Books gives the full title as Fred Astaire: A Bio-Bibliography and the publication date as 26 Aug 1997. Open Library gives the length as 402 pages, and its subject headings include Dancers, Biography, Bibliography and Motion pictures, bibliography.

The publisher’s description calls the volume a “complete guide” to Astaire’s life and career. It opens with a biography that runs from his 1899 birth in Omaha and his 1905 professional debut, through Broadway and Hollywood, to his death in 1987. A chronology comes next, and the later chapters take up his stage, film, radio and television work. The Google Books summary says the book covers “all of Astaire’s performances.” The catalog files it as a biography, but its subtitle is the only one in the catalog’s Astaire list to use the word bio-bibliography.

For fans

The publisher’s account

Greenwood’s description says each performance entry gives cast and credit details, a plot synopsis, critical commentary and passages from reviews. The volume also lists his recordings and “unfulfilled projects,” and an annotated bibliography, which the publisher calls “extensive,” closes it. The description also characterizes its subject. It says Astaire “treasured his family” and was “remarkably free from scandal,” and it says his work as a choreographer, dance director and creator of musical sequences permanently changed how dance was presented on film. The description says nothing about Billman himself.

A difference over the Rogers films

The publisher’s description refers to an “eleven-film collaboration” with Ginger Rogers. Wikipedia’s article on Astaire, which lists Billman’s book in its bibliography, gives a different count. It says the two co-starred in ten Hollywood musicals, naming nine at RKO and a final reunion at MGM, The Barkleys of Broadway, in 1949.

Among the other Astaire books

The catalog lists twelve books about Astaire from before 1997, beginning with his own memoir, Steps in Time (1959), and including Stanley Green’s film history, Starring Fred Astaire (1973). Among the books it classes as biographies, the nearest before Billman’s is Sarah Giles’s Fred Astaire (1988, Doubleday) and the next after it is Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire (2008, Yale University Press). George Baxt’s novel The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers murder case also appeared in 1997. Seven books in the list share the title Fred Astaire: Billman’s and those by Michael Freedland (1976), Benny Green (1979), Roy Pickard (1985), Bill Adler Sr (1987), Giles and Epstein.