That's Entertainment, Part II together for the first time since the 1946 film "Ziegfeld Follies", and for only the second time in their careers. (It was the last time 76-year-old Astaire danced on film, though the veteran actor continued to make film and TV appearances into the 1980s; Kelly would go on to appear in the 1980 musical "Xanadu".) According to film historian Robert Osborne, in specially-filmed introductions produced for Turner Classic Movies, it was Astaire who suggested to Kelly that the two take advantage of this potentially last-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform together, something Kelly actually wishes for out loud during his narration of
Fred Astaire 1960, and 1968, each featuring Barrie Chase, with whom Astaire enjoyed a renewed period of dance creativity. The first of these programs, 1958's "An Evening with Fred Astaire", won nine Emmy Awards, including "Best Single Performance by an Actor" and "Most Outstanding Single Program of the Year." It was also noteworthy for being the first major broadcast to be prerecorded on color videotape and has recently been restored. The restoration won a technical Emmy in 1988 for Ed Reitan, Don Kent, and Dan Einstein, who restored the original videotape, transferring its contents to a modern format and filling in gaps