“Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for the 1935 film Top Hat, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire. The song title refers to the formal wear required on a party invitation: top hat, white tie, and a tailcoat. Popular recordings in 1935 were by Fred Astaire and by Ray Noble and his Orchestra (vocal by Al Bowlly and The Freshmen).
For “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails”, probably Astaire’s most celebrated tap solo, the idea for the title song came from Astaire who described to Berlin a routine he had created for the 1930 Ziegfeld Broadway flop Smiles called “Say, Young Man of Manhattan,” in which he gunned down a chorus of men – which included a young Bob Hope and Larry Adler – with his cane. Berlin duly produced the song from his trunk and the concept of the film was then built around it. In this number Astaire had to compromise on his one-take philosophy, as Sandrich acknowledged: “We went to huge lengths to make the ‘Top Hat’ number look like one take, but actually it’s several.” Astaire’s remarkable ability to change the tempo within a single dance phrase is extensively featured throughout this routine and taken to extremes – as when he explodes into activity from a pose of complete quiet and vice versa.
This routine also marks Astaire’s first use of a cane as a prop in one of his filmed dances. The number opens with a chorus strutting and lunging in front of a backdrop of a Parisian street scene. They make way for Astaire who strides confidently to the front of the stage and delivers the song, which features the famous line: “I’m stepping out, my dear, to breathe an atmosphere that simply reeks with class,” trading the occasional tap barrage with the chorus as he sings. The dance begins with Astaire and chorus moving in step. Astaire soon lashes out with a swirling tap step and the chorus responds timidly before leaving the stage in a sequence of overlapping, direction-shifting, hitch steps and walks. In the first part of the solo which follows, Astaire embarks on a circular tap movement, embellished with cane taps into which he mixes a series of unpredictable pauses.
As the camera retreats the lights dim and, in the misterioso passage which follows, Astaire mimes a series of stances, ranging from overt friendliness, wariness, surprise to watchful readiness and jaunty confidence. Jimmy Cagney attended the shooting of this scene and advised Astaire, who claims to have ad-libbed much of this section. The chorus then returns in a threatening posture, and Astaire proceeds to dispatch them all, using an inventive series of actions miming the cane’s use as a gun, a submachine gun, a rifle and, finally, a bow and arrow.
The popular Norwegian meteorologist Kristian Trægde sang the song (and step-danced to it) on the TV show Skjemtegauken, in 1968. In 1977 ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev sang the song on The Muppet Show, complete with tap dancing. In Episode 1 of the ninth season of M A S H, “The Best of Enemies”, the character Hawykeye is singing “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails” in the first scene. In a 1981 SCTV television skit, “Al’s Sanitone Drycleaning”, Eugene Levy sings the song and tap dances as he promotes the fictional company in a mock commercial. In the 1995 film Batman Forever, the character Edward Nygma sings a brief parody of “Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails” using the lyrics “I’m, sucking up your I.Q., vacuuming your cortex, feeding off your brain!” Jim Carrey also parodied the song at the 69th Academy Awards when referring to Dirt Devil vacuum commercials featuring Fred Astaire footage: “I’m, sucking up the lint balls, getting in the corners, dump it out the back!”
