Fred Astaire insisted that dance be filmed in a single unbroken take showing the entire body, refusing the cutting that would let a double substitute, and that rule shaped the American musical for thirty years.
He made ten films with Ginger Rogers, and Top Hat is the best of them. The famous line about her doing everything backwards in heels is not his but describes the arrangement accurately.
A famous early screen test report reportedly read that he could not act, could not sing, and could dance a little. He worked into his eighties, including a dramatic nomination for The Towering Inferno.
Bing CrosbyA singer retires to a Connecticut farm and converts it into an inn that only opens on holidays, leading to a rivalry with his former dance partner. Holiday Inn is Mark Sandrich's 1942 American musical depicting Jim Hardy, a singer…
Edward Everett HortonThe Cheek to Cheek number is canonical. Their fifth collaboration and their best.
Faye DunawayThe Towering Inferno is the best disaster film of the 1970s and the model against which every subsequent disaster film has been measured. John Guillermin directed the dramatic scenes and Irwin Allen directed the action sequences.
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