BOOK OF THE DAY: Fred AstaireBy Joseph Epstein Yale University Press 198pp, Sterling 14.99
WOMEN WHO managed to drag a protesting Fred Astaire on to the dance floor found him disappointingly lacking in vim.
That's because at social events he wasn't really much of a dancer.
It was different when he was rehearsing or filming, of course. Then he was the dancer, driven almost to the point of mania, insisting on multiple takes until his partners' feet sometimes bled, spending hours perfecting a routine only to scrap it when a new idea seized him. This relentless quest for perfection was central to his character, but when you saw the result of all the angst and torture he'd inflicted on himself and others, it looked so nonchalant and effortless.
Joseph Epstein's book is rather like the Fred we know from the movies: charming, breezy, slim and elegant. It doesn't pretend to be an exhaustive biography or filmography but seeks something harder to pinpoint: "About Astaire's sublimity there seems to be little argument. Of what does this sublimity consist? Why does this far-from-traditionally-good-looking man singing these light songs while doing intricate and smooth steps in splendidly tailored clothes make so many men wish, however briefly, that they had been he, and so many women wish they had been his partner? Whence derived Fred Astaire's sublimity, his magic? That is the great, happy question at the centre of this little book."
Fred Astaire was shortish and bald. His jug-eared, long-chinned head was too big for the slight, round-shouldered body and his hands were also disproportionately large. It was his feet and his consummate charm that did the seducing. "Was he good looking?" mused Audrey Hepburn. "I think so, because charm is the best looking thing in the world, isn't it?"
It was the other Hepburn, Katherine, who famously commented that to the Fred-and-Ginger partnership Rogers brought sex and Astaire brought class. Epstein's thoughtful examination of this finds its weaknesses: Rogers came from a stable middle-class home, while Astaire and his sister and first partner, Adele, were brought up in reduced circumstances and plunged into the bawdy world of vaudeville and musicals while still tap-dancing tots.
Astaire's classiness was learned. During a successful stage tour of Britain in the 1920s he and his sister became enraptured by the style of high society. Fred always had a whiff of the midatlantic about him, and Adele married into the British aristocracy, becoming Lady Cavendish.
Epstein also debunks the myth that Astaire was dismissive of Ginger Rogers's talents. While it is clear that they didn't like each other much, Astaire always made sure she was seen at her very best. He knew that if she looked good, so did he. Moreover, the finished product, the movie, was all Astaire cared about.
It seems unfair that this man should not only be the most attractive dancer on film - although Gene Kelly fans might disagree - but also, though not blessed with much of a singing voice, be such a wonderful interpreter of songs.
Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and the Gershwins wrote just for him; the finest jazz musicians backed him in the recording studio.
"Astaire sang like a dancer," writes Epstein.
"His clearly enunciated, strongly beat, often staccato rhythms were chiefly a dancer's rhythms: his syncopations, too, had lots of the dancer to them."
Epstein humorously concedes that if there is a pot containing all the answers at the end of Fred's rainbow maybe it shouldn't be opened. "Magic, perhaps we ought to remember, is magic, prima facie, because it cannot be altogether successfully explained," he writes in this gem of a book. "Once entirely explained, of course, the magic - poof! - is gone."
• Stephen Dixon is an artist and journalist