The FOC [that's father of the cinetrix] reminds me that on this day in 1987, Fred Astaire shuffled off this mortal coil. As my dad so irreverently put it in his email, "He won't dance, don't ask him!"
Soon after Astaire's death, TBS mounted a week-long tribute, airing all of his old RKO Radio Pictures with Ginger Rogers--an event dubbed "Dead Fred Week" chez nous--which we taped and still have to this day.
Folks forget that above those fancy feet was quite an accomplished song stylist, one who introduced many of the Tin Pan Alley standards--the big 'uns. [We're talking Gershwin, Berlin, Porter.] Listen to Astaire's version of "They Can't Take That Away from Me" and forget all about Sinatra et al.--the yearning in his reedy tenor gets me every time.
