They never said he couldn't sing. The screen test report was damning enough without exaggerating it, as people have done, writes Frank McNally.
In any case, the original text is long lost. So the authoritative account must rest with the man who had most reason to memorise it: Fred Astaire himself. Near the end of his life he recalled RKO's verdict thus: "Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances." In fairness to the studio executives, they were not alone in being underwhelmed. Before he made a film, Astaire had spent years as half of a vaudeville act with his sister Adele, who was the partnership's star turn. A history of the 1920s Broadway musical records that a New York Times review of their show - under the headline "Adele Astaire Fascinates" - had nothing better to say about Fred than that "he participates enthusiastically and successfully in most of Miss Astaire's dance offerings".
Fred's sister never made movies and left no film of her work, before she retired to marry an aristocrat called Charles Cavendish and move to his family pile in Waterford, Lismore Castle. It is intriguing to think that a dancer who might have been even better than Fred Astaire sacrificed her career for a life in Ireland. At any rate, she established a family link with this country that continues today: of which more later.
It was Astaire himself who claimed he couldn't sing. Thousands agreed with him. His voice was just as thin as he was, and he struggled long to find a style he could carry. Once he did, he carried it so well that the leading composers of his day soon reserved their best material for him and, together, they reinvented the popular song genre.
"The male pop singer B.F. (before Fred) sounded something like an Irish tenor," one critic has written. "The limitations of Astaire's voice forced him to find another way - deceptively casual, never oversold, and at home with the American vernacular.
"Astaire moved the 'scene' of the singer from the centre of the great hall to just across the table, in effect replacing the Minstrel Boy with Ordinary Guy, US version." And that was just his secondary talent. His first was obvious enough - however bad the screen test - for RKO to persist with him. The trust paid off handsomely. By his second film, Flying Down to Rio, Astaire was clearly marked for greatness. And in the process he had found a new dancing partner, Ginger Rogers.
It is a popular compliment to the latter that, throughout their 10 movies, she had to do everything Astaire did, but "backwards and wearing high-heels". This is perhaps being kind to Rogers, whose greatest achievement - at least some critics argue - was making it look like she was doing everything he did.
Anyway, the partnership had challenges for him too. In what is perhaps their most famous dance sequence, Cheek to Cheek, the on-screen romance was threatened by Rogers's feather dress, which kept shedding and getting in Astaire's nose and eyes, to the point where he lost his temper.
At the risk of being misunderstood, Katherine Hepburn once said of the Astaire-Rogers partnership: "He gives her class. She gives him sex." I think we know what Hepburn meant. But 20 years after his death, Astaire's class, or his lack of sexiness - or both - have probably diminished his appeal for modern audiences used to much raunchier forms of music and dance.
Later this month a group of admirers will attempt to reignite the romance, reminding us how good he was and encouraging people to seek out those old films. The National Concert Hall is hosting a musical celebration of Astaire's work on August 31st, featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Big Band with guest vocalists. The evening will also include an interview with Fred's daughter, Ava Astaire McKenzie.
Ava first came to Ireland to visit her Aunt Adele in 1954 and liked it so much she returned to live here. She still spends much of her time in West Cork, where she wrote a book called Home in Ireland: Cooking and Entertaining with Ava Astaire McKenzie. Indeed, her move here was recorded in another book, by her husband, Richard McKenzie: Turn Left at the Black Cow - One Family's Journey from Beverly Hills to Ireland. The NCH audience will hear Ava's recollections of growing up with her famous father, who was also a regular visitor here. His most notable stay in Ireland was while shooting The Purple Taxi (1970), a "French-Italian-Irish" production and a "terrible" film, according to Ava.
That was one of his straight-acting roles, playing an Irish doctor called Scully.
And although he loved character acting, the natural grace of his movements sometimes worked against him. There was a scene in which he had to run up a stairs, for example. But this was a challenge, his daughter recalls, because instead of ascending the steps like a doctor, "he was doing it like Fred Astaire".
Wisely, the NCH event will not attempt to re-create any of his famous dance sequences, even by the one person in the line-up who can claim to have followed in the footsteps of Ginger Rogers.
Ava did not, by her own admission, inherit her father's feet. "Clumsy", she describes herself. But among the topics she may touch on is how, as an 18-year-old debutante, she took part in a father-and-daughter waltz with the man deemed by Nureyev, among others, to be the greatest dancer of the 20th century.
Tickets for the Fred Astaire celebration are available from the National Concert Hall or online at www.rte.ie/performinggroups