Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films

by John E. Mueller

Examines each of Fred Astaire's thirty-one musicals, provides a detailed analysis of all dance scenes, and describes Astaire's contributions to filmed dance

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

440 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

John E. Mueller is an American political scientist in the field of international relations as well as a scholar of the history of dance. [Wikipedia]

Reviews

[Nancy Loe]

Absolutely the best of the many books written about Fred Astaire. Mueller pairs freeze-frames of every Astaire dance in every Astaire movie with trenchant analysis. You've never really seen an Astaire movie til you've watched it while reading this book!

[Surreysmum]

[These notes were made in 2004] "Comprehensive" is the word that springs to mind. Every number in every film is acknowledged, and all that include dancing have analysis of that dance, together with frame enlargements from the film. As opposed to being a substitute for the films, this is the kind of book that makes you want to sit down with a video and watch the dances at a level of detail you've never indulged in before, agreeing or disagreeing with Mueller as you go! Though the very nature of the book precludes many very striking photos (because most have to be so small), this is nonetheless one of the treasures of my collection.

[Added comments in 2026] This book genuinely taught me to read the Astaire/Pan vocabulary of gesture, and to notice how at a granular level it worked with the music. I very much appreciated that Mueller is an uncompromising critic, not a fanboy. When something is wonderful (in his opinion) he says so. But he's equally capable of saying things like, "On the whole, Blue Skies is a dispirited and dispiriting film." Despite the fact that, as he says, "They Can't Take That Away From Me" from The Barcleys of Broadway is among Astaire's greatest work, he is quite willing to snipe at Rogers' "stiffness and thickness, particularly in the arms and back." (I happen to disagree with him on this: I don't find Ginger "thick" in this number (or in any number), and her relative stiffness characterizes the song, where she is resisting Astaire's attentions). But anyway, it's a wonderful, idiosyncratic passion project of a book.

[Nathan Phillips]

Mueller's laserdisc commentary for Swing Time is a bracing experience, delivering more analysis of the dance scenes in that picture than a non-student of dance might have even thought possible, an opening up an entirely new way of thinking about filmed musicals. It's little surprise that his mammoth reference book on Astaire, also published in the 1980s, is equally incisive -- it's probably the most formidable and extensive film book I've ever held in my hands. The Stanley Kubrick Archives may equal it in terms of the amount of hard information included, but that book didn't have the rigorous organization of this one. I read most of Mueller's general comments on the films but his often multi-page analyses of each individual dance in every one of Astaire's musical films (!) will wait until I see the specific movies in question. (As of now I've seen less than six of Astaire's pictures.) But I can already tell you that this book is an astounding -- and immaculately designed and illustrated -- achievement, even so.

[K Better]

Not only do I love Fred Astaire, but I also love his pictures. The movies put in this book were amazing.