The only star who out-danced Fred Astaire, according to Fred Astaire: “In a class by herself”
Fred Astaire was an unlikely Hollywood star. In an era when the wolfish good looks of Clark Gable and Errol Flynn adorned movie posters, Astaire’s gangly frame and big ears didn’t exactly fit the movie star mould. And yet, at his peak, he could compete at the box office with the best of them. He started as a vaudeville performer with his sister, Adele, at the tender age of six, wearing a top hat and tails. Given how early he started working as a dancer, it’s no wonder he made it look as easy as walking by the time he made it to Hollywood.
As early as the 1920s, Astaire was invited to Los Angeles to do a screentest for a major studio. Not surprisingly, given his inexperience as an actor and lack of leading man looks, they declined to put him under contract, and he went back to dancing on Broadway. When he finally did break through in movies, it was by accident. In 1933, he was brought in to do a dance number in the musical Flying Down to Rio, for which he received fifth billing. The studio provided him with an up-and-coming actor as a partner – Ginger Rogers.
Despite being only minor characters in the film, their dance routine stole critics’ hearts, and the studio quickly decided to test their appeal by putting them in their own movie. Between 1933 and 1949, they made 10 movies together and became known simply as ‘Fred and Ginger.’ Given their lengthy tenure as one of America’s favourite on-screen couples, you might assume that Astaire would consider Rogers to be his greatest Hollywood dance partner, but that distinction goes to someone else.
In 1940, after nine films with Rogers, Astaire struck out on his own, becoming a rare freelancer in an industry dominated by studios. His first dance partner after Rogers was Eleanor Powell, a Broadway veteran who became a star of MGM musicals in the 1930s. She didn’t start dancing until she was 11, but she was a prodigy. No one moved like her. She was known for her tap dancing, but her movement was informed by her ballet and acrobatics training, which gave her a style all her own.
Astaire and Powell were paired in the film Broadway Melody of 1940, in which they performed a tap routine to Cole Porter’s ‘Begin the Beguine.’ Even now, it is considered one of the greatest dance sequences in film history.
According to people who worked on the film, Astaire found his co-star’s talents to be downright intimidating, which is probably why he resorted to comparing her to a man in his memoir, Steps in Time. “She ‘put ’em down’ like a man, no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.”
If it hadn’t been for Powell, he might not have made the film. Astaire had been reluctant to do it because it was in black and white, and he’d been hoping to branch out into Technicolor, but he leapt at the chance to work with the MGM star. Even though the film was only marginally successful, he counted it as more than worthwhile, “if only for the opportunity of working with Eleanor.”
