Read about what you can’t see
“We’ll urge Alan to resist the temptation to cover Astaire’s many television appearances, vacations, meetings, with agents, etc.” — Gary Morris
Fat chance, Gary. As long as Fred’s dancing, I’m on it. It’s not my fault that you can’t see it. The fact is, Fred did a lot of TV before he hung up his pumps, but none of it is available except on the tiny YouTube screen. Whether anyone gives a damn is another question.
Network radio disappeared. You couldn’t listen to Gangbusters or The FBI in Peace and War or Jack Benny any more. Hollywood began to contract in the presence of the new giant as well. The big sword-and-sandal epics of the early fifties disappeared.1 The year 1957 saw four major musicals — Pal Joey, The Pajama Game, Les Girls, and Silk Stockings — while 1958 saw only one, Damn Yankees!, Gwen Verdon’s first and last big Hollywood role. Big Hollywood wasn’t quite as big as it used to be.
Watching clips from the show today, it’s easy to see why it was such a hit. Facing a live audience for the first time in decades, Fred danced with the same energy and confidence that he had showed in Silk Stockings. Chase looked terrific and showed off some impressive technique as well. If not quite another Cyd Charisse, she came close enough for television.
Not too surprisingly, a year later Fred did Another Evening with Fred Astaire, but, apparently, evenings with Fred Astaire were so 1958. I can’t really remember what was happening on the tube in ’59, but it wasn’t Fred. The show was only nominated for two Emmys, and it didn’t win any.
In fact, there was a definite falling-off in the second show. Fred does more posing than dancing, and, with Fred toning down his act, Barrie had to do the same. It wouldn’t look right for her to be flying around the room while Fred just stood there.
I don’t know if it was Fred who got tired or Barrie, but after 1960 Fred switched pretty steadily to the hosting thing, which made sense now that he was in his sixties. But “sense” and “movie star ego” are not quite the same thing. Fred wanted to be Fred Astaire, goddamnit! And Fred Astaire dances!
In the mid-sixties, a show that I never remember seeing, Hollywood Palace, made a point of mixing geezers with “young talent,” more or less. Fred hosted four episodes, and did some singing and dancing as well. The first, in October 1965, was a remarkable mélange featuring Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn; the “We Five,” specialists in close-harmony sixties crap; Paul Lynde; jazz organist Jimmy Smith; and, of course, Jackie Mason.
Think it couldn’t get any worse? Well, I don’t know. The next Fred episode featured Marcel Marceau (love those mimes!), singer Jack Jones, “comedian” Pat Morita, and two acrobatic troupes, the Handy Family and the Rogge Sisters. To keep Fred’s sanity, Ethel Merman showed up, and the two probably held hands, trying to pretend the year was 1936 instead of 1966. For Fred’s fourth and final outing, he brought back Barrie Chase, along with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, big band singer Helen O’Connell, comedian Louis Nye, and a juggler and a lion tamer.
After that, Fred had danced his last dance, though he never stopped working. A few similar obsessive-compulsives, like Katherine Hepburn, were lucky enough to be able to ride out their lives in vehicles especially designed for them. Fred wasn’t always so fortunate, appearing in such lame trash as The Over the Hill Gang Rides Again and The Amazing Dobermans, last appearing in Ghost Story (1981) when he was 82.
Afterwords
If you want to check out Fred and Barrie on YouTube, an index is here.
Editor’s Note: Next issue: Fred goes to the bathroom, and Alan is there to cover it! — G.M.
- Well, for the most part. Hollywood couldn’t swear off big entirely. When I saw Ben-Hur in 1959, I thought it was the worst movie I’d ever seen. When it won twelve academy awards, my trust in adults, already severely shaken by the popularity of Liberace and Milton Berle, disappeared entirely. [↩]
- Jones was black, so give Fred two points for “integration.” Jones, an excellent trumpeter, very much a Louis Armstrong acolyte, worked in other people’s big bands throughout the Swing Era, but in the fifties he somehow reinvented himself and became one of the most popular jazz acts in the country, releasing dozens of successful lps. [↩]