The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Dancing Couple’, by James Thurber

Next up on the essays shelf:

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped by decade, which is a lot of fun because you can see how the magazine developed, how the “voice” of the magazine developed, and how “The Talk of the Town” has grown and changed over the years.

Back in the 20s, most of the “Talk of the Town” pieces ran without bylines (editor Harold Ross didn’t like bylines), but a couple of their regular writers – James Thurber, E.B. White – became Masters in the Art of Miniature, required by the “Talk of the Town” format.

Today’s excerpt comes from 1928, and it’s by James Thurber. It’s a tiny profile, so to speak, of the brother-and-sister dancing duo, Fred and Adele Astaire. How wonderful to get a snapshot of them at this time, just as the vaudeville years were ending, and right before Fred would burst out of the duo and become a mega-Hollywood movie star. When I was 11 years old, I wrote a report on Fred Astaire, and did all kinds of research, and that was when I discovered his vaudeville years. I remember being a tiny bit obsessed with Adele. First of all, she was so adorable in pictures. And Fred Astaire was always not only complimentary towards his sister, but downright reverential. He maintained that she was one of his best partners. Please go check out my old friend Trav’s piece on Fred and Adele Astaire. (He wrote a book on vaudeville: No Applause–Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.)

There was something, too, about the idea of kids being professional performers that captivated me (not difficult to understand why). I was so obsessed with them that I gave them a cameo in my celebrated novel about a teenage vaudeville troupe, written when I was 12 years old. I love how I write that Fred and Adele “had great promise”. So generous of you, Tween Sheila! I loved the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies, which was yet another reason why that fateful Eight is Enough episode that changed my life, struck such a deep chord. But because of my research when I was a kid, I always wondered about Adele. Was it hard for her to give up performing? Did she have any feelings of jealousy watching her brother become such a huge international star? What was Adele’s experience of all of this? I was a sensitive child.

Here, in James Thurber’s “Talk of the Town” piece, Fred and Adele Astaire are big stars in the New York vaudeville scene. And there is talk of the two retiring their act. This was huge news. The world was changing. Theatre was changing. The movies were rising in importance. It’s a beautiful snapshot of a time-and-place.

Here’s an excerpt.

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks), edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Dancing Couple’, by James Thurber

Their first appearance in this city was in 1907. They did a clog dance in a vaudeville house until the Gerry Society objected. In those years they were forced to play in Shamokin and Passaic and places like that in order not to be molested by societies who knew that dancing was terrible for children.

Their first real chance in New York, after they got old enough to be let alone, came at the old Fifth Avenue Theatre and their hearts were high with hope. On the same bill was Douglas Fairbanks. He got over very well but after the first show the Astaires sadly noted that their names had been scratched from the call-board, which meant the management had given them, as Mr. James Gleason would say, the works. You couldn’t daunt the children, however, and they made their first big success not long afterwards in the revue “Over the Top.” Since then they have snapped their fingers at call-boards.

One of their earliest friendships was with George Gershwin, then a piano player for Remick. He used to say he hoped some day to write a score which the brother and sister could dance to. That happened first in the production of “Lady Be Good.” Then came “Funny Face.” We were interested to learn that dancing shoes rarely last the Astaires more than three weeks, which, to coin a statistic, means that each of them has used about four hundred pairs since they began to dance together. Fred is superstitious and on opening nights always brings to his dressing-room and wears a funny looking red and green bathrobe he bought in Bridgeport thirteen years ago. It hasn’t always brought him luck though. For instance, he was selected, not long ago, by a Columbia professor and a cigarette manufacturing company, to be blindfolded and to pick out, as the best of four cigarettes offered him, the kind manufactured by the company in question. He picked the wrong one.