UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "He was the best partner anyone could ever have," so said Ginger Rogers about the man who came to represent elegance on film.</s>GINGER ROGERS, DANCE PARTNER OF FRED ASTAIRE: A man who has an enormous amount of class and style, ability, originality.</s>CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fred Astaire's widow called him the best person she'd ever met.</s>ROBYN ASTAIRE, WIDOW OF FRED ASTAIRE: He died in my arms, he knew I was with him, and he was happy, he was ready to go.</s>JIM MORET, CNN ANCHOR: For those of us who can't dance, Fred Astaire made the impossible look relatively simple, and it was with grace that he would move. He was a creative genius when it came to dance. He made a hat rack into a partner. He could dance with a hat rack and make that hat rack look great. He could dance on the walls and the ceiling, and somehow we'd believe that he could really do it. He was smooth. If you if you looked at him, he would be the first to admit that he wasn't the best looking man. Yet he had a savoir-faire about him that would make women melt, because there was a sheer smoothness to his moves; a fluidity to the way he'd move his hands, his head, his feet. And then, he could make a walk into a graceful dance.
CNN 20: Fred Astaire Dies At 88, June 22, 1987