George & Ira Gershwin

George & Ira Gershwin

• Ceremony was on June 4, 1998

Recording Star for George & Ira Gershwin

Location: 7083 Hollywood Boulevard
https://www.google.com/maps/place/7083+Hollywood+Boulevard

Lady Be Good!

Ask anyone to name the world's best known dancer and it's 10 to 1 that the answer would be Fred Astaire. Ask them to name the most famous dance-team of all time and the odds are that the answer would come out as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. So great an impact did they make together that one tends to forget that their professional association lasted only from 1933 to 1939, with a brief encore in 1949. Since Fred and Ginger went their separate ways he has danced with Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Judy Garland, Vera-Ellen, Leslie Caron and many other starry ladies of the screen, but the longest lasting (and many say the best) of all Fred's partners was his very first - his sister Adele.

Starting as children in Vaudeville back in 1905 The Astaires trouped around the USA building a modest reputation as a song and dance team. They finally got to Broadway in 1917 in a show called "Over The Top" and received favourable notice for their work in this and several more productions during the next five years. In 1922 they reached stardom in a show entitled "For Goodness Sake" and they repeated their success in London in 1923 with the name of the show changed to "Stop Flirting". But it was when they opened in George Gershwin's Lady be Good", at the Liberty Theatre on West 42nd St. on 1st December 1924 that they danced and sang their way into theatrical immortality. The London production at the Old Empire Theatre in Leicester Square on 14th April, 1926, closing on 22nd January 1927 only because the theatre was sold for demolition, was a triumph!

The critics were loud in their acclaim. Said Hubert Griffith in The Evening Standard".... the Astaires would save any musical comedy - Miss Adele Astaire is I think the most attractive thing on any stage" while The Daily Sketch joined in the chorus of praise with "Fred and Adele Astaire have only to appear and everybody is blissfully happy".

"Lady Be Good" was typical of its time in having a nonsensical plot which involved Fred & Adele as an impoverished brother and sister who have been turned out of their home for non-payment of rent and chronicling the various comic vissisitudes they undergo before the final curtain finds each in the arms of a suitably wealthy partner. If the plot was trite it at least provided a peg on which to hang plenty of amusing comedy, some excellent dance routines (including Fred's first solo venture to the tune of "The Half of it Dearie Blues" and the famous "oompah trot" danced by both to "Swiss Miss") and a scintillating score by George & Ira Gershwin.

The recordings from "Lady Be Good " presented here were made during the London run and have for many years been much sought after collector's items - not only for the performances of the Astaires, enchanting though they are, but also for the piano accompaniments by composer George Gershwin. William Kent, who sings the title song was the show's principal comedian.

Following "Lady Be Good" the Astaires appeared in "Funny Face", "Smiles" and "The Band Wagon" but in 1932 Adele retired from the theatre to marry Lord Charles Cavendish leaving Fred to go it alone

His first solo venture was Cole Porter's "The Gay Divorce" in which he starred in both New York and London and which later, under the title "The Gay Divorcee" became his second film with Ginger Rogers.

From this came the all time hit "Night and Day" and the unjustifiably neglected "After You-Who?"

"The Gay Divorce" proved to be Fred's final stage show. In 1933 he made a guest appearance with Joan Crawford in a film called "Dancing Lady" and then in the same year he began his partnership with Ginger Rogers in "Flying Down to Rio" The nominal star of the film was Dolores del Rio, but when the public got their first taste of Fred and Ginger dancing "The Carioca" two new movie stars were born to burn brightly on through the thirties, the forties, the fifties and the sixties, despite occasional threats of retirement from Fred. On the LP are Fred's recordings of "Flying Down To Rio" and "Music Makes Me".

Of the four remaining titles that are included here, "Puttin' on the Ritz" at the time when Fred recorded it was a current hit tune from a film of the same name which starred Harry Richman. This recording was the start of an association with the song that has become so close across the years that it is now regarded as Astaire Fred sang and danced to it with Olga San Juan in his 1946 film "Blue Skies". property Crazy feet" and "Louisiana" were popular tunes of the day but "Not my Girl" is of particular interest in that it spotlights Fred's talent as a song-writer which was later to bear fruit with the well remembered "I'm Building up to an Awful Let-Down" "Just Like Taking Candy from a Baby" and quite a few more excellent songs.

The phrase "A Legend in his own Lifetime" has become a much over-used cliche but Fred Astaire is one of the very few artistes to whom it can honestly be applied. This LP is of particular interest in that it traces his career from his earliest days as a star of the theatre through to the beginnings of world wide fame in films. Here is a legend in the making.
Peter Orchard

Side 1 Lady Be Good

• Fascinating Rhythm
• Hang on to Me
• Lady Be Good
• I'd Rather Charleston
• So Am I
• Half of It Dearie Blues
• Swiss Maid (Yodel Song)

• Not My Girl
• Louisiana
• Puttin' on The Ritz
• Crazy Feet
• Night and Day
• After You
• Who?
• Flying Down to Rio
• Music Makes Me