LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Fred Astaire: Dances
built 275 days ago
Astaire didn't give up dancing completely, and made a series of high-rated specials for television into the early 1960s. One of these programs, 1958's An Evening with Fred Astaire, won nine Emmy Awards including "Best Single Performance by an Actor" and "Most Outstanding Single Program of the Year." It was ... noteworthy for being the first major broadcast to be prerecorded on color videotape.
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Astaire did not retire from dancing completely. He made a series of four highly rated, Emmy-winning musical specials for television in 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1968, each featuring Barrie Chase, with whom Astaire enjoyed an Indian summer of dance creativity. The first of these programs, 1958's An Evening with Fred Astaire, won nine Emmy Awards,[25] including "Best Single Performance by an Actor" and "Most Outstanding Single Program of the Year." It was ... noteworthy for being the first major broadcast to be prerecorded on color videotape.
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By 1970, the 70-year-old Astaire was semi-retired, but he continued to work periodically. He co-starred in a Western TV movie, The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again, broadcast on ABC on November 17, 1970, and less than a month later, on December 13, served as a voice for the animated TV film Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, which was accompanied by a soundtrack LP released by MGM. In 1972, he appeared in two television specials, the first a Gershwin tribute, 'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous, 'S Gershwin, broadcast on NBC on January 17, which ... had a soundtrack LP released on Daybreak Records, and the second a patriotic program, Make Mine Red, White and Blue, broadcast on NBC on September 9, for which he served as host. In May 1974, he was one of the hosts of the anthology film That's Entertainment!, consisting of clips from MGM musicals. The film was an enormous hit, with a double-LP soundtrack album that reached the charts, and was followed two years later by That's Entertainment, Part II, for which Astaire and Gene Kelly served as hosts, and for which they did a little modest singing and dancing. Of course, it too was accompanied by a soundtrack album.
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In 1942 Astaire and Crosby were paired in the Irving Berlin musical "Holiday Inn." In the movie Bing wins the girl and sings what turned out to be the most successful movie song of the century, White Christmas. Bing ... dances with Astaire, who later said that "Bing's the kind of dancer that I am a singer." Nevertheless, for many years Fred would answer "Bing Crosby" when asked to name his favorite dance partner -- to avoid alienating any of his female co-stars.
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Astaire had the singular ability to tell stories through the medium of the body in combination with the face, a face that never quite became handsome but was transformed through his inimitable poise into something persuasively alluring. Beyond that, as proved in the 1936 solo "Bojangles of Harlem," Astaire was capable of overcoming a condescending set of lyrics and the toned-down burnt-cork conventions of minstrelsy. In their place, he offers a joie de vivre that celebrates the richest meaning of its subject rather than insults a grand master of the tap dance and the ethnic group from which he came. Such transcendence was central to the power of Armstrong's art, which could overcome lyrics, ditties, minstrelsy, and anything else that would reduce the force of his aesthetic will.
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In 1946 Astaire retired from motion pictures to create a chain of successful dancing schools. In 1947 he returned to movies to make the highly profitable Easter Parade at Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM). Nine more musicals followed. Astaire's success was marred in 1954... when his beloved wife died from cancer.
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