Fred Astaire Week: One for My Baby

August 21, 2012 • 3:33 pm

There are really more than a week’s worth of Fred Astaire videos worth highlighting, so “Astaire Week” may go on for ten days or so.

This video starts with Astaire, drunk and dolorous, singing, and then segues into a wonderful dance routine where he breaks real glasses (and a mirror) during the dance. It’s said that he cut his ankle quite badly during the filming. As the YouTube notes say:

Fred Astaire dancing and singing to “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)”. Song written for him to perform in the movie “The Sky’s the Limit” (1943). Words by Johnny Mercer and music by Harold Arlen, dance by Fred Astaire.

The dancing and singing stop at 5:45, so you may want to quit watching at that time.

Dancers and choreographers on Astaire (from WikiQuote):

  • He is terribly rare. He is like Bach, who in his time had a great concentration of ability, essence, knowledge, a spread of music. Astaire has that same concentration of genius; there is so much of the dance in him that it has been distilled.
    • George Balanchine in Nabokov, Ivan and Carmichael, Elizabeth. “Balanchine, An Interview”. Horizon, January 1961, pp. 44-56. (M)
  • He is the most interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our times… you see a little bit of Astaire in everybody’s dancing–a pause here, a move there. It was all Astaire’s originally.
    • George Balanchine, quoted in Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1985. ISBN 0297784021 p.33.
  • What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It’s no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he’s too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It’s too hard to face.
    • Mikhail Baryshnikov at the 1978 Kennedy Center Honours for Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, as quoted in Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0-09-173736-2 p.255.
  • He’s a genius…a classical dancer like I never saw in my life.
    • Mikhail Baryshnikov in “Interview with Mike Wallace”, 60 Minutes, CBS Television. February 18, 1979
  • He was not just the best ballroom dancer, or tap dancer, he was simply the greatest, most imaginative, dancer of our time.
    • Rudolph Nureyev quoted in Cooke, Alistair. “Fred Astaire Obituary”, Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 1987
  • When I was in the Soviet Union recently I was being interviewed by a newspaperman and he said, “Which dancers influenced you the most?” and I said, “Oh, well, Fred Astaire.” He looked very surprised and shocked and I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “Well, Mr. Balanchine just said the same thing.”
    • Jerome Robbins in Heeley, David, producer and director. Fred Astaire: Puttin’ on his Top Hat and Fred Astaire: Change Partners and Dance (two television programs written by John L. Miller), PBS, March 1980. (M)
  • The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.
    • Gene Kelly in Heeley, David, producer and director. Fred Astaire: Puttin’ on his Top Hat and Fred Astaire: Change Partners and Dance (two television programs written by John L. Miller), PBS, March 1980. (M)

30 thoughts on “Fred Astaire Week: One for My Baby”

    1. @Martha

      Fred Astaire was the first to perform the song ‘One For My Baby’ in the musical ‘The Sky’s the Limit’ (1943). Frank Sinatra didn’t record it until 1947. The song itself was actually written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. Like a lot of songs in those days, they were performed by MANY different artists. If you look, Fred and Frank (and other great celebs of the time) sang A LOT of the same songs that were usually composed by different people, like Irving Berlin and such! 🙂

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_My_Baby_(and_One_More_for_the_Road)

  3. And who influenced him in his earliest dancing years? Bojangles, according to Wikipedia.

  4. Seriously, what gives. I know you don’t take kindly to people questioning your music taste and fair enough with that. Also cats, well I’m a dog lover so there. Though what the fuck is this shit. You must be about the same age as me yet you think this crap is good? I would rather put my genitals in a blender than sit thought this escapism crap. Looks like I need to avoid this website for a while.

    1. Sometimes what seems like light-hearted entertainment can illuminate the path to better human possibilities.

      As the Wikipedia article on escapism notes, “German social philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote that utopias and images of fulfillment, however regressive they might be, also included an impetus for a radical social change. According to Bloch, social justice could not be realized without seeing things fundamentally differently. Something that is mere “daydreaming” or “escapism” from the viewpoint of a technological-rational society might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, as it can be seen as an “immature, but honest substitute for revolution”.

      I could have just said somebody got beaten up with the grumpy stick, but I think this is more articulate.

    2. “I would rather put my genitals in a blender than sit thought this escapism crap.” On the web, people would pay to watch that. The words ‘miserable’ & ‘git’ spring to mind, but as I don’t want to appear rude I will not apply them to you!

    3. ” I would rather put my genitals in a blender”

      My nominee for the Darwin Award 2012.
      Congratulations!

      1. Though I also consider musicals and dance based films on the whole to be unpalatable–just not enough mental stimulation/substance–I still am bowled over by Astaire. If you can appreciate beauty, you should be able to get what he is all about.

    4. Leech, what is the point of your post except to be splenetic and throw in a few curse words?

      I would recommend, however, trying for the Darwin award in the way you mention, which could only upgrade the human gene pool.

      There are plenty of other sites about dogs that also lack Fred Astaire, so please, by all means go away and look at those.

      2. Well said.

        Some people try every trick in the book to get attention.

        I’m impressed by all the measured and polite responses to this Leech critter.

        My take on it is “If catz, why not spats?”.

        Keep on keepin’ on, Jerry.

    8. Oops – that should read:

      Looks like I need to avoid this website for a while.

      Feel free. This also applies to your previous sentence.

  5. Breaks a real glass?? I don’t doubt your sources, but Hollywood had developed by this time a solid substance made from sugar water that looked just like glass on camera, but wouldn’t cut you when you smashed it. (Too fragile to be used as real glass, and when smashed the sound-boys just added the sound of real glass shattering.)

    Unfortunately, like about roughly 1 to 5% of YouTube videos, this has sound in only one channel!!

    1. I was told by someone who’s read a lot about Astaire that these were indeed real glasses. I’ll try to check on this.

    2. Here’s the reference for the use of real glass:

      As Mueller writes, “As it happened, real glass was used in the scene, though, as much for economy as for patriotism, RKO purchased factory rejects for the occasion. Ironically, in peacetime, breakaway glass made of sugar would have been used, but sugar was rationed in 1943. Astaire cut his shins and ankles doing the number, and the dance was dangerous in other ways as well: the bar was slippery, and the choreography called for Astaire to slide and sway his way along the edge. Two nurses stood by throughout the filming of the number, as well as Astaire’s concerned wife.” The number took two and a half days to shoot and the prop men needed a half an hour just to reset the glasses for another take.

      1. I guess that settles it. I was wondering if they were able to make the simpler shape of windows but not glasses out of it.

        Thanks.

  7. Nice to see Alistair Cooke’s obituary of Fred Astaire acknowledged.
    If Astaire is a benchmark, then Alistair Cooke was the Fred Astaire of radio.
    (Double bias disclosure: my mom was trained as a professional ballerina, so no chance of evading any Fred Astaire celebration, ever; and I used to listen to A.C. every week for 30+ years.)

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