A bit of the old Fred

The star of the month on the Turner Classic Movies channel is Fred Astaire!! I'm a sucker for his films—the singing, the dancing… he made it all look so easy. And what a pro! Oddly enough, I dislike modern musical type of films, but I just love the oldies like the ones with Fred and Gene Kelly. My favorite films with him are Top Hat, Swing Time, Flying Down to Rio, Shall We Dance, Roberta, and Royal Wedding, where he literally danced on the ceiling! Click here to watch that trick. You can watch a mini bio of Fred here.

I pinched the phrase "a bit of the old Fred" from the 1987 film Hope and Glory. It's a charming little story about a young boy and his family in London, WWII. In one scene the family is gathered around the piano — that's what they did in those days! — and the father said that line,  "a bit of the old Fred." He was referring to Frederic Chopin, whose gently moving Prelude No. 4  he played as the film showed sweeping scenes of the bomb-ravaged city.