An Evening With Fred Astaire
Encyclopedia
An Evening with Fred Astaire is a one-hour live television
special starring Fred Astaire
, broadcast on NBC
on October 17, 1958. It was highly successful, winning nine Emmy awards and spawning three further specials, and technically innovative, as it was one of the first major television shows to be recorded on color videotape
. It was produced at NBC's Color City
studios in Burbank, California
.
Considered something of a comeback for the then 59-year-old Astaire, the special was his first starring role on television. It was directed and co-produced by Bud Yorkin
and introduced Astaire's new partner Barrie Chase, whom he would later describe in Interview
magazine in 1973 as perhaps his favorite dance partner. The Jonah Jones
Quartet and David Rose
and his Orchestra provided the music, and the Hermes Pan Dancers
appeared in the ensemble dance numbers. The announcer was Art Gilmore
, who at the time was the voice of the Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor. Typical for advertising of the era, Chrysler's 1959 model year
Forward Look
cars featured prominently in the show; Astaire's final words were "I only hope the show is as good as the cars."
, a technology then in its infancy.
As with the first major television program to be recorded on videotape-- The Edsel Show
in 1957, this was a straight recording of a live performance with no editing. Early videotape use was confined largely to rebroadcasting programs from the east coast three hours later in the west, and was a cheaper, better-quality alternative to the film-based kinescope
s. The experimental low-band quadruplex recording system in use was troublesome and hard to copy. Furthermore, early video editing
was a highly complicated matter that required the engineer to cover the two-inch tape with iron oxide solution to locate the magnetic tracks and then splice it with a razor blade.
Although it was recorded live, An Evening with Fred Astaire used a number of innovative production techniques that are now commonplace, such as chroma key
, and dissolves
between scenes.
In 1988, the show earned a further technical Emmy Award for Ed Reitan, Don Kent, and Dan Einstein, who restored the original videotape, transferring its contents to a modern format. (The three had also restored the oldest color videotape known to exist, the dedication of WRC-TV
's new studio in Washington, DC on May 21, 1958.)
The show was rebroadcast twice, on NBC on January 26, 1959, and on CBS
on December 20, 1964. It was thus one of the earliest shows to be rerun
using color videotape. The 1964 rebroadcast used a different beginning and ending that eliminated the advertising for Chrysler; instead the opening and closing dances were shown uninterrupted.
for October 11-17, 1958 and an inside article: "Now for the Dance Bash", formally announcing the new partnership to the American public. The show went on to win the Trendex rating race for its time slot and the week. TV Guide followed up with an in-depth feature article on December 13, 1958: "How Fred Astaire discovered Barrie Chase" and again featured Astaire and Chase on its cover on October 31, 1959, promoting Another Evening with Fred Astaire.
Not all media coverage was so positive however. After the show won an unprecedented nine Emmy awards, Ed Sullivan
queried whether Astaire should have been awarded the Best Actor Award. Astaire promptly offered to return the award protesting: "I'm an actor, and this Emmy is for a performance by an actor, isn't it? When I do a difficult pantomime in a dance which tells a story, what do they think it is? Tiddlywinks
?". He kept the award, but when Variety
reported that MCA had lost $75,000 on the show he retorted angrily: "Kindly retract erroneous article in last week's Variety. Here are the facts: The entire package is mine, via Ava Productions Corp. MCA merely acted as my agent with the sponsor. Nobody had any cut. All the expenses were paid for by me and the show definitely turned in a sizeable profit. Though I was not interested in that phase, I would like to make it clear that I am not completely nuts. I particularly directed that no expense be spared in carrying out my plans, ideas and designs for the show which I had been working on for some time."
Live television
Live television refers to a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. From the early days of television until about 1958, live television was used heavily, except for filmed shows such as I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. Video tape did not exist until 1957...
special starring Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
, broadcast on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
on October 17, 1958. It was highly successful, winning nine Emmy awards and spawning three further specials, and technically innovative, as it was one of the first major television shows to be recorded on color videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
. It was produced at NBC's Color City
NBC Studios
The NBC Studios in New York, New York is located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the historic GE Building houses the headquarters of the NBC television network, its parent General Electric, and NBC's flagship station WNBC , as well as cable news channel MSNBC.When NBC Universal relocated,...
studios in Burbank, California
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
.
Considered something of a comeback for the then 59-year-old Astaire, the special was his first starring role on television. It was directed and co-produced by Bud Yorkin
Bud Yorkin
Bud Yorkin is an American film and television producer, director, writer and actor.Yorkin was born Alan David Yorkin in Washington, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree in engineering from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsbugh, Pennsylvania...
and introduced Astaire's new partner Barrie Chase, whom he would later describe in Interview
Interview (magazine)
Interview is an American magazine which has the nickname The Crystal Ball Of Pop. It was founded in late 1969 by artist Andy Warhol. The magazine features intimate conversations between some of the world's biggest celebrities, artists, musicians, and creative thinkers...
magazine in 1973 as perhaps his favorite dance partner. The Jonah Jones
Jonah Jones
Jonah Jones was a jazz trumpeter who is perhaps best known for creating concise versions of jazz and swing standards that appealed to a mass audience. In jazz, he might be best appreciated for his work with Stuff Smith. He was sometimes referred to as "King Louis II," a reference to Louis Armstrong...
Quartet and David Rose
David Rose
David Rose was a British-born American songwriter, composer, arranger, pianist, and orchestra leader. His most famous compositions were "The Stripper", "Holiday for Strings", and "Calypso Melody"...
and his Orchestra provided the music, and the Hermes Pan Dancers
Hermes Pan (choreographer)
Hermes Pan was an American dancer and choreographer, principally celebrated as Fred Astaire's choreographic collaborator on the famous 1930s movie musicals starring Astaire and Ginger Rogers.-Early life:...
appeared in the ensemble dance numbers. The announcer was Art Gilmore
Art Gilmore
Arthur Wells "Art" Gilmore was an American voice actor and announcer whose voice has been heard in radio and television programs, movies, trailers, advertising promotions and documentary films.-Biography:...
, who at the time was the voice of the Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor. Typical for advertising of the era, Chrysler's 1959 model year
Model year
The model year of a product is a number used worldwide, but with a high level of prominence in North America, to describe approximately when a product was produced, and indicates the coinciding base specification of that product....
Forward Look
Forward Look
Forward Look was a design theme employed by Virgil Exner in styling the 1955 through 1961 Chrysler Corporation vehicles.When Exner joined Chrysler, the company's vehicles were being fashioned by engineers instead of designers, and so were considered outmoded, unstylish designs...
cars featured prominently in the show; Astaire's final words were "I only hope the show is as good as the cars."
The use of videotape
The program was highly innovative in its use of color videotapeVideotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
, a technology then in its infancy.
As with the first major television program to be recorded on videotape-- The Edsel Show
The Edsel Show
The Edsel Show is an hour-long television special broadcast live on CBS in the United States on October 13, 1957, intended to promote Ford Motor Company's new Edsel cars...
in 1957, this was a straight recording of a live performance with no editing. Early videotape use was confined largely to rebroadcasting programs from the east coast three hours later in the west, and was a cheaper, better-quality alternative to the film-based kinescope
Kinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...
s. The experimental low-band quadruplex recording system in use was troublesome and hard to copy. Furthermore, early video editing
Linear video editing
Linear video editing is a video editing post-production process of selecting, arranging and modifying images and sound in a predetermined, ordered sequence. Regardless whether captured by a video camera, tapeless camcorder, recorded in a television studio on a video tape recorder the content must...
was a highly complicated matter that required the engineer to cover the two-inch tape with iron oxide solution to locate the magnetic tracks and then splice it with a razor blade.
Although it was recorded live, An Evening with Fred Astaire used a number of innovative production techniques that are now commonplace, such as chroma key
Chroma key
Chroma key compositing is a technique for compositing two images together. A color range in the top layer is made transparent, revealing another image behind. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production...
, and dissolves
Dissolve (film)
In the post-production process of film editing and video editing, a dissolve is a gradual transition from one image to another. The terms fade-out and fade-in and are used to describe a transition to and from a blank image. This is in contrast to a cut where there is no such transition. A dissolve...
between scenes.
In 1988, the show earned a further technical Emmy Award for Ed Reitan, Don Kent, and Dan Einstein, who restored the original videotape, transferring its contents to a modern format. (The three had also restored the oldest color videotape known to exist, the dedication of WRC-TV
WRC-TV
WRC-TV, channel 4, is an owned and operated television station of the NBC television network, located in the American capital city of Washington, D.C...
's new studio in Washington, DC on May 21, 1958.)
The show was rebroadcast twice, on NBC on January 26, 1959, and on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
on December 20, 1964. It was thus one of the earliest shows to be rerun
Rerun
A rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. There are two types of reruns—those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Reruns can also be, as the...
using color videotape. The 1964 rebroadcast used a different beginning and ending that eliminated the advertising for Chrysler; instead the opening and closing dances were shown uninterrupted.
Musical numbers
- "Morning Ride"/"Svengali"/"Frantic Holiday" — Fred Astaire and the Hermes Pan Dancers
- "Change PartnersChange Partners"Change Partners" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for the 1938 film Carefree, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire. Hit records included Astaire, Ozzie Nelson and Jimmy Dorsey...
" — Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase - "Baubles, Bangles & Beads" (Wright and Forrest)
- "Prop Dance" — Fred Astaire
- "Mack the KnifeMack the Knife"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the...
" — The Jonah Jones Quartet - "Man with the Blues"/"Young Man's Lament" (David Rose)/ "Like Young" (Andre Previn) — Fred Astaire, Barrie Chase and the Hermes Pan Dancers
- "Old MacDonald on a Trip/Holiday for Strings" (David Rose) — The Hermes Pan Dancers, featuring Jimmy Huntley, Roy Fitzell, and Bert May
- "St. James Infirmary" (Primrose) — Fred Astaire, Barrie Chase, Jonah Jones, and the Hermes Pan Dancers
- "Oh, Lady be Good!Oh, Lady be Good!"Oh, Lady be Good!" is a 1924 song by George and Ira Gershwin.The song was introduced by Walter Catlett in the Broadway show, Lady, Be Good!, written by Guy Bolton, Fred Thompson, and the Gershwin brothers, starring Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire. It ran for 330 performances in its original...
" (Ira & George Gershwin)/"Cheek to CheekCheek to Cheek"Cheek to Cheek" is a song written by Irving Berlin, and first performed by Fred Astaire in the movie Top Hat . Astaire's 1935 recording with the Leo Reisman Orchestra was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000....
" (Irving Berlin)/"A Fine RomanceA Fine Romance (song)"A Fine Romance" is a popular song composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, published in 1936.The song was written for the musical film, Swing Time, where it was co-introduced by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...
" (Kern & Fields)/"They Can't Take That Away From MeThey Can't Take That Away from Me"They Can't Take That Away from Me" is a 1937 song written by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film Shall We Dance....
"/"Nice Work If You Can Get ItNice Work If You Can Get It (song)"Nice Work If You Can Get It" is a popular song.The music was written by George Gershwin, the lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was one of nine songs George Gershwin wrote for the movie A Damsel in Distress, in which it was performed by Fred Astaire with backing vocals provided by The Stafford Sisters...
"/"A Foggy DayA Foggy Day"A Foggy Day" is a song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress...
" (Ira & George Gershwin)/"I Won't DanceI Won't Dance"I Won't Dance" is a song composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics written by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, for the 1934 London musical Three Sisters. However, Three Sisters flopped and was quickly forgotten, so when the time came to film the Kern-Harbach musical Roberta, the song was...
" (Kern-Hammerstein-Harbach)/"Something's Gotta GiveSomething's Gotta Give (song)"Something's Gotta Give" is a popular song with words and music by Johnny Mercer in 1954. It was published in 1955. It was written for and first performed by Fred Astaire in the 1955 musical film Daddy Long Legs....
" (Mercer)/"Night and DayNight and Day (song)"Night and Day" is a popular song by Cole Porter. It was written for the 1932 musical play Gay Divorce. It is perhaps Porter's most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook and has been recorded by dozens of artists....
" (Porter)/"Top Hat, White Tie and TailsTop Hat, White Tie and Tails"Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for the 1935 film Top Hat, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire.The song title refers to the formal wear required on a party invitation, top hat, white tie, and a tailcoat....
" (Berlin, also the theme musicTheme musicTheme music is a piece that is often written specifically for a radio program, television program, video game or movie, and usually played during the title sequence and/or end credits...
for the show) — Fred Astaire - "Isn't This a Lovely Day" — Fred Astaire
Sequels
Astaire produced another three similar specials, each featuring Barrie Chase:- Another Evening with Fred Astaire (November 4, 1959)
- Astaire Time (September 28, 1960)
- The Fred Astaire Show (February 7, 1968)
Media coverage
Astaire's first foray into television dance, and the introduction of his new dance partner, Barrie Chase, drew significant media coverage, the most prominent being a feature on the cover of TV GuideTV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
for October 11-17, 1958 and an inside article: "Now for the Dance Bash", formally announcing the new partnership to the American public. The show went on to win the Trendex rating race for its time slot and the week. TV Guide followed up with an in-depth feature article on December 13, 1958: "How Fred Astaire discovered Barrie Chase" and again featured Astaire and Chase on its cover on October 31, 1959, promoting Another Evening with Fred Astaire.
Not all media coverage was so positive however. After the show won an unprecedented nine Emmy awards, Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...
queried whether Astaire should have been awarded the Best Actor Award. Astaire promptly offered to return the award protesting: "I'm an actor, and this Emmy is for a performance by an actor, isn't it? When I do a difficult pantomime in a dance which tells a story, what do they think it is? Tiddlywinks
Tiddlywinks
Tiddlywinks is an indoor game played on a flat mat with sets of small discs called "winks", a pot and a collection of squidgers. Players use a "squidger", a disk usually made from plastic to move a wink into flight by pressing down on one side of the wink...
?". He kept the award, but when Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
reported that MCA had lost $75,000 on the show he retorted angrily: "Kindly retract erroneous article in last week's Variety. Here are the facts: The entire package is mine, via Ava Productions Corp. MCA merely acted as my agent with the sponsor. Nobody had any cut. All the expenses were paid for by me and the show definitely turned in a sizeable profit. Though I was not interested in that phase, I would like to make it clear that I am not completely nuts. I particularly directed that no expense be spared in carrying out my plans, ideas and designs for the show which I had been working on for some time."
See also
- Fred Astaire's solo and partnered dancesFred Astaire's solo and partnered dancesThis is a complete guide to over one hundred and fifty of Fred Astaire's solo and partnered dances compiled from his thirty-one Hollywood musical comedy films produced between 1933 and 1968, his four television specials and his television appearances on The Hollywood Palace and Bob Hope Presents...
- 1958 in television1958 in televisionThe year 1958 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1958.-Events:*January 14 – TWW, the first ITV franchise for South Wales and West of England, went on the air....
- The Edsel ShowThe Edsel ShowThe Edsel Show is an hour-long television special broadcast live on CBS in the United States on October 13, 1957, intended to promote Ford Motor Company's new Edsel cars...