Astaire

HOLLYWOOD -- A cultural icon's place in the public's heart is much like a politician's: He belongs to everyone and everyone acts as though they've elected him to Olympus. That's true for no one more than Fred Astaire, the American god of an American art form, the smooth soft shoe. Long after the curtain fell on his career, his audience remains as devoted as any fervent constituents.And when people think you're messing with their legends, watch out. Indeed, Astaire's widow, Robyn, has found herself vilified over the way she has handled her guardianship of his image.

Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein Yale University Press / 224 pages / $22 Fred Astaire, writes Joseph Epstein, the veteran critic and essayist, "was the very model ... of the democratic dandy, itself an innovative figure." He adds that G. Bruce Boyer called Astaire in his movie roles "the democratic ideal: a classless aristocrat." If T.S. Eliot calling the mature Henry James "a European of no known country" isn't the same thing, it's close enough. Astaire's career is full of paradoxes like these.

Having seen every Fred Astaire movie, I'm qualified to say that not once did Fred Astaire grab his crotch. It's possible that he grabbed his crotch in the privacy of his home or dressing room. But that would be of no concern to the public.I mention this because Michael Jackson, the alleged super-duper star of show biz, has been described by many dance critics as being the Fred Astaire of his generation.While I'm no expert on dancing, I watched Jackson perform during half time of the Super Bowl, and I saw little that reminded me of Astaire, other than being skinny.

CYD CHARISSE, 86 Dancer and actress Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died yesterday. Ms. Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam. She appeared in several dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and '50s. Classically trained, she could dance anything from a pas de deux in 1946's Ziegfeld Follies to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1956's The Band Wagon (with Mr. Astaire)

The other night, at the Fred & Adele Astaire Awards, one of the best Texans of modern times, the talented Tommy Tune, was given the Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award at Manhattan Center on 34th Street. The irony was we enjoyed a show about dancing where the stage was littered in front with sound boxes so big that you couldn't see anyone's feet. The best thing about this evening was the emcee, Lee Roy Reams, ubiquitous actor/star from La Cage aux Folles. Lee Roy opened "big" with a number of hugely presented songs about dancing.

Fred Astaire by Joseph Epstein Yale University Press / 224 pages / $22 Fred Astaire, writes Joseph Epstein, the veteran critic and essayist, "was the very model ... of the democratic dandy, itself an innovative figure." He adds that G. Bruce Boyer called Astaire in his movie roles "the democratic ideal: a classless aristocrat." If T.S. Eliot calling the mature Henry James "a European of no known country" isn't the same thing, it's close enough. Astaire's career is full of paradoxes like these.

SIGN in a coffee bar:Life is shortDon't sleep through it* * *GINGER ROGERS, who died this week at the age of 83, will no doubt be remembered best for her dance partnership with Fred Astaire, who died in 1987.A few quotations from Ms. Rogers' 1991 biography, "Ginger: My Story," help recall a long and lustrous show business career:* "While our union (Astaire-Rogers) had a special kind of magic and produced a unique enchantment, it was not the be-all and end-all of my career. . . . Fred and I were colleagues, and despite occasional snits . . . we worked together beautifully.

CYD CHARISSE, 86 Dancer and actress Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died yesterday. Ms. Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam. She appeared in several dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and '50s. Classically trained, she could dance anything from a pas de deux in 1946's Ziegfeld Follies to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1956's The Band Wagon (with Mr. Astaire)

FUNNY FACE 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION Paramount / $14.99 Funny Face offers an object lesson in beauty, class and charisma, courtesy of an actress who had all three in abundance. Already in 1957, at age 24 and with just three major films behind her, Audrey Hepburn was a Hollywood original, a glamorous pixie who somehow retained a regal bearing that engendered respect and a gaminelike quality that made men and women alike adore her. Paired here with Fred Astaire, she plays a beatnik-ish bookstore clerk who, reluctantly, becomes the new face of a fashion line.

Through the artwork of Howard County students, the first meeting between famous people such as Fred Astaire and Count Basie is depicted in papier-mache figures, while puppets of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis stand together for the first time on a stage in front of an adoring audience. Nearly 400 pieces of such artwork from county kindergartners to high school seniors will be displayed at Howard County Center for the Arts in First Encounters: Students' Responses to Memorable Meetings. Opening tomorrow, the exhibit was inspired by First Encounters: A Book of Memorable Meetings by Nancy Caldwell Sorel and illustrated by her husband, Edward Sorel, and features 65 meetings between famous people.

The other night, at the Fred & Adele Astaire Awards, one of the best Texans of modern times, the talented Tommy Tune, was given the Douglas Watt Lifetime Achievement Award at Manhattan Center on 34th Street. The irony was we enjoyed a show about dancing where the stage was littered in front with sound boxes so big that you couldn't see anyone's feet. The best thing about this evening was the emcee, Lee Roy Reams, ubiquitous actor/star from La Cage aux Folles. Lee Roy opened "big" with a number of hugely presented songs about dancing.

FUNNY FACE 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION Paramount / $14.99 Funny Face offers an object lesson in beauty, class and charisma, courtesy of an actress who had all three in abundance. Already in 1957, at age 24 and with just three major films behind her, Audrey Hepburn was a Hollywood original, a glamorous pixie who somehow retained a regal bearing that engendered respect and a gaminelike quality that made men and women alike adore her. Paired here with Fred Astaire, she plays a beatnik-ish bookstore clerk who, reluctantly, becomes the new face of a fashion line.

"Jump Cuts," a series of short films that spotlights the art of film editing, will be shown tomorrow at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St. The program, put together by Pratt sight and sound librarian Tom Warner, includes the famous "Odessa Steps" sequence from Sergei Eisenstein's groundbreaking 1925 Battleship Potemkin, an exercise in cinematic rabble-rousing that's a staple in film schools, along with such short films as Jim Henson's Oscar-nominated...

The Poseidon Adventure [Fox] $20 The 1970s was a fertile decade in American cinema because of the demise of the studio system and the production code and the influx of such "Young Turk" directors as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Peter Bogdanovich and William Friedkin. The '70s also ushered in the era of the all-star disaster film. Although 1954's The High and the Mighty is the granddaddy of disaster epics, the genre didn't really take off until 1970's Airport. The "Master of Disaster" was producer Irwin Allen.

There's no escaping the glut of holiday books. They're handsome, they're expensive, they're all too easy to sell at a secondhand bookstore or repackage as a birthday present a few months from now. But here are two suggestions for books that you will want to keep (or buy with that nice gift certificate). They are books that sharpen the mind and stir the heart. The first is The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Vivian Gornick, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

For [Jane] Austen," writes scholar Robert Polhemus, "love, like dance, ought to be a rational pursuit, leading to what is pleasurable, useful, and beautiful."

For [Jane] Austen," writes scholar Robert Polhemus, "love, like dance, ought to be a rational pursuit, leading to what is pleasurable, useful, and beautiful."

Every year for the past 14, "The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts" has been a way for television to end the year on a graceful note that elevates TV's brow and the viewers' spirits for two glorious hours.The 15th anniversary edition of the broadcast (9 p.m. to 11 p.m. tonight, WBAL, Channel 11) is marred by a jangling note of disharmony from the real world.The note was struck by Robyn Astaire, widow of Fred, who demanded $17,500 from the producers for use of clips from her husband's movies with Ginger Rogers, one of six artists being honored this year (with actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, jazzman Lionel Hampton, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and choreographer Paul Taylor)

Cyril A. Keller, a renowned sleight-of-hand man whose showmanship in magic set him apart during an apex of hocus-pocus in Baltimore, died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Friday at a Philadelphia hospice center. He was 77. A spade was never just a spade near Mr. Keller, who to the eye could wave his hand over a card to change its suit. With a clink, he could make seemingly seamless metal rings link. He could, of course, pull cards from behind his ears. "He was a Fred Astaire with cards," said Ken Horsman, who owns Ken-Zo's Yogi Magic Mart on South Charles Street, where Mr. Keller sometimes performed.

The Saturday revival series at the Charles delivers pop perfection tomorrow with the 1935 smash Top Hat. In the dialogue and situations, the director, Mark Sandrich, and the writers, Dwight Taylor and Allan Scott, deftly milk all manner of farcical misunderstandings. Fred Astaire plays a song-and-dance man headlining a London show, Ginger Rogers a high-society model who mistakes him for his married producer (Edward Everett Horton). Irving Berlin provided the music and lyrics; as usual, the key numbers - "Isn't This a Lovely Day?"