Fred Astaire

Benny Green’s Fred Astaire is a biography of Fred Astaire, published by Hamlyn in 1979. Open Library files the work under four subjects: Dancers, Biography, Motion picture actors and actresses, and Bildband. Its record gives 176 pages for an edition published in 1984, while Google Books lists a 1979 publication of 184 pages. Neither record explains the difference in length.

Several books on Astaire carry the same plain title, so the author and the publisher are what identify this one. Michael Freedland (1976), Roy Pickard (1985), Bill Adler Sr (1987), Sarah Giles (1988), Larry Billman (1997) and Joseph Epstein (2008) each wrote a book called Fred Astaire. Green’s came from Hamlyn, and none of those six did.

For fans

What the records say

Open Library’s entry gives 1979 and Hamlyn for the book, and its work record names Hamlyn again for the 1984 edition. Wikipedia’s article on Fred Astaire cites Green’s book in its bibliography under a different date and publisher, 1980 and Bookthrift Co., with ISBN 0-89673-018-2. None of these records says whether the 1980 and 1984 dates mark reprints or new editions.

Beside the other Astaire books

Four of the other books on Astaire predate Green’s. Astaire’s own memoir, Steps in Time, dates from 1959. Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972) and Freedland’s Fred Astaire (1976) are both listed as biographies, and Stanley Green’s Starring Fred Astaire (1973) is listed as film history. Stanley Green and Benny Green share a surname, but the two books have separate authors.

After 1979, the next listed titles are dated 1984: Peter Carrick’s A Tribute to Fred Astaire and Bob Thomas’s Astaire, the Man, the Dancer, whose full title promises comments by Astaire himself. Tim Satchell’s Astaire followed in 1987. Two novels came later, Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Dancing in the Dark (1996) and George Baxt’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Murder Case (1997).

The Open Library and Google Books records carry no description of the contents, no review and no publisher’s account, so little is recorded there about what Green wrote.