“Puttin’ On The Ritz” — Fred Astaire
When I need cheering up, humming a few bars of Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz” to myself always does it.
It brings back memories of childhood Saturday afternoons with my grandfather. He was a big fan of Hollywood musicals and the “song and dance men” he’d seen in Glasgow’s music halls as a younger man.
In the heyday of music halls, he’d seen all the big stars. Unusually for a Glaswegian, he wasn’t a drinker, but loved his Friday nights out after work had finished for the week at one of Glasgow’s theatres when a big star was up from London or over from America.
On winter Saturday afternoons while the rain came down outside…Glasgow is a great place but the weather is terrible…my grandad and I watched all the old black-and-white movies that aired on BBC2 while the other two TV channels (there were only two others back then) force-fed the country a diet of sport that neither my grandad nor I were interested in.
I probably saw every movie that Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Cyd Charisse and Donald O’Connor made before I became a teenager.
Even now, I could watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers all day. They both possess that ephemeral combination of elegance, refinement and technical expertise that you see only in the very greatest dancers.
