WORTH £5 A TAP

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVI, Issue 21360, 1 June 1939, Page 13

WORTH £5 A TAP

His Feet Are His Fortune Fred Astaire on How He Gets Ideas . (Special—By Air Mail) LONDON, May 13. Fred Astaire, the famous dancer, admitted this week that his feet must have earned him a million. “I paid £40,000 in taxes last year,” he declared this week in London. “Every time I tap my feet in ‘Top Hat,’ or any other film,” he said, “£5 clicks up on the imaginary cash register of my private fortune. “That is what those dancing feet of mine mean to me. They're not insured or any nonsense like that. All they ask for is a comfortable pair of shoes—size 81.

“So when I spend £3 or £4 a pair on shoes to dance in I don’t think I am being extravagant, although each pair lasts a week at the longest. “Although I have been dancing since I was five—and I am now 37—1 have never had to worry about my feet. In 32 years of dancing they must have become pretty well educated, and, sometimes, I swear, they think independently of me. “For instance, sometimes I am at a loss for a new dance sequence—the steps I want simply won’t come. So what do I do? Igoonto an empty stage with a gramophone and a -bunch of records. I put on a record or two and try and make my mind a blank as I listen to the music. “I leave it entirely to my feet. Soon they begin to tap out a rhythm, and the next thing I know I am dancing and, voila! there is the new sequence I was after.

“Sometimes I get an idea for a new step in the middle of the night. For instance, there was that umbrella number in ‘Top Hat.’ It was in the small hours that I got the inspiration for that. “I jumped out of bed, found an umbrella, and went through the steps in my bare feet. (By the way I often dance bare-footed —for the exercise.) “Though these ideas for new dance squences come to me fairly easily, they often need a lot of working out. Here I get a good many useful suggestions from Ginger Rogers. "There have been a lot of rumours recently about a break-up in the Astaire-Rogers partnership. You can take it from me there’s nothing in them. “Although in my next film, “Broadway Melody of 1940,’ I shall have Eleanor Powell as a partner, Ginger and I will be back together on our tenth film just as soon as another dance-theme story has been prepared for us. “There has never been a quarrel. Both a sense of humour and our feet are in perfect harmony. “These dancing feet of mine even earn me money without being seen. For some years now radio performances have formed a substantial part of my income. Listeners seem to like to hear me tapping out a swift and joyous rhythm—particularly swing, which is my own favourite, too.”