Back Story 2 - Why Did I Start "Young Man of Manhattan"?
Where did I get the idea for this Astaire-New York biography?
Almost every time I mention my research project into the life of Fred Astaire in New York City, both friends and new acquaintances ask “What got you interested in that?” The short answer is that Fred Astaire has been my favorite Hollywood star since I first saw him in “Top Hat” in a film history class at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972, and New York City has been my favorite metropolis since I first traveled there by train that same year. I have watched every Astaire movie musical countless times and traveled to Manhattan almost every year for decades, visiting and re-visiting the city’s theaters, museums, hotels, restaurants, and landmarks, but mostly just enjoying long walks through the city and absorbing its rich history and vibrant life.
That’s just the background. The more specific start of my project came in 2013 when I retired after a nearly 40-year career at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College in my hometown of Richmond, VA. I knew that I wanted a meaningful intellectual project that would balance the physical exertion of my home renovation projects, so once I had finished building an office in the basement of my 100-year-old home in Richmond’s Museum District, I was ready to start searching for a topic that could give me a research and writing goal.
Each evening before dinner, my wife, Barbara, and I sit near the fireplace in our home and read. I remember perusing a book review in The Weekly Standard, of a new biography by Kathleen Riley: The Astaires: Fred & Adele. I had never realized that my favorite Hollywood star had a sister with whom he had performed in vaudeville and on Broadway for nearly 30 years before he started making those wonderful Hollywood musicals. I ordered a copy of the book and in Riley’s carefully researched work she mentioned several details of Fred’s life in New York. I realized that some of his favorite spots were places that I also regularly visited on our annual trips to Manhattan, and I began making a list of Astaire addresses. (A year or so later, I dragged my ever-patient wife along on a marathon walking tour of the places where he had lived and performed.)
Still, it took one more book to get me fully started on the research project: Fred’s 1959 autobiography, Steps in Time. When he describes first coming to New York City in 1905, he states “We arrived at the Pennsylvania Station on a gray day.” But wait a minute, I thought. The famed Penn Station did not open until 1910, five years after the Astaires first came to New York. I went back to the Riley biography and noted that she gracefully never mentioned Fred’s anachronistic error. I then checked another Astaire biography and saw that it simply repeated Fred’s faulty memory. So what other errors, omissions and gaps in the history of New York were in these Astaire sources?
That then led me to the idea of a parallel biography of Fred Astaire and Manhattan: how this young boy from Omaha had been transformed into a young man of Manhattan and how his new home was also transformed during the three decades he lived there.
I will write in later posts about the sources I have used, the beautiful libraries I have visited, and the many tangents I have explored in doing my research and writing. I will also describe the absolute delights of discovery I have experienced as I stumbled upon new things not mentioned in any of the biographies.
Above all, I remain fascinated by the connections between the people and the places of New York that shaped Fred Astaire. On the vaudeville and Broadway stages, he worked with thousands of people — some well-known, many long forgotten. (Dozens also re-connected with him during his Hollywood years.) Fred Astaire lived, worked, and played in many well-known spots in New York, some still standing but many sadly demolished in a city that not only never sleeps but never stays unchanged.
I hope you will come along with me on this journey of discovery.