October 29, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, for Steve Stoliar, working for Dick Cavett meant crossing paths with some of Hollywood’s most legendary names. But nothing compared to the weekend he spent in the company of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They were both older at that point, long past the silver screen, yet their presence carried the same quiet command that had once filled theaters. Over those forty-eight hours, Steve watched how two very different men moved through the world they had shaped. Astaire carried an air of precision and grace, while Kelly brought warmth and strength to everything he did. Together, they represented two halves of the same art form, and for a brief moment, Steve saw what made them timeless.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American Stories. Previously on our show,
we've heard from Steve Stolier, who, as a UCLA student
in the mid seventies, convinced Universal Pictures to re release
the classic Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers. It's a terrific story,
by the way, go to our American Stories dot com
and take a look. Stolier would then go on to
(00:32):
be Groucho Marx's personal assistant and historian for the final
years of the legend's life. Today we hear from Steve again,
still in show business, but excited as ever to be
surrounded by stage and screen legends. Here's Steve.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Groucho Marx was just at the top of my pantheon
of most admired and entertainers, but running a close second
was fred Astaire Frederic Austerlitz of Omaha, Nebraska. He doesn't
seem as if he would have come from Middle America
(01:14):
like that, because he's known for the top hat and
white tie and tails, but in fact he's one of
those aeradite fellows that came from Nebraska, along with Johnny
Carson and Dick Cavitt and Marlon Brando and a number
of other people. I would have given anything to be
able to meet him. And in fact, when I was
(01:38):
working at Universal Studios in the late seventies after Graucho died,
I got a job working in the Steno pool from
eleven am to eight pm every day, and I would
be typing episodes of The Rockford Files and Kojak and
Barretta and so on. But I loved working at Universal
(01:59):
because on lunch breaks or before or after work, I
could go wandering around there. You know, there wasn't much
security at the time. It isn't like now. Plus I
was an employee and I was always nosing around because
of the history of the place. I loved the Universal
horror films and all that sort of stuff with the classics.
(02:20):
My man godfree and so I would keep track of
who was guest starring on different shows and if they
were filming on the lot, and if I was lucky,
sometimes I would be able to cross paths with them.
And then, of all the unlikely things, I found out
that Fred Astaire was going to be guest starring on
(02:42):
Battle Star Galactica. Apparently his grandson his favorite TV show
was Battlestar Galactica, and he said, Grandpa will you be
on that that would be cool, and so a stare figuring, well,
I can't deny my own grandson a request like that.
(03:04):
So he got in touch with the producers and they
wrote a part for him where he played Dirk Benedict's
con man father. On a lunch break, I wandered over
to the set and I watched him shoot a scene
inside the spacecraft. And then during a break, he was
just sauntering around the soundstage with his hands in his pockets,
(03:28):
and I happened to have with me an original still
of him in Swingtime, nineteen thirty sixth film, and so
I went over and introduced myself and I said, I
just I want to thank you for all of the
magical moments, from flying down to Rio, to a Family
(03:50):
Upside Down and everything in between. Family Upside Down was
a TV movie he had just done, co starring opposite
Helen Hayes. At the time, that was sort of like
thanking him for his whole film career. And he said, oh, well,
my goodness, thank you, and he was happy to sign
my photo. And so, for one brief shining moment, I
(04:13):
got to meet one of my all time heroes. So
that was in seventy eight. In nineteen eighty three, five
years later, I had moved to New York the previous
year to write for Dick Kvitt, whom I met through
my Groucho connection and who hired me away from Universal
(04:36):
to write for him at HBO on a short lived
show called HBO Magazine. But then I continued to live
in New York and write for Cavit and other things.
A Stare and Gene Kelly had both been honored by
the Kennedy Center. You see the edited down specials on
(04:58):
TV where they have someone from dance and music and
literature and they salute them, And the Kennedy Center had
a policy where after you've been saluted, they would appreciate
it if you would sit down for an interview, not
to be released or broadcast, but just for their library,
(05:19):
for the Kennedy Center's official library to have that for
people to be able to access. So Astare said that
would be fine with him, but only if Dick Caviot
does the interview, because he had had good experiences when
Cavit had his ABC show and he felt comfortable conversing
(05:42):
with him. I was friends with and writing for Cavot,
and he knew what an austere fanatic eye was, as
was he, and the Kennedy Center sent Cavot the list
of questions they wanted him to ask, and luckily he
(06:04):
gave those to me to rework because they were asking
thesis questions on, you know, compare and contrast the development
of tap as an art form from the Irish clog
through Vaudeville and the influence of the African American experience.
(06:27):
And I knew from previous experience that Astaire is a
tough interview subject and he hates analyzing his art. He's
very much He was very much a I just do
it kind of guy. So what I did was I
very carefully chopped up their essay questions into more conversational
(06:51):
bites so that Cavot could ask him and get information,
you know, his answer on how a certain sequence happened.
The dance director Hermi's Pan would come up with an
idea and I'd try it out in front of a mirror,
and sure, great, that would be how he would discuss
(07:13):
how a dance step came to be. Kelly, because he
was a director and choreographer, Kelly was the opposite. If
you said, hi, Gene, Kelly would say, dance is a
three dimensional medium and film is a two dimensional medium.
So as a director or a choreographer, you have to
take in that distinction and frame the image such that
(07:36):
the two dimensions. You know, he gave those kind of
dissertation answers, but for a Stare, it was just well, sure, great,
let's do it, which doesn't make for you know, compelling listening.
I flew out to La with Cavett to interview both
(07:57):
Astare and Kelly. We were in a limousine. I was
in the front seat with the chauffeur, which is just
as well because I tended to get nauseated sitting in
the back of limousine. And we stopped by a Stair's
house on Sanya Sidrow in Beverly Hills. He got in
the car and Astaire looked at me and he said,
have we worked together before? You look familiar. And I
(08:19):
don't know whether he was confusing me with someone else
or if he really did remember from when I met
him on the set of Galactica. But so on the
way to the studio, I'm listening to Cavit and a
Stair talking, and a Stair said, Dick, did you look
over these questions and I'm thinking, he he he he,
(08:41):
and A. Stair said, some of them are asinine. What
was I doing in Vaudeville. I mean, for Heaven's sakes,
that was fifty years ago. I mean, it's ridiculous. And I'm,
you know, mentally slinking down in the front seat, thinking,
oh God, you should only know what these questions were
like before. I I made them sanitized for your easy digestion.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And you've been listening to Steve Stolier talk about his
brush with greatness again when we come back, more of
the story of Fred Astaire and Steve Stolier here on
our American Stories. And we're back with our American stories.
(09:41):
In Steve Stolier's story of the time he had the
privilege of meeting and working with FREDA.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Stair.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Steve was working for to Caviot at the time, and
Astaire had just been selected to be honored by the
Kennedy Center. Cabot was going to interview with Stair, and
it asked Steve to rewrite the Kennedy Center's questions, and
even so, Estaire still on stole these versions of the questions. Etxnine.
Let's get back to Steve.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
So I was sort of on edge after that because
I thought it was going to be this wonderful time,
and now he's attacking the questions and all that, and
I didn't let on that I'd had anything to do
with them, because I didn't want to be the target
of his annoyance. But we got to the studio, and
as a favor to a Stare, to show respect, they
(10:31):
had him go into the makeup room first before Cabot
to get ready for the cameras. So then he came
out in makeup, and then it was Caviot's turn, and
the director said to me, will you sit down with
Fred and talk to him until Dick is ready? And
I thought, oh, dear er, yeah, sure. I The next
(10:58):
thing I knew, I was sitting in a director's chair,
next to a stair in his director's chair and trying
to make pleasant conversation with someone who had just torn
apart the questions I had carefully crafted, and who was
notoriously difficult to draw out. But one of the things
(11:19):
I brought up was, you know, this was in eighty three.
It was the same year that the musical My One
and Only had opened on Broadway, and I had seen
that with Tommy Toon and Twiggy and Honey Cole's and
it was basically a loose reworking of the Gershwin show
Funny Face, which Fred and his sister Adele had started
(11:43):
in nineteen twenty seven. And I loved it. And I
felt like seeing Tommy Tooon to do some of those
intricate tap numbers was as close as I was going
to get to seeing a stair dance. And I mentioned
that even though the show was filled with a lot
of standards, the song my one and only was semi obscure,
(12:08):
but I knew it because I had a record of
a Stare and Adele singing that from Funny Face, And
I said, so, it's interesting because now that song is
getting well known by the average public because of this
new Broadway show. So we started talking about new releases
of classic songs, and we got around to Putting on
(12:30):
the Ritz and he mentioned, he said, last year, that
was that version by that German fellow, and I must
say I didn't care for it. The German fellow was
a guy named Taco, and it was sort of a synthesized,
(12:54):
mechanized version of Putting on the Ritz that got a
lot of airplay in nineteen eighty two. But a Stair said,
the way he does it is just boom boom boom
putting on the ritz, boom boom putting on the ritz.
I didn't care for it, he said, Now when Irving
wrote it, meaning Berlin, he wrote it like this, And
(13:18):
a Stair started tapping his foot. D D D D
D d d d d D D D dad. And
I'm thinking, Fred Astaire is tapping and singing, putting on
the rits to me, only me, this special moment, just
(13:41):
from me. I would say, dancing as fast as I
could verbally to keep him occupied until Kavot came out.
But it ended up being this wonderful little pocket of conversation.
And then Kavot came out and they started taping, and actually,
between my having cut the questions up and Cabot's brilliance
(14:07):
as an interviewer and conversationalist, he was able to draw
fred Astare out in that interview and actually got him
to talk about a lot of things that were essentially
things that I had wondered about that I would have
asked Fred Astare if I ever had the chance. So
I put them through Dick Cabot's mouth, and he ended up,
(14:30):
you know. At one point he said something like, gosh, Dick,
you're making me remember things I hadn't thought about in
forty years, which I took as very gratifying because it
was unlocking some of these old memories. One of my
questions was did he ever have an understudy? Because you
think about Broadway shows and how unique a stare was.
(14:56):
Was there someone who, if he was sick, would have
gone on? And the way Cabot asked it was he said,
for instance, if you were under the weather, did the
manager come out before the show and say, we're very sorry,
mister Astaire can't be here tonight. Instead, please enjoy Leonard Crunchman.
(15:18):
That was the name he came up with on the spot,
Leonard Crunchman. And as Staire said, oh no, I never
had an understudy. I just no matter what, you just
went on, you know, And it was that kind of
that trooper mentality. And he said, I remember one time
in London I had a boil removed from my head
(15:42):
and the doctor bandaged it. But I still went on
that night and I had my top hat and this
bandaged head, and nobody explained anything, and I guess the
people in the audience were thinking, Oh, I suppose the
old fellow broke his skull or something. And every time
I put the top hat back on top of my
(16:03):
head it hurt, but you know, you just went on.
So it turned into this really fascinating conversation. I mean,
a Stair was in his mid eighties at the time
and just beginning to slow down a bit. I mean,
he wasn't as lively as he was on the ABC
Cabot shows. And that you know, there was no audience,
(16:25):
there was no band, It was just this conversation. Then
the following day we went over to Gene Kelly's house,
and he was the absolute opposite because he was able
to dissect and come at his films and the dance
sequences and the combination of ballet and tap and the
(16:48):
athleticism and the choreography because I had researched him when
I was in New York. HBO at the time was
located in the Time Life building, so I had access
to Time and Life magazines archives, and they would have
(17:09):
bulging Manila folder files with stretched out rubber bands trying
to keep them from exploding, and inside would be old
clippings and old photos and stuff. You know, it was
like a morgue of old newspaper and photographic things from
previous stories. This was, you know, I hastened to add
(17:30):
before Google, so you couldn't just go to IMDb or
Wikipedia or something. But I had this rare access. And
in the file for gene Kelly was a story about
when he was working on the nineteen forty two oh
Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth. The music was by Jerome Kern.
(17:52):
So there was one news story that said that after
filming was completed, Jerome Kern presented gene Kelly with a
silver plate and that was engraved to GK from JK
in honor of Cover Girl. And so after the cabot
had finished interviewing gene Kelly, I thought this will floor
(18:16):
him that I know this bit of trivia, and so
I said, do you still have that plate that Jerome
Kern gave you after CoverGirl? And I expected him to
laugh or something, and instead he's got this scowl on
his face and he said, where did you hear about that?
(18:37):
That was stolen from me some years back and I've
never seen it. There was a theft at my house.
How do you know about that? And all of a sudden,
I was, like, you know, sitting in a chair with
the cops going over me with a third degree in
a bright light, and I said, I it was in
your file at the time life archive of the thing,
(19:01):
and I did. And I think he was placated. But
it was a strange note to end on because I
don't know, but he ever completely got over that trace
of suspicion that the one thing I brought up that
I thought would put a smile on his face instead
triggered his irish anger. But it was still a great
(19:23):
afternoon to be sitting at the feet of Gene Kelly
and listening to him talk about his career. And only
one day after spending the afternoon with Fred Astaire so
I had, in one visit back to la from New York,
I had managed to spend time with two of obviously
(19:45):
two of the greatest dancers that have ever appeared on film.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And great job is always by Robbie on the production
and everything else. It's a terrific story in Steve's Stollier.
My goodness, what a great storyteller. Steve Stollier's story his
two brushes with greatness here on our American story.
And we continue with our American Stories. Previously on our show,
we've heard from Steve Stolier, who, as a UCLA student
in the mid seventies, convinced Universal Pictures to re release
the classic Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers. It's a terrific story,
by the way, go to our American Stories dot com
and take a look. Stolier would then go on to
(00:32):
be Groucho Marx's personal assistant and historian for the final
years of the legend's life. Today we hear from Steve again,
still in show business, but excited as ever to be
surrounded by stage and screen legends. Here's Steve.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Groucho Marx was just at the top of my pantheon
of most admired and entertainers, but running a close second
was fred Astaire Frederic Austerlitz of Omaha, Nebraska. He doesn't
seem as if he would have come from Middle America
(01:14):
like that, because he's known for the top hat and
white tie and tails, but in fact he's one of
those aeradite fellows that came from Nebraska, along with Johnny
Carson and Dick Cavitt and Marlon Brando and a number
of other people. I would have given anything to be
able to meet him. And in fact, when I was
(01:38):
working at Universal Studios in the late seventies after Graucho died,
I got a job working in the Steno pool from
eleven am to eight pm every day, and I would
be typing episodes of The Rockford Files and Kojak and
Barretta and so on. But I loved working at Universal
(01:59):
because on lunch breaks or before or after work, I
could go wandering around there. You know, there wasn't much
security at the time. It isn't like now. Plus I
was an employee and I was always nosing around because
of the history of the place. I loved the Universal
horror films and all that sort of stuff with the classics.
(02:20):
My man godfree and so I would keep track of
who was guest starring on different shows and if they
were filming on the lot, and if I was lucky,
sometimes I would be able to cross paths with them.
And then, of all the unlikely things, I found out
that Fred Astaire was going to be guest starring on
(02:42):
Battle Star Galactica. Apparently his grandson his favorite TV show
was Battlestar Galactica, and he said, Grandpa will you be
on that that would be cool, and so a stare figuring, well,
I can't deny my own grandson a request like that.
(03:04):
So he got in touch with the producers and they
wrote a part for him where he played Dirk Benedict's
con man father. On a lunch break, I wandered over
to the set and I watched him shoot a scene
inside the spacecraft. And then during a break, he was
just sauntering around the soundstage with his hands in his pockets,
(03:28):
and I happened to have with me an original still
of him in Swingtime, nineteen thirty sixth film, and so
I went over and introduced myself and I said, I
just I want to thank you for all of the
magical moments, from flying down to Rio, to a Family
(03:50):
Upside Down and everything in between. Family Upside Down was
a TV movie he had just done, co starring opposite
Helen Hayes. At the time, that was sort of like
thanking him for his whole film career. And he said, oh, well,
my goodness, thank you, and he was happy to sign
my photo. And so, for one brief shining moment, I
(04:13):
got to meet one of my all time heroes. So
that was in seventy eight. In nineteen eighty three, five
years later, I had moved to New York the previous
year to write for Dick Kvitt, whom I met through
my Groucho connection and who hired me away from Universal
(04:36):
to write for him at HBO on a short lived
show called HBO Magazine. But then I continued to live
in New York and write for Cavit and other things.
A Stare and Gene Kelly had both been honored by
the Kennedy Center. You see the edited down specials on
(04:58):
TV where they have someone from dance and music and
literature and they salute them, And the Kennedy Center had
a policy where after you've been saluted, they would appreciate
it if you would sit down for an interview, not
to be released or broadcast, but just for their library,
(05:19):
for the Kennedy Center's official library to have that for
people to be able to access. So Astare said that
would be fine with him, but only if Dick Caviot
does the interview, because he had had good experiences when
Cavit had his ABC show and he felt comfortable conversing
(05:42):
with him. I was friends with and writing for Cavot,
and he knew what an austere fanatic eye was, as
was he, and the Kennedy Center sent Cavot the list
of questions they wanted him to ask, and luckily he
(06:04):
gave those to me to rework because they were asking
thesis questions on, you know, compare and contrast the development
of tap as an art form from the Irish clog
through Vaudeville and the influence of the African American experience.
(06:27):
And I knew from previous experience that Astaire is a
tough interview subject and he hates analyzing his art. He's
very much He was very much a I just do
it kind of guy. So what I did was I
very carefully chopped up their essay questions into more conversational
(06:51):
bites so that Cavot could ask him and get information,
you know, his answer on how a certain sequence happened.
The dance director Hermi's Pan would come up with an
idea and I'd try it out in front of a mirror,
and sure, great, that would be how he would discuss
(07:13):
how a dance step came to be. Kelly, because he
was a director and choreographer, Kelly was the opposite. If
you said, hi, Gene, Kelly would say, dance is a
three dimensional medium and film is a two dimensional medium.
So as a director or a choreographer, you have to
take in that distinction and frame the image such that
(07:36):
the two dimensions. You know, he gave those kind of
dissertation answers, but for a Stare, it was just well, sure, great,
let's do it, which doesn't make for you know, compelling listening.
I flew out to La with Cavett to interview both
(07:57):
Astare and Kelly. We were in a limousine. I was
in the front seat with the chauffeur, which is just
as well because I tended to get nauseated sitting in
the back of limousine. And we stopped by a Stair's
house on Sanya Sidrow in Beverly Hills. He got in
the car and Astaire looked at me and he said,
have we worked together before? You look familiar. And I
(08:19):
don't know whether he was confusing me with someone else
or if he really did remember from when I met
him on the set of Galactica. But so on the
way to the studio, I'm listening to Cavit and a
Stair talking, and a Stair said, Dick, did you look
over these questions and I'm thinking, he he he he,
(08:41):
and A. Stair said, some of them are asinine. What
was I doing in Vaudeville. I mean, for Heaven's sakes,
that was fifty years ago. I mean, it's ridiculous. And I'm,
you know, mentally slinking down in the front seat, thinking,
oh God, you should only know what these questions were
like before. I I made them sanitized for your easy digestion.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
And you've been listening to Steve Stolier talk about his
brush with greatness again when we come back, more of
the story of Fred Astaire and Steve Stolier here on
our American Stories. And we're back with our American stories.
(09:41):
In Steve Stolier's story of the time he had the
privilege of meeting and working with FREDA.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Stair.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Steve was working for to Caviot at the time, and
Astaire had just been selected to be honored by the
Kennedy Center. Cabot was going to interview with Stair, and
it asked Steve to rewrite the Kennedy Center's questions, and
even so, Estaire still on stole these versions of the questions. Etxnine.
Let's get back to Steve.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
So I was sort of on edge after that because
I thought it was going to be this wonderful time,
and now he's attacking the questions and all that, and
I didn't let on that I'd had anything to do
with them, because I didn't want to be the target
of his annoyance. But we got to the studio, and
as a favor to a Stare, to show respect, they
(10:31):
had him go into the makeup room first before Cabot
to get ready for the cameras. So then he came
out in makeup, and then it was Caviot's turn, and
the director said to me, will you sit down with
Fred and talk to him until Dick is ready? And
I thought, oh, dear er, yeah, sure. I The next
(10:58):
thing I knew, I was sitting in a director's chair,
next to a stair in his director's chair and trying
to make pleasant conversation with someone who had just torn
apart the questions I had carefully crafted, and who was
notoriously difficult to draw out. But one of the things
(11:19):
I brought up was, you know, this was in eighty three.
It was the same year that the musical My One
and Only had opened on Broadway, and I had seen
that with Tommy Toon and Twiggy and Honey Cole's and
it was basically a loose reworking of the Gershwin show
Funny Face, which Fred and his sister Adele had started
(11:43):
in nineteen twenty seven. And I loved it. And I
felt like seeing Tommy Tooon to do some of those
intricate tap numbers was as close as I was going
to get to seeing a stair dance. And I mentioned
that even though the show was filled with a lot
of standards, the song my one and only was semi obscure,
(12:08):
but I knew it because I had a record of
a Stare and Adele singing that from Funny Face, And
I said, so, it's interesting because now that song is
getting well known by the average public because of this
new Broadway show. So we started talking about new releases
of classic songs, and we got around to Putting on
(12:30):
the Ritz and he mentioned, he said, last year, that
was that version by that German fellow, and I must
say I didn't care for it. The German fellow was
a guy named Taco, and it was sort of a synthesized,
(12:54):
mechanized version of Putting on the Ritz that got a
lot of airplay in nineteen eighty two. But a Stair said,
the way he does it is just boom boom boom
putting on the ritz, boom boom putting on the ritz.
I didn't care for it, he said, Now when Irving
wrote it, meaning Berlin, he wrote it like this, And
(13:18):
a Stair started tapping his foot. D D D D
D d d d d D D D dad. And
I'm thinking, Fred Astaire is tapping and singing, putting on
the rits to me, only me, this special moment, just
(13:41):
from me. I would say, dancing as fast as I
could verbally to keep him occupied until Kavot came out.
But it ended up being this wonderful little pocket of conversation.
And then Kavot came out and they started taping, and actually,
between my having cut the questions up and Cabot's brilliance
(14:07):
as an interviewer and conversationalist, he was able to draw
fred Astare out in that interview and actually got him
to talk about a lot of things that were essentially
things that I had wondered about that I would have
asked Fred Astare if I ever had the chance. So
I put them through Dick Cabot's mouth, and he ended up,
(14:30):
you know. At one point he said something like, gosh, Dick,
you're making me remember things I hadn't thought about in
forty years, which I took as very gratifying because it
was unlocking some of these old memories. One of my
questions was did he ever have an understudy? Because you
think about Broadway shows and how unique a stare was.
(14:56):
Was there someone who, if he was sick, would have
gone on? And the way Cabot asked it was he said,
for instance, if you were under the weather, did the
manager come out before the show and say, we're very sorry,
mister Astaire can't be here tonight. Instead, please enjoy Leonard Crunchman.
(15:18):
That was the name he came up with on the spot,
Leonard Crunchman. And as Staire said, oh no, I never
had an understudy. I just no matter what, you just
went on, you know, And it was that kind of
that trooper mentality. And he said, I remember one time
in London I had a boil removed from my head
(15:42):
and the doctor bandaged it. But I still went on
that night and I had my top hat and this
bandaged head, and nobody explained anything, and I guess the
people in the audience were thinking, Oh, I suppose the
old fellow broke his skull or something. And every time
I put the top hat back on top of my
(16:03):
head it hurt, but you know, you just went on.
So it turned into this really fascinating conversation. I mean,
a Stair was in his mid eighties at the time
and just beginning to slow down a bit. I mean,
he wasn't as lively as he was on the ABC
Cabot shows. And that you know, there was no audience,
(16:25):
there was no band, It was just this conversation. Then
the following day we went over to Gene Kelly's house,
and he was the absolute opposite because he was able
to dissect and come at his films and the dance
sequences and the combination of ballet and tap and the
(16:48):
athleticism and the choreography because I had researched him when
I was in New York. HBO at the time was
located in the Time Life building, so I had access
to Time and Life magazines archives, and they would have
(17:09):
bulging Manila folder files with stretched out rubber bands trying
to keep them from exploding, and inside would be old
clippings and old photos and stuff. You know, it was
like a morgue of old newspaper and photographic things from
previous stories. This was, you know, I hastened to add
(17:30):
before Google, so you couldn't just go to IMDb or
Wikipedia or something. But I had this rare access. And
in the file for gene Kelly was a story about
when he was working on the nineteen forty two oh
Cover Girl with Rita Hayworth. The music was by Jerome Kern.
(17:52):
So there was one news story that said that after
filming was completed, Jerome Kern presented gene Kelly with a
silver plate and that was engraved to GK from JK
in honor of Cover Girl. And so after the cabot
had finished interviewing gene Kelly, I thought this will floor
(18:16):
him that I know this bit of trivia, and so
I said, do you still have that plate that Jerome
Kern gave you after CoverGirl? And I expected him to
laugh or something, and instead he's got this scowl on
his face and he said, where did you hear about that?
(18:37):
That was stolen from me some years back and I've
never seen it. There was a theft at my house.
How do you know about that? And all of a sudden,
I was, like, you know, sitting in a chair with
the cops going over me with a third degree in
a bright light, and I said, I it was in
your file at the time life archive of the thing,
(19:01):
and I did. And I think he was placated. But
it was a strange note to end on because I
don't know, but he ever completely got over that trace
of suspicion that the one thing I brought up that
I thought would put a smile on his face instead
triggered his irish anger. But it was still a great
(19:23):
afternoon to be sitting at the feet of Gene Kelly
and listening to him talk about his career. And only
one day after spending the afternoon with Fred Astaire so
I had, in one visit back to la from New York,
I had managed to spend time with two of obviously
(19:45):
two of the greatest dancers that have ever appeared on film.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
And great job is always by Robbie on the production
and everything else. It's a terrific story in Steve's Stollier.
My goodness, what a great storyteller. Steve Stollier's story his
two brushes with greatness here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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