Starring Fred Astaire

Starring Fred Astaire is a book about Fred Astaire by Stanley Green, dated 1973 and published by Doubleday in the catalog entry. The catalog classes it as film history. Open Library files it under the subjects “History and criticism” and “Musicals” and records a 1977 edition of 501 pages.

The classification separates it from the other Astaire books in the catalog, which are listed as a memoir, biographies and two novels. Its subject headings point to a reader interested in the history and criticism of musicals, and not to one looking for a life story.

For fans

The library records

The records disagree on the credit and the imprint. The catalog entry and Open Library name Green alone. Google Books, describing a Doubleday Books edition of 1 Jan 1977 with 501 pages, names both Stanley Green and Burt Goldblatt. The bibliography in Wikipedia’s Astaire entry also credits Green and Goldblatt, but it dates the book 1973 and gives the publisher as Dodd. These entries do not explain whether Dodd and Doubleday issued separate editions.

Beside the other Astaire books

By date, the book stands early among the Astaire titles in the catalog. Only two come before it: Astaire’s memoir Steps in Time (1959) and Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers book (1972), which appeared one year earlier. Michael Freedland’s Fred Astaire followed in 1976 and Benny Green’s Fred Astaire in 1979. Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire came in 2008, 35 years after the catalog’s date for Green’s book. Sarah Giles’s Fred Astaire (1988) is the only other title on that list under the Doubleday name. Neither the Open Library record nor the Google Books record carries a description of the contents or a reviewer’s account.