Steps in time

Steps in Time is Fred Astaire’s account of his own career, published in 1959 and classed in the catalog as a memoir. It is for the reader who wants that career under Astaire’s name rather than a biographer’s. Open Library’s description says the book runs “from childhood to the present” and takes in the theater, the movies, television and international society. Its subject headings in that record include dancers, dance and actors’ biography.

The catalog lists 14 other books about Astaire, and all of them are dated later. The nearest, Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book, came out in 1972, 13 years after the memoir, and the most recent, Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire, came out in 2008. Steps in Time is the only memoir in that list, which otherwise holds 11 books classed as biography, one classed as film history (Stanley Green’s Starring Fred Astaire, 1973) and two novels (Stuart M. Kaminsky’s Dancing in the Dark, 1996, and George Baxt’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Murder Case, 1997). The catalog’s full title for Bob Thomas’s 1984 biography says it comes with comments by Astaire, but Thomas is the named author.

For fans

The editions on record

A Google Books record gives the title as Steps in Time: An Autobiography and lists a 2000 edition from Cooper Square Publishers at 376 pages. The publisher description in that record says Astaire lets readers see through his “effortless balletic exuberance.” Open Library lists a Harper Paperbacks edition dated August 5, 2008, at 384 pages. The records differ on the first publisher: the catalog facts pair 1959 with Harper Paperbacks, while Wikipedia’s bibliography for Astaire cites Harper Collins, 1959, with a warning that the ISBN does not fit the date.

What Wikipedia reports

Wikipedia’s article on Astaire states that he wrote the autobiography himself and published it in 1959. The article quotes the book on Eleanor Powell, his partner in Broadway Melody of 1940: there was “no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie,” he wrote, and her tap dancing was “in a class by herself.”

The same article records that Astaire refused permission for film portrayals of his life, saying “I shall not sell,” and that his will asked that no such portrayal ever take place. It adds that his estate did not keep the film rights to Steps in Time, which were ultimately sold to Sony. It also reports that Tom Holland announced on December 5, 2021, that he would play Astaire in a biopic directed by Paul King and written by Steven Levenson, without saying whether that film draws on the book. Wikipedia’s article gives no account of how reviewers received the memoir.