Fred Astaire

Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire is a biography of Fred Astaire, published in 2008 by Yale University Press and listed at 198 pages in the Open Library record. That record describes a portrait of Astaire’s life, personality, work habits and accomplishments, along with what it calls his “modest pretensions.” The publisher’s description on Google Books says the book traces how Astaire came to embody, for Americans, “a fantasy of easy elegance” and, in what it calls a more complicated way, “democratic aristocracy.”

Set against 14 other books on Astaire, it is the most recent, arriving 49 years after his memoir Steps in Time (1959) and 11 years after the 1997 titles by Larry Billman and George Baxt. A reader who wants Astaire’s own account has the memoir, and a reader who wants film history has Stanley Green’s Starring Fred Astaire (1973). Epstein’s book follows 10 earlier books classed as biography, the first of them Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers book (1972).

For fans

The publisher and the library record

The Open Library record files the book under the subjects Dancers, Biography and Astaire’s own name with the dates 1899-1987, and it also carries the tag “New York Times reviewed.” That record gives neither the date nor the wording of the Times review. The praise on record comes from the publisher’s description on Google Books, which speaks of “wit and grace” suited to the subject and calls the book a “remarkable portrait.” Those are the publisher’s terms, not a reviewer’s. Neither the Open Library record nor the Google Books description lists the book’s chapters or its sources.

Beside the other books on Astaire

Six of the 10 earlier biographies are dated between 1984 and 1988: Peter Carrick’s A tribute to Fred Astaire and Bob Thomas’s Astaire, the man, the dancer (both 1984), Roy Pickard’s Fred Astaire (1985), Tim Satchell’s Astaire and Bill Adler Sr’s Fred Astaire (both 1987), and Sarah Giles’s Fred Astaire (1988). The full title of the Thomas book says it comes with comments by Fred Astaire, while Epstein is the only author named on his. Two of the other books are novels, Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Dancing in the Dark (1996) and George Baxt’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers murder case (1997). Yale University Press is the only publisher among the 15 books with a university in its name; the others include Doubleday, St. Martin’s Press and Greenwood Press.