An Evening with Fred Astaire
First major color videotape TV special, winning nine Emmys.
On October 17, 1958, NBC aired a one-hour live special starring Fred Astaire, marking his first leading role on television. The show, a comeback for the 59-year-old, won nine Emmys and led to three more specials. It was the first major color TV program recorded on videotape, produced at NBC’s Burbank Color City studios. The special introduced Barrie Chase as Astaire’s new dance partner.
Quick Facts
- Director
- Bud Yorkin
- Presenter
- Fred Astaire
- Starring
- The Jonah Jones Quartet
- David Rose and His Orchestra
- Barrie Chase
- Narrator
- Art Gilmore
- Theme music
- David Rose
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
- Location
- Color City, Burbank, California
Facts from the source article.
The use of videotape
The use of color videotape on this program was a major technical leap, as the technology was still very new. Like the first major TV show recorded on videotape, The Edsel Show in 1957, this was simply a live performance captured without any cuts or edits. At the time, videotape was mostly used to delay broadcasts from the East Coast for West Coast airings three hours later, offering a cheaper and sharper alternative to film-based kinescopes. The experimental low-band quadruplex system used here was finicky and difficult to duplicate. Editing early videotape was an ordeal: engineers had to coat the two-inch tape with an iron oxide solution to find the magnetic tracks, then cut it with a razor blade. Despite being recorded live, the show employed several production techniques that are standard today, including chroma key and dissolves between scenes. In 1988, the program received another technical Emmy, this time awarded to Ed Reitan, Don Kent, and Dan Einstein for restoring the original videotape and moving its content to a modern format. Because the recording machines were modified RCA black-and-white recorders, the restoration team had to locate the engineers who had performed those conversions. (These same three people had also restored the oldest known color videotape, the dedication of WRC-TV’s new studio in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 1958.) The show aired again twice: on NBC on January 26, 1959, and on CBS on December 20, 1964, making it one of the earliest programs to be rerun using color videotape. For the 1964 broadcast, the opening and closing were changed to remove Chrysler advertising, showing the full dances instead. Until 2024, this program held the record as the oldest surviving color videotape of an entertainment show. That year, a videotape of the premiere of Kraft Music Hall, which aired just nine days before the Astaire program, was discovered and restored.
Musical numbers
The musical numbers included "Morning Ride"/"Svengali"/"Frantic Holiday" performed by Fred Astaire and the Hermes Pan Dancers; "Change Partners" by Astaire and Barrie Chase; "Baubles, Bangles & Beads"; "Prop Dance" by Astaire; "Mack the Knife" by The Jonah Jones Quartet; "Man with the Blues"/"Young Man's Lament"/"Like Young" by Astaire, Chase and the Hermes Pan Dancers; "Old MacDonald on a Trip/Holiday for Strings" by the Hermes Pan Dancers featuring Jimmy Huntley, Roy Fitzell, and Bert May; "St. James Infirmary" by Astaire, Chase, Jonah Jones, and the Hermes Pan Dancers; a medley of songs including "Oh, Lady be Good!", "Cheek to Cheek", "A Fine Romance", "They Can't Take That Away From Me", "Nice Work If You Can Get It", "A Foggy Day", "I Won't Dance", "Something's Gotta Give", "Night and Day", and "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" by Astaire; and "Isn't This a Lovely Day" by Astaire. The Chrysler Corporation record label produced a rare giveaway promotional soundtrack album direct from the monaural audio track of the master videotape.
Media coverage
Astaire's first foray into television dance, and the introduction of his new dance partner, Barrie Chase, drew significant media coverage, the most prominent being a feature on the cover of TV Guide for October 11–17, 1958 and an inside article: "Now for the Dance Bash", formally announcing the new partnership to the American public. The show went on to win the Trendex rating race for its time slot and the week. TV Guide followed up with an in-depth feature article on December 13, 1958: "How Fred Astaire discovered Barrie Chase" and again featured Astaire and Chase on its cover on October 31, 1959, promoting Another Evening with Fred Astaire. Not all media coverage was so positive, however. After the show won an unprecedented nine Emmy awards, Ed Sullivan queried whether Astaire should have been awarded the Best Actor Award. Astaire promptly offered to return the award, protesting: "I'm an actor, and this Emmy is for a performance by an actor, isn't it? When I do a difficult pantomime in a dance which tells a story, what do they think it is? Tiddlywinks?". He kept the award, but when Variety reported that MCA had lost $75,000 on the show, he retorted angrily: "Kindly retract erroneous article in last week's Variety. Here are the facts: The entire package is mine, via Ava Productions Corp. MCA merely acted as my agent with the sponsor. Nobody had any cut. All the expenses were paid for by me and the show definitely turned in a sizeable profit. Though I was not interested in that phase, I would like to make it clear that I am not completely nuts. I particularly directed that no expense be spared in carrying out my plans, ideas and designs for the show which I had been working on for some time."
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