Three Little Words Astaire, Fred performer Pan, Hermes performer Vera-Ellen performer Film 1950 MGM "Where Did You Get That Girl?" opens with a bright dance routine for Astaire and Vera-Ellen as the dancing team of Kalmar and Brown, in action at a top vaudeville theatre in 1919 (The number is set to a popular song Kalmar wrote in 1912 with HRY Puck). Dressed alike in top hats, white ties (and socks) and tails, the routine, stepping in synchrony, which consists of song and dance with brief punctuations of their canes, recalls the class act tap dancing of Charles Johnson and Dora Babbage Dean, as well as Astaire's early roots on the vaudeville stage with his sister Adele. "Mr. and Mrs. Hoofer at Home" in which the couple, now married, is seen performing at Keith's Theatre in Washington D.C. for an audience that includes a great vaudeville fan, President Woodrow Wilson. Their act is a comedy skit showing the domestic in tranquility of a couple of married tap dancers. "Test Solo" A virtuosic solo by Astaire that includes a 42-second tap routine that is unsurpassed by anything in his film career: tap dancing while snatching his cane up from the floor, he raps out a brisk tap barrage, then confidently saunters into a dance that is a series of sweeping maneuvers and gliding spins punctuated by more crisp cane snatches. This followed by tap work that is more maniac: rapid tapping behind the cane, a stomping promenade, and a staggering passage in which the cane is swung and kicked around so that it slaps the floor (all performed to a sparse piano composition by Andre Previn). Performing Arts Encyclopedia http://www.loc.gov/performingarts Billman, Larry: Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia, 1893-1955. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland (1997). Tap Dance America http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/tda/tda-home.html Hermes Pan (biography) loc.music.tdabio.147 Fred Astaire (biography) loc.music.tdabio.16 tda IHAS 151216 loc.music.tda.298