1.0 - A Gray Day in January 1905
Preface to "Young Man of Manhattan"
On a gray day in January 1905, a five-year-old boy, his older sister, and his mother arrived in New York City after a three-day journey on a steam-powered train from Omaha, Nebraska. Three decades later, on July 14, 1933, the young man and his new bride stepped onto a sleek airplane and flew to California, leaving behind a city that had been transformed and that had transformed him.
Almost everything about and around him had changed during those three decades: starting with his name. No longer Frederick Austerlitz, he was now known as Fred Astaire. Instead of a boy whose ambitions focused on baseball, he was recognized as the most accomplished dancer on the Broadway stage and was aiming to bring those skills to Hollywood. When he first arrived in Manhattan, the theatrical center of New York had only recently moved north to 42nd Street, and Longacre Square had been redubbed Times Square just a few days earlier on December 31, 1904. In the three decades that followed, dozens of new theaters had opened, hundreds of new shows had been produced, and millions of new people had come to New York.
In those intervening decades, nearly everything about the city had been transformed, from the way people came to the city, how they moved about, where they lived, what they read, what they listened to, where they ate, and how they played. This book examines those changes through the lens of the life of the young Fred Astaire, following his steps in New York to see how the landscape of the city changed, how show business evolved, and how a young boy from Omaha became the young man of Manhattan.
Along the way we will meet the actors, singers, dancers, composers, directors, managers, and producers who worked with Fred Astaire in New York. Most of them are now forgotten, but many ended up appearing in Fred’s films, as did elements of the city itself. We will close by looking at how Hollywood re-imagined that young man’s Manhattan in the next four decades of his professional career.
When he arrived in Manhattan, he was tagging along with his more obviously talented older sister, Adele. When he left in 1933, his father had died, his sister had married and moved to England, and his mother was spending most of her time with her daughter. Fred’s family now was his two-day bride.
He left New York never to return professionally, except that he never really left. More frequently than any other city, New York was the setting for his films. Re-created on the sound stages of Hollywood would be the streets, the parks, and the theatres of Manhattan. The film industry itself, which had largely started in New York, had already moved to the West Coast, as had many of Fred’s show business colleagues from his years in vaudeville and on Broadway. In his final four decades in show business, Fred would transform the movie musical with constantly innovative dances and techniques, and he would find success in radio, phonograph recordings, and television, winning repeated awards in all areas of show business.
Yet it all started in New York on a gray day in 1905.