My 48 Hours with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

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Next is here February 29th through March 3rd on NFL network and streaming on NFL plus. And we continue with our American stories. Previously on our show we've heard from Steve Stolier who as a UCLA student in the mid 70s convinced Universal Pictures to re-release the classic Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers.

It's a terrific story by the way go to our americanstories.com and take a look. Stolier would then go on to be Groucho Marx's personal assistant and historian for the final years of the legend's life. Today we hear from Steve again still in show business but excited as ever to be surrounded by stage and screen legends. Here's Steve. Groucho Marx was just at the top of my pantheon of most admired entertainers but running a close second was Fred Astaire, Frederick Ousterlitz of Omaha Nebraska. He doesn't seem as if he would have come from middle America like that because he's you know known for the top hat and white tie and tails but in fact he's one of those erudite fellows that came from Nebraska along with Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett and Marlon Brando and a number of other people. I would have given anything to be able to meet him and in fact when I was working at Universal Studios in the late 70s after Groucho died I got a job working in the steno pool from 11 am to 8 pm every day and I would be typing episodes of The Rockford Files and Kojak and Beretta and so on but I loved working at Universal because on lunch breaks or before or after work I could go wandering around there you know there wasn't much security at the time it isn't like now plus I was an employee and I was always nosing around because of the history of the place.

I loved the Universal horror films and all that sort of stuff the classics by a man Godfrey and so I would keep track of who was guest starring on different shows and if they were filming on the lot and if I was lucky sometimes I would be able to cross paths with them and then of all the unlikely things I found out that Fred Astaire was going to be guest starring on Battlestar Galactica apparently his grandson his favorite tv show was Battlestar Galactica and he said grandpa will you be on that that would be cool and so Astaire figuring well I can't I can't deny my own grandson a request like that so he got in touch with the producers and they wrote a part for him where he played Dirk Benedict's con man father on a lunch break I wandered over to the set and I watched him shoot a scene inside the spacecraft and then during a break he was just sauntering around the sound stage with his hands in his pockets and I happened to have with me an original still of him in swing time 1936 film and so I went over and introduced myself and I said I just I want to thank you for all of the magical moments from flying down to Rio to a family upside down and everything in between family upside down was a tv movie he had just done co-starring opposite Helen Hayes so at the time that was sort of like thanking him for his whole film career and he said oh well my goodness thank you and he was happy to sign my photo and so for one brief shining moment I got to meet you know one of my all-time heroes so that was in 78 in 1983 five years later I had moved to New York the previous year to write for Dick Cavett whom I met through my Groucho connection and who hired me away from Universal to write for him at HBO on a short-lived show called HBO Magazine but then I continued to live in New York and write for Cavett and other things Astaire and Gene Kelly had both been honored by the Kennedy Center you see the edited down specials on tv where they have someone from dance and music and literature and they salute them and the Kennedy Center had a policy where after you've been saluted they would appreciate it if you would sit down for an interview not to be released or broadcast but just for their library for the Kennedy Center's official library to have that for people to be able to access so Astaire said that would be fine with him but only if Dick Cavett does the interview because he had had a good experience with when Cavett had his ABC show and he felt comfortable conversing with him I was friends with and writing for Cavett and he knew what a an Astaire fanatic I was as was he and the Kennedy Center sent Cavett the list of questions they wanted him to ask and luckily he gave those to me to rework because they were asking thesis questions on you know compare and contrast the development of tap as an art form from the Irish clog through vaudeville and the influence of the African-American experience and I knew from previous interviews that Astaire is a tough interview subject and he hates analyzing his art he's very he was very much a I just do it kind of guy so what I did was I very carefully chopped up their essay questions into more conversational bites so that Cavett could ask him and get information on his work so that Cavett could ask him and get information you know his answer on how a certain sequence happened the dance director Hermes Pan would come up with an idea and I'd try it out in front of a mirror and sure great that would be how he would discuss how a dance step came to be Kelly because he was a director and choreographer Kelly was the opposite if you said hi Jean Kelly would say dance is a three-dimensional medium and film is a two-dimensional medium so as a director or choreographer you have to take in that distinction and frame the image such that the two-dimension you know he he gave those kind of dissertation answers but for Astaire it was just well sure great let's do it which doesn't make for you know compelling listening I flew out to LA with Cavett to interview both Astaire and Kelly we were in a limousine I was in the front seat with the chauffeur which is just as well because I tended to get nauseated sitting in the back of limousines and we stopped by Astaire's house on San Ysidro in Beverly Hills he got in the car and Astaire looked at me and he said have we worked together before you look familiar and I don't know whether he was confusing me with someone else or if he really did remember from when I met him on the set of Galactica but so on the way to the studio I'm listening to Cavett and Astaire talking and Astaire said dick did you look over these questions and I'm thinking he he he he he and Astaire said some of them are asinine what was I doing in vaudeville I mean for heaven's sakes that was 50 years ago I mean it's ridiculous and I'm you know mentally slinking down in the front seat thinking oh god you should only know what these questions were like before I I made them sanitized for your easy digestion and you've been listening to Steve Stolier talk about his brush with greatness again when we come back more of the story of Fred Astaire and Steve Stolier here on our American Stories. 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From football playoffs to basketball madness TCL Roku TVs are the best way to stream your favorite live sports with all the biggest sports channels a sports zone with all available games in one place and apps like iHeartRadio with sports podcasts such as The Herd with Colin Cowherd cheering on your favorite team has never been easier a big screen TCL Roku TV offers premium picture and sound quality so you'll feel like you're right in the action find the perfect TCL Roku TV for you today at go.tcl.com TCL Roku TV the 2024 NFL scouting combine presented by noble where a dream that starts small can get big this guy's just different where a journey that starts quiet can get loud and where a name that's unknown can become the future we will hear his name called the 2024 NFL combine presented by noble where you can witness the future stars of the NFL next is here february 29th through march 3rd on NFL network and streaming on NFL plus and we're back with our American stories and Steve Stolier's story of the time he had the privilege of meeting and working with Fred Astaire Steve was working for Dick Cavett at the time and Astaire had just been selected to be honored by the Kennedy Center Cavett was going to interview Astaire and had asked Steve to rewrite the Kennedy Center's questions and even so Astaire still found Stolier's versions of the questions excellent let's get back to Steve so I was sort of on edge after that because I thought it was going to be this wonderful time and now he's attacking the questions and all that and I didn't let on that I'd had anything to do with them because I didn't want to be the target of his annoyance but we got to the studio and as a favor to Astaire to show respect they had him go into the makeup room first before Cavett to get ready for the cameras so then he came out uh in makeup and then it was Cavett's turn and the director said to me will you sit down with Fred and talk to him until Dick is ready and I thought oh dear um yeah sure I the next thing I knew I was sitting in a director's chair next to Astaire in his director's chair and trying to make pleasant conversation with someone who had just torn apart the questions I had carefully crafted and who was you know notoriously difficult to draw out but one of the things I brought up was you know this was in 83 it was the same year that the musical My One and Only had opened on Broadway and I had seen that with Tommy Tune and Twiggy and Honey Coles and it was basically a loose reworking of the Gershwin show Funny Face which Fred and his sister Adele had starred in in 1927 and I loved it and I felt like seeing Tommy Tune do do some of those intricate tap numbers was as close as I was going to get to seeing Astaire dance and I mentioned that even though the show was filled with a lot of standards the song My One and Only was was semi-obscure but I knew it because I had a record of Astaire and Adele singing that from Funny Face and I said so it's interesting because now that song is getting well known by the average public because of this new Broadway show so we started talking about new releases of classic songs and we got around to putting on the Ritz and he he mentioned he said last year that was that version by that German fellow and I must say I didn't care for it the German fellow was a guy named Taco and it was sort of a synthesized mechanized version of putting on the Ritz that got a lot of airplay and in 1982 but Astaire said the way he does it is just boom boom boom putting on the Ritz boom boom putting on the Ritz I didn't care for it he said now when Irving wrote it meaning Berlin he wrote it like this and Astaire started tapping his foot and I'm thinking Fred Astaire is tapping and singing putting on the Ritz to me only me this special moment just from me I would say dancing as fast as I could verbally to keep him occupied until Cavett came out but it ended up being this wonderful little pocket of conversation and then Cavett came out and they started taping and actually between my having cut the questions up and Cavett's brilliance as an interviewer and conversationalist he was able to draw Fred Astaire out in that interview and actually got him to talk about a lot of things that were essentially things that I had wondered about that I would have asked Fred Astaire if I ever had the chance so I put them through Dick Cavett's mouth and he ended up you know at one point he said something like gosh Dick you're making me remember things I hadn't thought about in 40 years which I took as very gratifying because it was unlocking some of these old memories one of my questions was did he ever have an understudy because you think about Broadway shows and how unique Astaire was was there someone who if he was sick would have gone on and the way Cavett asked it was he said for instance if you were under the weather did the manager come out before the show and say we're very sorry Mr. Astaire can't be here tonight instead please enjoy Leonard Crunchman that was the name he came up with on the spot Leonard Crunchman and Astaire said oh no I never had an understudy I just no matter what you just went on you know and it was that kind of that trooper mentality and he said I remember one time in London I had a boil removed from my from my head and the doctor bandaged it but I still went on that night and I had my top hat and and this bandaged head and nobody explained anything and I guess the people in the audience were thinking oh I suppose the old fellow broke his skull or something and every time I put the top hat back on top of my head it hurt but you know you just went on so it turned into this really fascinating conversation I mean Astaire was in his mid-80s at the time and just beginning to slow down a bit I mean he wasn't as lively as he was on the ABC Cavett shows and that you know there was no audience there was no band it was just this conversation then the following day we went over to Gene Kelly's house and he was the absolute opposite because he was able to dissect and come at his films and the dance sequences and the combination of ballet and tap and the athleticism and the choreography because I had researched him when I was in New York HBO at the time was located in the Time Life building so I had access to Time and Life magazine's archives and they would have bulging manila folder files with stretched out rubber bands trying to keep them from exploding and inside would be old clippings and old photos and stuff you know it was like a morgue of old newspaper and photographic things from previous stories this was you know I hasten to add before Google so you couldn't just go to IMDB or Wikipedia or something but I had this rare access and in the file for Gene Kelly was a story about when he was working on the 1942 Oh! Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth the music was by Jerome Kern so there was one news story that said that after filming was completed Jerome Kern presented Gene Kelly with a silver plate and that was engraved to GK from JK in honor of Cover Girl and so after Cabot had finished interviewing Gene Kelly I thought this will floor him that I know this bit of trivia and so I said do you still have that plate that Jerome Kern gave you after Cover Girl and I expected him to laugh or something and instead he's got this scowl on his face and he said where did you hear about that that was stolen from me some years back I and I've never seen it there was a theft at my house how do you know about that and all of a sudden I was like you know sitting in a chair with the cops going over me with a third degree and a bright light and I said I it was in your file at the the time life archive of the thing and then I did and I think he was placated but it was a strange note to end on because I don't know that he ever completely got over that trace of suspicion that the thing the one thing I brought up that I thought would put a smile on his face instead triggered his Irish anger but it was still a great afternoon to be sitting at the feet of Gene Kelly and listening to him talk about his career and only one day after spending the afternoon with Fred Astaire so I had in one visit back to LA from New York I had managed to spend time with two of obviously two of the greatest dancers that have ever appeared on film and great job as always by Robbie on the production and everything else it's a terrific story and Steve Stolier my goodness what a great storyteller Steve Stolier's story his two brushes with greatness here on our American story from football playoffs to basketball madness team has never been easier a big screen TCL Roku TV offers premium picture and sound quality so you'll feel like you're right in the action find the perfect TCL Roku TV for you today at go dot TCL dot com slash TCL Roku TV hey hey it's Malcolm Gladwell host of revisionist history eBay motors is here for the ride your elbow grease fresh installs and a whole lot of love transformed a hundred thousand miles and a body full of rust into a drive entirely its own brake kits LED headlights whatever you need eBay motors has it and with eBay guaranteed fit it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time every time or your money back plus at these prices you're burning rubber not cash keep your ride or die live at eBay motors.com eligible items only exclusions apply the 2024 NFL scouting combine presented by noble where a dream that starts small can get big this guy's just different where a journey that starts quiet can get loud and where a name that's unknown can become the future we will hear his name call the 2024 NFL combine presented by noble where you can witness the future stars of the NFL next is here February 29th through March 3rd on NFL network and streaming on NFL plus