Well, the Nicholas brothers were more spectacular than either.
But damn, Fred had a way with a song. He wasn’t a singer (God knows he wasn’t a singer!); he was a song stylist, like Sinatra, Merman, or Cocker. All four knew how to sell a song. In Ethel Merman’s case she could sell a song to the 27th balcony, across Broadway, and into another theater.
I think it’s clear that Donen was a major director without Kelly, while Kelly was only so-so without Donen (Gigot, anyone?)
My take on this age old question:
Fred Astaire always looked and sounded to me like he was about to fall over from hunger; there’s a certain effete weakness to his, um, affect, that it makes me vaguely uncomfortable watching him. A kind of “Auschwitz, The Musical” thing.
On the other hand, Gene Kelly had really hot thighs.
Oh I have been waiting for years for this quote to surface.
No. She didn’t. Watch the movies.
Not to take anything away from Miss Rogers, she was a great dancer, a very engaging actress, and probably a better singer than Fred although as mentioned he’s more of a stylist. But her dancing isn’t really comparable.
If you want to look at an equal, look at Eleanor Powell. She and Fred Astaire were only in one movie together and it has IMO 2 of the 5 greatest Astaire dances ever–the Jukebox dance and the Begin the Beguine boogie at the end. I think she smoked him and she did do it in high heels. Too bad about those ballet sequences though.
(The other 3: “fancy Free” from Top Hat, the aforementioned Puttin on the Ritz, and the one where he dances on the walls and the ceilings.
Re: the cane trick, while directors liked to shoot his dances in a single take, obviously they weren’t above using camera tricks. I think there is a moment when the film runs in reverse, and I think this after watching this one many times, but I’m just not sure. There are a couple of cane-levitation tricks in a good hoofer’s repertoire–I used to know a couple–but clearly this is not that kind of trick.
I think that he did drop it and they reversed the order of those few frames.
My favorite number of his involves more singing than dancing - ‘Never Gonna Dance’ from “Swing Time”. Beautiful and heartbreaking. And the beautiful part for me is that, if you have watched the whole movie, the number is more poignant than if you watch it by itself.
Now as to the cane trick, this NYTimes article refers to “camera tricks”, which lends credence to the idea of interpolating reverse film, but it sure is hard to spot the joins if that’s what they’re doing.
If I read Astaire’s book it was 30 years ago, so I don’t remember, but doesn’t he discuss how this trick was done in there?
Roddy
Note, too, that Fred was guiding her every step of the way. Her solo dancing wasn’t backwards.
It’s from Royal Wedding, and I think it’s too gimmicky to be great. I’d sub in the one with firecrackers from Holiday Inn.
My favorite is “Pick Yourself Up” from Swing Time. She’s a dance instructor about to get fired, and he pretends to be a student to impress her boss. What a marvelous teacher she is! *Look *how he’s improved! 
My favorite routine was Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell’s “Begin the Beguine”. The way they both challenge each other and make it look completely effortless is astounding! In fact, Powell might have been better than Astaire.
What is most amazing about some of these routines is that so many of them were filmed in one continuous take. Eleanor Powell’s dancing in the “Ship Ahoy” clip is so involved I shudder to think how many times they had to film it before they got it all right.
The cane trick is quite simple, but it’s not a “camera trick” and couldn’t possibly have been done by reversing the film: both instances occur in the middle of fairly lengthy shots with no sign of a cut.
Most of the early part of the routine is a long continuous shot, but at about 2:50, just before the first cane leap, there’s a cut.
The leaping cane is not the same one Astaire is dancing with at the beginning of that shot. He kicks that one aside and if you look closely you can see it goes off to the left side of the screen, nowhere near where we’ll see the leaping cane resting a second or two later.
The camera pulls back to reveal the preset leaping cane, and at 2:59, it jumps up into Fred’s hand. If you watch in high quality, full screen, you can see what’s happening. Look very closely and you can see a small vertical rod pop up out of the floor about a foot, propelling the cane up. It could be a spring mechanism or an electrically operated solenoid-type device.
The second instance is similar. Fred sets the cane on the floor, dances off to the right, and the camera follows him, so that the cane is out of frame for a few seconds. When it pans back, it jumps up. Look closely at its position before and after the pan to the right, and you can see that it was not exactly in line with the pattern on the floor before, but it is after.
So during the couple of seconds it was off camera, a stagehand set it up on another pusher mechanism.
Very simple.
Another one here who as a kid was brought up with watching Astaires films on a Sunday afternoon(though my parents were there as well ).
Theres a story about his first Hollywood audition(and these are not the exact words but an approximation)Cant sing can’t act, can dance a little.
I for one loved his movies.
I’m hardly a dancing expert, but Rogers never did anything for me. Eleanor Powell and Cyd Cherise actually made me take my eyes off Astaire.
I totally agree. And many people would say we’re supposed to be looking at the lady anyway (like in ballet), though some of us are more likely to look at the guy.
I only mentioned the Rogers quote as humor, not as truth. And even if it had been true, it was kinda bitchy of her to say it.
Strangely enough, Astaire used to be brought in by Leo Reisman, a very classy bandleader, to sing on record dates in the early '30s. Not only would Fred sing tunes from his latest shows, but tunes from other shows – and sometimes tunes that weren’t from any show.
But the music of that era no longer has an audience, and the movies still do. And in the movies Fred was at his best when dancing. So now we think of him as first and foremost a dancer.
I like Rogers best when she was dancing, which she was quite good at. But she wasn’t much of an actor and any interview I ever saw with her made her come off as graceless, arrogant and stuck up. I enjoy watching a dancing couple when they both are as mesmerizing as Astaire was with Powell and Cherise.
Whle the “high heels” comment is overly glib and reductive, let’s be fair: Rogers is not the one credited to have originated it.
We have both Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936) on DVD and love them both. The wife is possibly the only Thai who knows of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
The “backwards and in high heels” quote seems to have originated in this Frank and Ernest cartoon in 1982. Both Ginger Rogers and the late Texas Governor Ann Richards have both been mistakenly credited with saying it first.
There’s even been a Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Musical show.
One of my favorites is the shoemaker dance in The Barclays of Broadway (not sure I have the title exactly right). It’s very difficult to make it look like the shoes are dancing and the dancer is just getting carried along, and Fred nails it.