Word: hoofer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...quit school to become successively a waiter, bartender, factory worker and hairdresser. His evenings he spent at the movies watching his idols-Fred Astaire, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Trenet; by the time he was 18, he was doing imitations of all three in suburban flea pits. The transition from provincial hoofer to Parisian headliner began in 1944 when Montand, newly arrived in Paris, happened to appear on a theater bill with Chanteuse Edith Piaf, became her protégé. With Piaf's help, he dropped synthetic American numbers like Les Plaines du Far West, began to concentrate...
...international scene, issued a list of the world's best-dressed males. Among them: Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito ("the ritziest looking dictator in the world"), Richard Nixon ("a neat line between the wigwag shapes of U.S. drape and the ludicrously tight togs of U.S. Ivy Leaguers"), durable Hoofer Fred Astaire ("one of the few Americans who can wear a suit of tails"), Cinemactor Rex Harrison ("the best British answer to the Italian look"), Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ("British taste and American imagination"), Plutocrat Nubar Gulbenkian ("one of the few millionaires who dress like millionaires...
After 59 years, eleven Broadway musicals and 31 movies, twinkle-toed Hoofer Fred Astaire published his highly informal, do-it-yourself autobiography titled (on Noel Coward's suggestion) Steps in Time (Harper; $4.95). More a theatrical log than a self-portrait, the book brings Astaire from his Omaha boyhood (papa was a brewer of Austrian descent) to the pinnacle of popular dancing, a position he has enjoyed for half his life. Astaire fans will be elated to hear that the end of his career is nowhere in sight. Writes the mellowing top-hatter: "What is this age bit that...
...Dainty June, life without Mother was dismal. An awkward adolescent, she had grown out of her job as a child hoofer. Hungry, she split with her husband, signed on as a marathon dancer near Boston. Just as the stage had been June's nursery, the marathon became her college, and she gives an effective description of one of the weirdest fads of the '20s and '30s. Dredged from the bottom of the Depression, the dancers were "horses" rather than humans, swung on their feet for days, weeks and months-with an eleven-minute break every hour...
...Arthur Godfrey nominated for the same award ("Outstanding Personality of the Year") had changed not a bit. The academy this time managed to match lightfooted Fred Astaire with Actor Christopher Plummer and 14-year-old Robert Crawford in the race for "Best Single Performance by an Actor." Winner: Hoofer Astaire. (Astaire also won eight other awards, exactly 27 lbs. of Emmys, all for his memorable song-and-dance show last October.) The catalogue of categories seemed endless. On and on it went, until one irritated critic was moved to ask: "Is there a difference between Best Western Actor with Black...