I miss the romance. I keep saying this over and over again, but dance follows music. And if the accent today is percussion and rhythm and loudness, then that is the way the dance numbers will be. But it is pretty hard on romance with seven guitars, three drums, and no melody instruments in the band.

I never wanted to be a dancer. It's true! I wanted to be a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.

Any man who looks like a sissy while dancing is just a lousy dancer.

I love rhythmic dancing - I'm not derogating it at all. It's just that sometimes you want to whisper, "I adore you." And for that you need strings and woodwinds.

Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.

Kids talk to me and say they want to do musicals again because they've studied the tapes of the old films. We didn't have that. We thought once we had made it, even on film, it was gone except for the archives.