Of whom were these words spoken?...

And, by whom?

"Your success here is assured. You’ve got youth, energy, humor, looks, and fun. That’s exactly what the English like.”

What struck me in these words is how easily someone could have written them to one of the young Beatles. They had all of those attributes bundled in with their talent and so won over their fellow Brits, as their Command Performance before the Royals famously underscored.

And the act about which the words above were spoken, in fact, became favorites of the Prince of Wales.

Who were the words written about?

The sister and brother dance team of Adele and Fred Astaire, who became a huge hit across the pond a few years before Adele retired from show business and Fred became a triple-threat movie icon: dancer, actor, singer. (Some people forget how successful Astaire was as a singing recording artist. In the 1930s, recordings by Astaire, regarded by many as the greatest dancer ever, often outsold those of Bing Crosby, the crooner of the age. George Gershwin, I've read, wept on hearing recordings Astaire made of Gershwin compositions. Astaire, Gershwin thought, was the first singer to really understand what George and Ira had in mind in their music.)

The laudatory comment about the Astaires was made by English playwright Noel Coward and it strikes me as spot-on. Fred Astaire, like his contemporary Cary Grant, and like the Beatles, was more than just talented. He was a personality. Fun, accessibility, and the joy of life, however studied and however attributable to his storied perfectionism, were at least as important to Astaire's success and to the enduring attractiveness of his movie performances as was his talent.

Coward was right.

The quote is cited in a wonderful article here.

By the way, I spent some time analyzing the appeal of the Beatles here.