Word: hollywoodism
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Today mobsters need Hollywood more than Hollywood needs them. Like the western, the Mafia myth is outlasting its subject. TV's The Sopranos may indulge our power fantasies, but the series is really about the end of empire. (Boss Tony Soprano constantly escapes his woes by losing himself in Mob flicks like Public Enemy.) And the Sopranos' counterparts? They're counting down their twilight days, like the New Jersey DeCavalcantes, caught on tape debating the show's merits and looking for signs that its characters are based on them. "It's not me," one says pitiably. "I'm not even...
...prime stretched for about 35 years, from the 1922 Broadway show "For Goodness' Sake" (his first Gershwin musical) to the 1957 "Funny Face" (his last original film musical, also with songs by George and Ira). He danced for 10 years on Broadway with his sister Adele, and in 10 Hollywood movies with Ginger Rogers. But in his signature tune from the show and film "The Band Wagon" he sang, "I'll go by way by myself" (available on the CD "Fred Astaire at M-G-M"). His achievement was solitary and unique - extensive and varied enough for the most esteemed...
...high end, Mikhail Baryshnikov hailed him as the dancer of the century, and Jerome Robbins created a ballet in tribute to Astaire's "I'm Old Fashioned" dance with Rita Hayworth. Starchy Teutonic theorist Siegfried Kracauer praised him for injecting realism in Hollywood films by "dancing over table tops and down garden paths into the real world." Kracauer was totally wrong - Astaire didn't bring realism but rather a nonchalant nobility to movies - but it's touching that the nutty professor bent his theory to accommodate a tap dancer he loved...
...half-century of Astaire in the movies has made his achievement seem both ineffable and inevitable. But back in 1932, when Fred came to Hollywood, moguls could be forgiven for not spotting a potential movie star. He and Adele had danced through hit Broadway shows for a dozen years, but Adele was the star; Fred was "and." In "Make Believe: The Broadway Musical in the 1920s," Ethan Mordden passes along a typical notice for the sibs' "Lady, Be Good": "Stark Young spent the first half of his Times review entirely on her - 'Adele Astaire Fascinates,' ran the headline - and could...
...Hollywood skeptic, appraising Fred for the first time, the Astaires' stage stardom could be attributed to snob appeal and second-balcony myopia. The fuss must have been about Adele. Look at her brother. In long shot Fred's body photographed small, fragile, bewildered. In close-up he looked - and, in moments of earthbound repose, acted - like Stan Laurel. Thus the famous pronouncement on Astaire's first screen test: "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little." But oh, how he danced! That was evident from his second film, "Flying Down to Rio" (1933), when he was paired...