Let’s talk about Fred. And his
partners: Rita, Cyd, Paulette, Vera-Ellen, Nanette, the two Powells — Eleanor
and Jane — Judy, Leslie, Audrey, numerous couches and chairs, several tables
(dining and coffee), a British ceiling and one supremely fortunate coat rack.
But mainly, of course, there was the divine Ginger, always magnificently
dressed, occasionally, as in “Top Hat,” by three or four well-endowed
ostriches.
While the Hays Office in the
mid-’30s was in its most censorial early days, its enforcers changing any
plotline or dialogue from which they could squeeze sexual innuendo, they
managed in their verbal vigilance to, myopically, overlook Fred Astaire’s duets
with Ginger Rogers, in which he demonstrates clearly, concisely, even overtly,
every move any aspiring lover might do well to adopt. Put down the Kama Sutra
and its impossible acrobatics, rent “The Gay Divorcee” and watch Astaire seduce
a resistant Rogers, transforming her from a feisty, fast-talking, fast-walking,
too-good-for-you dame into a dewy-eyed ingénue.
“That? Oh, that was nothing,” his
modesty after brilliance his most disarming charm.
Astaire is our American Casanova
camouflaged in tux and tails or sailor suit as a clean-cut gentleman, sometimes
a naïve goof, zooming about in Hollywood musical fluff. Good, solid, still
funny fluff. As “Night and Day” closes, Astaire lands Rogers gently on a steep
incline — she’s mesmerized by the magician who just took her on the ride of her
life — bends over her suggestively, pulls back and says, “Cigarette?” Mute and
dazed, she declines. But we need Paul Henreid to light one for us. Yep, the
Hays Office really did miss the dance. Thank God.
Rogers was Astaire’s best partner
(the coat rack vying for a close second), though none, not even she, could
match him as a dancer — watch how he takes off in his solos like Mercury in
winged taps. But it didn’t matter: they were good and gorgeous, and he did the
rest. Hermes Pan, Astaire’s longtime choreographic collaborator, said, “Except
for times Fred worked with real professional dancers like Cyd Charisse, it was
a 25-year war.” So why did these women look like goddesses with Astaire?
Because of Adele.
Adele? Yes, his sister, Adele.
For the duration of their astonishing 27-year partnership, the longest in his
life — it began when Fred was 5 and Adele 8 — she was the undisputed star of
the duo. In her fascinating new book, “The
Astaires,” the Australian theater historian Kathleen Riley describes the exploits of this brother-sister team
in glorious detail. And it becomes clear that it was behind and beside, but
never in front of, Adele that Fred learned not only how to dance, but how to
present a woman, honor her and make her glow. It is now a mostly lost art,
hard-won equality having removed woman’s pedestal and left her prevaricating in
the ditch of parallelism.
He can certainly restore one’s
faith in humanity should it, by chance, ever falter — or at least in one
extraordinary human being’s capacity for beauty. “He is like Bach,” George
Balanchine said. “Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so
much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.”
Riley performs the great service
of giving us the history before the history, of Fred and Adele, the biggest
vaudeville and musical theater stars of their time. It’s a love story rarely
told, of that between a sister and her brother, one bonded in blood but
cemented by hoofing.
As the toasts of the town they
cavorted with Noël Coward, the Prince of Wales (long before Mrs. Simpson) — he
saw the show 10 times — and the prince’s three brothers, who ushered the young
Americans about town to all the trendiest clubs, where Fred was caught dancing
an “inappropriate” Charleston with Lady Edwina Mountbatten. When not dancing,
the siblings endorsed shampoo, cold cream, pens, toothbrushes, bronchial
pastilles and shoes. “Astairia” was afoot.
J. M. Barrie asked Adele to play
Peter Pan (she couldn’t for contractual reasons), while P. G. Wodehouse, A. A.
Milne, John Galsworthy, Hugh Walpole and Somerset Maugham became admirers and
friends. Cecil Beaton likened Adele, “with her large amusing head on a minute
exquisite little body,” to Felix the Cat, while another critic took a more
existential tone: “Hers is not only the poetry of motion but its wit, its
malice, its humor.”
While there is, sadly, no footage
of Fred and Adele dancing together, there is one other way, besides Nathan’s
glorious flurries, to reach back in time and touch her, via a handful of audio
recordings of the Astaires singing, made in the late 1920s. In “Funny Face” —
written for them — they sing to each other, starting with Fred: “You have all
the qualities of Peter Pan / . . . You’re a cutie / With more than beauty /
You’ve got such a lot / of Personal-i-T-N-T.”
Riley’s book makes clear that
during those three decades of dancing with Adele, Fred was driven, in part, by
the belief that he was “a detriment to my sister,” and thus honed his craft on
so many levels, devising new levels in the process, that he became a creature,
like Mayakovsky’s “cloud in trousers,” beyond his sister’s obviously radiant,
though possibly only-of-her-time, talent. While Adele charmed them in the
spotlight, her brother became an artist of the highest order.
When Astaire was given a Life
Achievement Award by the American Film Institute, in 1981, he was 81 years old.
As he took the stage a single ring shone on his elegant hands: the gold signet
pinky ring that Adele had given him in London over 50 years earlier. This ring
can be seen in virtually all his films, circling his finger as he circles the
waists of one beautiful woman after another. “My sister, Adele,” he said in his
unscripted speech, “was mostly responsible for my being in show business. She
was the whole show, she really was. In all the vaudeville acts we had and the
musical comedies we did together, Delly was the one that was the shining light
and I was just there pushing away.”
Just pushing away. Like Bach.