Puttin' On the Ritz

“[An] exuberant biography . . . traces Astaire’s stunningly long and successful career from early vaudeville . . . to the heyday of MGM musicals.” —Publishers Weekly

In this comprehensive new book about the life and artistry of Fred Astaire, Peter Levinson looks carefully at the entirety of Astaire’s career from vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood to television. He explores Astaire’s relationships with his vivacious dance partners, his friendship with songwriters like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and his relationship with choreographers like Hermes Pan to discover how Astaire—a small-town Nebraska boy—created his elegant persona. Astaire put his mark on the Hollywood musical, starting his career at RKO and then moving to MGM. From his long list of films, certain classics like Swing Time, Top Hat, Royal Wedding and The Bandwagon revolutionized the presentation of dance on film; but, he also revolutionized the television variety special with the Emmy Award–winning An Evening with Fred Astaire.

For Puttin’ on the Ritz, veteran Hollywood insider, Peter Levinson interviewed over two hundred people who worked closely with Astaire such as Debbie Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Artie Shaw, Bobby Short, Oscar Peterson, Mel Ferrer, Betty Garrett, Joel Grey, Arlene Dahl, Michael Kidd, Betty Comden, Onna White, Margaret Whiting, Andy Williams, and others like Quincy Jones, John Travolta, and John Williams, to provide an intimate window onto his professional as well as his personal life. His new biography of Astaire is a celebration of the great era of sophistication on Broadway and in Hollywood as seen through the life of a man who learned how to put on the Ritz and become America’s premiere song-and-dance-man: Fred Astaire.