Fred Astaire was the American movie dancer of the 1930s and 1940s. Famed for his mixture of elegance and nice-guy charm, he was a popular romantic lead despite his lack of typical movie star good looks. His dance routines are a staple of movie highlight reels. He was often paired with dancing actress Ginger Rogers; their movies together included Flying Down to Rio (1933), Top Hat (1935), and Swing Time (1936).
Astaire was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his non-dancing appearance in the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno.
(click to enlarge) Astaire in Top Hat, 1935 (credit: Corbis/Bettmann)
(born May 10, 1899, Omaha, Neb., U.S. — died June 22, 1987, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. dancer and singer of stage and movies. At age seven he began his popular vaudeville dance act with his sister Adele, and they made their Broadway debut in 1917; they continued dancing in stage hits until Adele retired in 1932. Astaire's successful film appearances with Ginger Rogers began with Flying Down to Rio (1933) and continued until 1939. In the 1940s and 1950s he danced on-screen with Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse, and Judy Garland. His singing, though untrained, was admired by the finest songwriters of his time. He retired in 1971 but occasionally appeared in films and on television. His combination of sophisticated, seemingly effortless grace and technical virtuosity revolutionized popular-dance performance.
Astaire, Fred [né Frederick Austerlitz] (1899–1987), dancer and actor. He and his sister Adele (1898–1981) comprised the preeminent Broadway dance team of the 1920s. They were born in Omaha and achieved recognition in vaudeville before making their Broadway debut in Over the Top (1917). There followed appearances in The Passing Show of 1918, Apple Blossoms (1919), and The Love Letter (1921). The Astaires became virtual stars in two 1922 shows, For Goodness Sake and The Bunch and Judy, then, after a season in London, earned lasting recognition as the stars of Lady, Be Good! (1924). Another success, Funny Face (1927), followed, but Smiles (1930) was a failure. Their last joint success was The Band Wagon (1931), in which they sang and danced “Hoops” and “I Love Louisa.” When the revue closed, Adele retired to marry an English lord, so her brother appeared alone in what proved to be his last Broadway show, Gay Divorce (1932). The musical gave him the chance to introduce one final great song, “Night and Day.” The rest of his career was spent in Hollywood, where his early films with Ginger Rogers at RKO and his later work at Paramount and especially MGM made him one of filmdom's greatest stars. Although neither Fred nor Adele was especially good‐looking, they were both slim, agile dancers, whose routines were characterized by a streamlined stylishness and a delightfully impish wit. Writing of their work in Smiles, the Boston Evening Transcript's famous critic, Henry Taylor Parker, observed, “They are quite unsentimental. Whether they speak, dance or would sing, their touch is light, dry, sophisticated.” Until her departure, Adele Astaire was generally considered the better of the two, universally praised not only for her dancing but also for her brilliant gifts as a comedienne. The pair's trademark was a run‐around, in which they danced in ever widening arcs until, before their audience realized it, they had danced themselves off stage. Autobiography (Fred): Steps in Time, 1959; biography: Fred Astaire: A Wonderful Life, B. Adler, 1987.
Fred Astaire (1899-1987) was a preeminent dancer and choreographer who worked in vaudeville, revue, musical comedy, television, radio, and Hollywood musicals. He achieved admiring recognition not only from his peers in the entertainment world, but also from major figures in ballet and modern dance.
Fred Astaire, born Frederick Austerlitz on May 10, 1899, in Omaha, Nebraska, began performing in vaudeville with his sister, Adele, in 1905. The Astaires eventually became featured performers, and in 1917 they moved to the musical stage where they appeared in ten productions, most of them hugely successful, particularly two musical comedies with songs by George and Ira Gershwin (Lady, Be Good in 1924 and Funny Face in 1927) and a revue with songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz (The Band Wagon in 1931).
When his sister retired from show business in 1932 to marry, Astaire sought to reshape his career. He settled on the featured role in Gay Divorce, a "musical play" with songs by Cole Porter. This show proved Astaire could flourish without his sister, and it also helped establish the pattern of most of his film musicals: it was a light, perky, unsentimental comedy, largely uncluttered by subplot, built around a love story for Astaire and his partner (Claire Luce) that was airy and amusing, but essentially serious - particularly when the pair danced together.
Astaire Goes to Hollywood
In 1933 Astaire married Phyllis Livingston Potter. Shortly after his marriage Astaire went to Hollywood. At RKO he had a featured part in the exuberant, fluttery Flying Down to Rio (1933). The film was a hit, and it was obvious Astaire's performance and screen appeal were a major factor in that success. The Gay Divorcee (1934), a film version of Gay Divorce, was the first of Astaire's major pictures with Ginger Rogers, and it scored even better at the box office than Flying Down to Rio. With this and seven more films in the 1930s (the most popular of which was Top Hat of 1935), they reached their full development as a team - one of the legendary partnerships in the history of dance, characterized by breathless high spirits, emotional richness, bubbling comedy, and beguiling romantic compatibility.
For these films Astaire created a rich series of romantic and playful duets for the team, as well as an array of dazzling and imaginative solos for himself. Astaire's musicality, together with the opportunity of working on such a classy, highly profitable project, made his films attractive to many of the top popular-song composers of the day: Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and the Gershwins.
By the end of the 1930s the revenues from the films with Rogers were beginning to decline and, after a disagreement over fees with the studio, Astaire left. The next years were nomadic but successful ones for Astaire. He made nine films at four different studios and continued to fashion splendid dances. He appeared with a variety of partners - tap virtuoso Eleanor Powell, Paulette Goddard, Rita Hayworth, Joan Leslie, and Lucille Bremer - and he also did a pair of films with Bing Crosby. Musically, Astaire continued to attract the best: Porter, Berlin, Kern, Harold Arlen, Harry Warren, and lyricist Johnny Mercer.
Retirement and Creation of Dancing Schools
In 1946 Astaire retired from motion pictures to create a chain of dancing schools, a venture that was eventually proved to be successful. In 1947 he returned to movies to make the highly profitable Easter Parade at MGM, opposite Judy Garland. Nine more musicals followed. His partners in these included Ginger Rogers for one picture, as well as Vera-Ellen, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, Betty Hutton, Jane Powell, and Audrey Hepburn. This period was marked by a great personal tragedy for Astaire - the agonizing death of his beloved wife from cancer in 1954 at the age of 46.
By the mid-1950s the era of the classic Hollywood musical as Astaire had experienced it - indeed, defined it - was coming to an end, and Astaire moved into other fields. On television he produced four multiple award-winning musical specials with Barrie Chase as his partner. He also tried his hand at straight acting roles with considerable success in eight films between 1959 and 1982. Over the years he played a number of characters on television - usually suave ones - in dramatic specials and series. As he entered his 80s, Astaire, a life-long horse racing enthusiast, romanced, and in 1980 married, Robyn Smith, a successful jockey in her mid-30s. He died seven years later.
Ginger Rogers, Astaire's long time dance partner, passed away in April 1995. Rogers is often quoted as having said, "I did everything Fred did, only backwards and in high heels." Their partnership lasted sixteen years, from 1933 to 1949.
Astaire's Legacy
Over the course of his long film career, Fred Astaire appeared in 212 musical numbers, of which 133 contain fully developed dance routines, a high percentage of which are of great artistic value, a contribution unrivaled in films and with few parallels in the history of dance. And, because he worked mainly in film, Astaire is that great rarity: a master choreographer the vast majority of whose works are precisely preserved.
Although the creation of many of Astaire's dances involved a degree of collaboration with others, the guiding creative hand and the final authority was Astaire himself. His choreography is notable for its inventiveness, wit, musicality, and economy. Characteristically, each dance takes two or three central ideas and carefully presents and develops them - ideas that might derive from a step, the music, the lyrics, the qualities of his partner, or the plot situation.
Astaire's dances are stylistically eclectic, an unpredictable blend of tap and ballroom with bits from other dance forms thrown in. What holds everything together is Astaire's distinctive style and sensibility: the casual sophistication, the airy wit, the transparent rhythmic intricacy, and the apparent ease of execution. Astaire also focused his attention on the problems of filming dance and settled on an approach that was to dominate Hollywood musicals for a generation: both camerawork and editing are fashioned to enhance the flow and continuity of the dances, not to undercut or overshadow it.
A perfectionist, Astaire spent weeks working out his choreography. Although his perfectionism, his propensity to worry, his shyness, and his self-doubt could make him difficult, even exasperating, to work with, he was an efficient planner and worker. His courtesy, enormous professionalism, and tireless struggle for improvement earned him the admiration of his co-workers.
Astaire's legacy continues to be revisited, sometimes with controversy. In January 1997, Astaire's image returned to television through special effects editing when Dirt Devil grafted their vacuum cleaners into dance scenes from Astaire's films for three of their commercials. The advertisements were completed and run with Robyn Astaire's blessing. The commercials, which aired during the Super Bowl, were panned by the press, the general feeling being that replacing Ginger Rogers with a vacuum cleaner was in poor taste.
Further Reading
Fred Astaire's autobiography which, shattering Hollywood tradition, he wrote himself (in longhand) is Steps in Time (1959). His work is discussed and analyzed in Arlene Croce, The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972) and John Mueller, Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films (1985). Useful interviews with Astaire are included in Morton Eustis, Players at Work (1937) and in Inter/View (June 1973). Astaire can also be found on the World Wide Web. A listing of his movies can be found at http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~amatth13/fred.html. Information on Astaire can also be found at http://www.mrshowbiz.com/scoop/news/archive/1_9_97_8bogart.html
Astaire, Fred (orig. Frederick Austerlitz;b Omaha, Nebr., 10 May 1899, d Los Angeles, 22 June 1987). US dancer and choreographer, considered to be one of the greatest tap dancers of the century. With very little formal training, he and his sister Adele began performing a vaudeville child act in 1906 which toured widely around the US. In 1917 they appeared in their first musical comedy (Over the Top) and subsequently starred in many musicals and revues in both London and New York—including the Gershwins' Lady be Good (1924) and Funny Face (1927). After Adele retired in 1932 he went to Hollywood where his appearance with Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio (1933) created a sensation. They made 8 more films together in quick succession, including The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), Shall We Dance? (1937), and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). They made an ideally complementary couple, he slender, elegant, and dapper, she more earthy, pliant, and extrovert. Astaire subsequently made many films with other partners, including Eleanor Powell (Broadway Melody of 1940), Rita Hayworth (You'll Never Get Rich, 1941), Judy Garland and Ann Miller (Easter Parade, 1948), Leslie Caron (Daddy Long Legs, 1955), Audrey Hepburn (Funny Face, 1957), and Cyd Charisse (Silk Stockings, 1957). None of these partnerships displayed the unique chemistry of his work with Rogers, though their re-union in The Barkleys of Broadway (1947) proved to be disappointing. In the same year, however, Astaire received a special Academy Award for ‘his unique artistry’ which was presented to him by Rogers. Though he liked to pretend his dancing was effortless- ‘I just put my feet in the air and move them around’-he was in fact a notorious perfectionist both as choreographer and performer. From the late 1950s he concentrated on acting roles and television specials, though he did not give up dancing completely until his seventies. He received nine Emmy Awards and a Dance Magazine award in 1959. He wrote Steps in Time (New York, 1959).
(1899-1987), dancer and actor. Astaire first performed as a child in vaudeville with his sister, Adele, and later the team was very successful on Broadway. In 1933, Astaire, now performing alone, made his first film, Flying Down to Rio, for rko. It was an immediate success, and he went on to make forty more movie musicals. After 1958 he produced and directed four award-winning television musical specials, appeared in numerous television acting roles, wrote an autobiography, and played in straight acting roles in eight films. Astaire's dancing and choreography were sophisticated, the technique always hidden by his debonair charm as a performer. Astaire films continue to be shown throughout the world, and his dancing has come to be associated with the best of the American style, admired by such classical artists as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Known as a perfectionist, Astaire created some of his finest dances in collaboration with dance director Hermes Pan, although he also worked with choreographers like Roland Petit, Eugene Loring, and many others. A musician as well as a dancer, Astaire was able to oversee musical arrangements, making sure they were tailored to fit the needs of the dancing. His most famous partnership was with Ginger Rogers. If others of his partners, like Eleanor Powell, Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, and Vera Allen, were technically better dancers, it was Rogers whose persona and movements seemed to fit with Astaire's in beautiful complement. The image of the two locked in an embrace, twirling across a highly polished floor, came to symbolize ideas about dance and romance for many in their audiences.
Astaire made the dance number the culmination of the plot, and by giving dance the honored position, he turned movie dancing into a fine art. He always directed his own dance numbers and tended to create within certain genres--like the romantic ballroom dance, tap competitions, tap solos, and solos with props. It was said that he could dance with anyone--and anything. One of his famous dances involving props is "Say It with Firecrackers" (Holiday Inn, 1942, Paramount), in which he sets off firecrackers, smoke, and small explosive charges with his feet. Another is a mad duet with a drum set in "Nice Work If You Can Get It" (Damsels in Distress, 1937, rko).
Astaire made many innovations in the filming of dance, including filming the entire body of the dancer and capturing the dance's continuity by filming it from beginning to end in a single take. In love with movement, Astaire said that either the camera would dance--or he would. An example of his use of camera movement is his well-known dance in Royal Wedding (mgm, 1951) in which he appears to dance on the walls and ceiling of a room; actually, the entire room and the camera were turning around him in a kind of gigantic squirrel cage.
It is a testament to Fred Astaire's artistry that no matter how clever the devices, they were always made to serve the dance, for he never sacrificed integrity for the special effect. He is still the finest director of dance on film, and his contributions to the art as well as his own dancing on film remain unparalleled.
Bibliography:
John Mueller, Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films (1985).
Astaire, Fred (əstâr'), 1899-1987, American dancer, actor, and singer, b. Omaha, Nebr., as Frederick Austerlitz. After 1911 he and his sister Adele formed a successful Broadway vaudeville team. After his sister retired, Astaire became a film actor (1933). He became known as a debonair song-and-dance man, particularly in the films he made with Ginger Rogers, which elevated the tap dance to an elegant, disciplined art. He also danced in movies with Eleanor Powell, Rita Hayworth, and Cyd Charisse, and on television with Barrie Chase. Among his most notable films are The Gay Divorcée (1934), Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), Easter Parade (1948), Funny Face (1956), and Silk Stockings (1957). A number of classical dancers, notably Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, have acknowledged an artistic debt to him.
Bibliography
See his autobiography, Steps in Time (1959); biographies by B. Thomas (1985), B. Adler (1987), and J. Epstein (2008); J. Mueller, Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films (1985); A. Croce, The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (rev. ed. 1987); E. Gallafent, Astaire and Rogers (2002).
A twentieth-century American entertainer who danced in many film musicals with partners such as Ginger Rogers. He was admired for his speed and grace and for his apparently effortless approach to dancing.
Representative Albums: "Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers at RKO", "The Cream of Fred Astaire", "Crazy Feet!"
Representative Songs: "Cheek to Cheek", "Night and Day", "Puttin' on the Ritz"
Biography
Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire also danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans. Although his efforts as a dancer necessarily overshadowed his purely musical work, he made hundreds of recordings over a period of more than 50 years, resulting in several major hits.
Astaire's long career breaks down neatly into four major phases. From 1905 to 1917, he and his sister Adele Astaire (b. Sep 10, 1897; d. Jan 25, 1981) danced and sang as the team of Fred and Adele Astaire in vaudeville. From 1917 to 1933, Astaire worked in the legitimate theater in 11 stage musicals, ten of them with his sister. From 1933 to 1957, he appeared in 30 movie musicals, ten of them teaming him with Ginger Rogers. From 1957 to 1981, he worked mostly as a character actor in films and on television. Although Fred and Adele Astaire garnered considerable critical attention and achieved stardom on Broadway and in the West End, no documentation beyond their reviews and a handful of recordings exists to preserve their legacy. On the other hand, Astaire's partnership with Rogers, immortalized on film, continued to fascinate viewers of succeeding decades much as it did those who attended the movies initially in the '30s. In those days, Astaire, gliding across polished dancefloors in his trademark "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" (as Berlin put it in a song written for him), with Rogers beside him in a spectacular gown, served as an antidote for the Depression that gripped the country and reassured millions of filmgoers that elegance and gentility could overcome economic turmoil. This was Astaire's popular peak, when he and Rogers were among the country's biggest box-office stars, when his records topped the charts, and his radio show was listened to by millions every week. But his lengthy career was marked by a series of triumphs that made him one of the best-loved entertainers of the century.
Fred Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, NE, on May 10, 1899. His father, Frederic (no "k") Austerlitz, was an Austrian immigrant who worked as a salesman for the Storz Brewing Company but was also a pianist with a strong interest in the performing arts. His mother, Johanna (Gelius) Austerlitz, shared this interest, and when his sister Adele Marie Austerlitz, who was 20 months his senior, showed a talent for dancing as a small child, she was enrolled at Chambers' Dancing Academy. The family faced a financial crisis in 1904 when a temperance movement led to the closing of the brewery, and they met it in surprising fashion by deciding that mother, daughter, and son would move to New York where Adele could be enrolled in the dancing school run by Claude Alvienne with an eye toward a professional career. Johanna, Adele, and Fred Austerlitz (soon renamed Ann, Adele, and Fred Astaire) arrived in New York in January 1905, and, shortly after Adele began studying with Alvienne, Fred joined her, creating the dance team of Fred and Adele Astaire, which made its professional debut in a vaudeville act created by Alvienne in Keyport, NJ, in November 1905. Astaire was six-years-old; his sister was eight.
The Astaires toured in vaudeville until 1909, by which time they had outgrown their act and a disparity in their heights made dancing together difficult. They retired temporarily, settling in Highwood Park, NJ, where Astaire attended grammar school . But after two years off, he and his sister were enrolled in Ned Wayburn's dancing school in New York in the summer of 1911, intending to return to vaudeville, which they did with a Wayburn-written act that December. From then on, they toured with gradually increasing success to the point in June 1917 that they were signed by the Shubert Organization to make the leap to the legitimate stage. This occurred with the musical revue Over the Top, which opened on Broadway on November 28, 1917, and ran 78 performances before going on a national tour that continued into the spring of 1918. The Astaires had seventh billing in the show, and they danced in three numbers, also singing in two of them. The Shubert quickly cast them in another revue, The Passing Show of 1918, which opened on July 25, 1918, and ran 142 performances, followed by a tour that ran through June 1919. The Astaires had eighth billing in this show. In addition to appearing together in three numbers, each also had a solo, Astaire's being "Squab Farm" (music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Jean Schwartz). After the tour, they went into rehearsals for an operetta, Apple Blossoms, which opened on October 7, 1919, and ran 256 performances, until April 24, 1920, followed by a tour that ran from August to April 1921. Fourth-billed in this show, they danced in three numbers, but did not have speaking parts. They had two dances and were billed separately fifth and sixth in the cast for a second operetta, The Love Letter. It was a failure, opening October 4, 1921, and closing 25 days and 31 performances later on October 29, followed by a tour that ran only until December. But that gave them the opportunity to have their first speaking roles in a second show in the same season, For Goodness Sake, which opened on February 20, 1922, for a run of 103 performances through May 20, followed by a brief tour. This show allowed them to perform the music of Astaire's friend George Gershwin, one of several songwriters who contributed to the score.
The Astaires had received increasing critical support, which resulted in their receiving top billing in their sixth stage work, The Bunch and Judy, boasting a score by Jerome Kern and Anne Caldwell. Unfortunately, the show was a flop with a run of only 63 performances between November 28, 1922, and January 20, 1923. This failure again resulted in an opportunity, however, as the Astaires were invited to England to star in a re-tooled version of For Goodness Sake, re-christened Stop Flirting, which opened in the West End on May 30 and ran 418 performances, until August 1924. Its success brought the team's first chance to record, as they were contracted by HMV Records and went into a London studio on October 18, 1923, to perform two of their songs from the show, "The Whichness of the Whatness" and "Oh Gee! Oh Gosh!" (music and lyrics for both by William Daly and Paul Lannin), soon released in the U.K. only on either side of the 78 rpm (HMV B-1719), Astaire's first record release.
The Astaires returned to New York to appear in a new musical written for them with songs by George and Ira Gershwin, Lady, Be Good! It opened December 1, 1924, and became an enormous hit, running 330 performances, until September 12, 1925, followed by a two-month tour. Returning to England, the Astaires opened the show in the West End on April 14, 1926, resulting in a 326-performance run that lasted until January 22, 1927. Shortly after the London opening, they recorded songs from the show for the English Columbia Records label (an imprint of EMI and no relation to the American Columbia label) in what amounted to an original cast album, albeit spread across three separately released 78s. Accompanied by George Gershwin on piano, they performed "Fascinating Rhythm," "Hang on to Me," and "I'd Rather Charleston" (lyrics by Desmond Carter), and Astaire gave made his first solo recording on "The Half of It, Dearie, Blues" on April 19, 1926. At a later session, they were accompanied by an orchestra for "Swiss Miss," and Adele and cast member George Vollaire sang "So Am I."
After a British tour, the Astaires returned to the U.S. in June 1927 to prepare for another Gershwin show, Funny Face, which opened on Broadway on November 22, 1927, and ran 250 performances until June 23, 1928. Shortly before the opening, The Jazz Singer, the first sound film, had opened successfully, featuring Broadway star Al Jolson, and the Hollywood movie studios became interested in other stage stars. The Astaires did a screen test for Paramount Pictures for a proposed movie version of Funny Face, but nothing came of it. Instead, the Astaires took Funny Face to London, where it opened November 8, 1928, for a run of 263 performances, which, with a tour to follow, kept them in Great Britain until April 1930. Again, shortly after the opening, they recorded some of the songs for English Columbia, performing "The Babbitt and the Bromide" and the title song together, while Astaire recorded "High Hat" and "My One and Only" solo. Subsequently, he also cut a couple of singles not associated with the show, "Not My Girl"/"Louisiana," accompanied by Al Starita and His Boyfriends in April 1929 and "Puttin' on the Ritz" (music and lyrics by Irving Berlin)/"Crazy Feet" in March 1930.
The Astaires next appeared in producer Florenz Ziegfeld's Smiles, a flop that opened on November 18, 1930, and played only 63 performances through January 10, 1931. They quickly rebounded with The Band Wagon, a revue with songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, which opened June 3, 1931, and ran 260 performances, until January 16, 1932, followed by a tour that ran through May. Bandleader Leo Reisman recorded a collection of the show's songs for Victor Records, and he engaged the Astaires to sing them. As a duo, they recorded "Hoops" and a two-part medley of "Gems from the Band Wagon," while Astaire sang "I Love Louisa," "New Sun in the Sky," and "White Heat" solo. In addition to releasing 78s of the material, Victor also pressed up an experimental 33 1/3 rpm containing the medley, but the format did not catch on. (Seventeen years later, Columbia Records employed the same disc speed when it unveiled its new "LP" -- long-playing -- records.) Researchers Joel Whitburn (Pop Memories) and Edward Foote Gardner (Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century), who have estimated chart performance for this pre-chart era, both cite "I Love Louisa" as a Top Ten hit and also award chart showings to "New Sun in the Sky."
Adele Astaire gave her final performance in The Band Wagon in Chicago on March 15, 1932. On May 9, she married Charles Cavendish, the son of the Duke of Devonshire, and went to live with him in Ireland, retiring from her performing career. Astaire carried on without her, planning his next theatrical venture, the musical Gay Divorce, with songs by Cole Porter, for the fall. On November 22, the day after the show opened a tryout run in New Haven, CT, and a week before it opened on Broadway, he joined Reisman to record two songs from the score, "Night and Day" and "I've Got You on My Mind," for a Victor single. Emphasizing the score, and in particular "Night and Day," turned out to be a good idea. Gay Divorce earned only modest reviews from critics who had often favored Astaire's sister over him and missed her, and it did only modest business at first. But it caught on along with "Night and Day," cited by both Whitburn and Gardner as a number one hit in early 1933. As a result, the show ultimately ran 248 performances on Broadway, until July 1, 1933. Astaire's growing success as a solo stage and recording artist again attracted the interest of Hollywood, and in January 1933 David O. Selznick, in charge of production for RKO Pictures, had him do another screen test. Selznick called the test "wretched," referring to Astaire's "enormous ears and bad chin line," but suggested that the performer's "charm is so tremendous" that it came through even so. He circulated the test among other executives at the company, resulting in a legend that attached itself to Astaire forever afterward. Supposedly, one person responded, "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little." In her autobiography, Debbie, My Life, Debbie Reynolds finally named this studio official as Burt Grady, and Astaire, speaking to his biographer Bob Thomas (Astaire: The Man, the Dancer) clarified the remark. "It has been repeated many times, usually incorrectly," he recalled. "What the man said was: 'Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.'" Notwithstanding this assessment, Astaire was signed to a contract by RKO on May 27, 1933, for one film, with options for more. Meanwhile, he recorded a few additional sessions with Reisman for Victor, including a version of "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)" (music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin), which had been introduced by Ginger Rogers in the film Gold Diggers of 1933.
On July 12, 1933, Astaire married socialite Phyllis Livingston Baker Potter. They would have two children and remain married until her death from cancer on September 13, 1954. Within days of his wedding, Astaire flew to Los Angeles to begin work on his first film. But since RKO was not yet ready to begin filming, he was loaned to MGM for a featured part in Dancing Lady, starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, which became his movie debut when it opened in November. Then he took on a featured role in his first RKO picture, Flying Down to Rio, in which he was billed fifth behind Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced onscreen for the first time. After he finished filming, he left for England to open a British production of Gay Divorce on November 2, 1933, with a limited engagement of 108 performances running through April 7, 1934. This would be his final work as a stage performer. While in London, he recorded two songs from Flying Down to Rio, the title song and "Music Makes Me" (which Rogers sang in the picture). Both songs are credited as chart hits by Whitburn and Gardner. Flying Down to Rio opened in the U.S. in December 1933 and was a hit, too, particularly because of audience reaction to Astaire and Rogers' dance of "The Carioca" (which became the first song to win an Academy Award). As a result, RKO quickly bought rights to both Gay Divorce and a concurrent Broadway hit, Roberta, as screen vehicles for the two. The former was retitled The Gay Divorcee, and all of Cole Porter's songs except "Night and Day" were replaced, along with much of the plot. Nevertheless, Astaire (who took on the uncredited role of choreographer, which he would maintain throughout his film career) and Rogers were a hit with audiences when the film opened in October 1934. Roberta retained more of Jerome Kern's original score for the show, and the composer was even brought in to write new numbers. The result, released in February 1935, was Astaire and Rogers' third hit film.
For their fourth screen pairing, Top Hat, RKO brought in Irving Berlin to write an original song score, and Astaire prepared for the release by signing to Brunswick Records and making studio recordings of all five of the songs: "Cheek to Cheek," "No Strings," "Isn't This a Lovely Day?," "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails," and "The Piccolino." The records were released simultaneously with the film's premiere in August 1935, and Astaire appeared several times on the popular radio show Your Hit Parade to promote both, with explosive results. "Cheek to Cheek," "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails," "Isn't This a Lovely Day?," and "No Strings" all made the Top Ten of the hit parade, with "Cheek to Cheek" spending five weeks at number one. The film, meanwhile, was the most successful Astaire/Rogers movie ever, registering a profit of over one million dollars according to RKO's accountants. Naturally, the two were re-teamed with Berlin for their next film, Follow the Fleet, for which the songwriter provided another seven songs. Astaire recorded five of them, also sneaking into the session a composition of his own, "I'm Building Up to an Awful Let-Down" (lyrics by Johnny Mercer). That song and three entries from the film, "Let's Face the Music and Dance," "Let Yourself Go," and "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket," all reached the Top Five of the hit parade concurrent with the film's release in February 1936. Follow the Fleet showed a slight downtick in profitability, but still poured nearly one million into RKO's coffers. Those profits declined consistently for subsequent Astaire/Rogers films, but biographer Edward Gallafent (Astaire and Rogers) has demonstrated that this was because of rising production costs for the series, not diminishing revenues at the box office.
RKO commissioned a sixth Astaire/Rogers film, this time bringing back Jerome Kern, who wrote an original score with lyricist Dorothy Fields for Swing Time. Astaire recorded five of the songs for Brunswick, and from that batch "The Way You Look Tonight" spent six weeks at number one in the hit parade and "A Fine Romance" peaked at number three upon the film's release in August 1936. Another drop in profits caused RKO to decide to break up the team temporarily after their upcoming seventh picture. Meanwhile, on September 15, Astaire began hosting his own weekly radio program, The Fred Astaire Show (aka The Packard Hour) on the NBC network. He found himself stretched to handle both the series and his extensive preparations for the dances in his films, however, and despite its popularity he gave up the show after one season. Meanwhile, George and Ira Gershwin were brought in to write songs for the next Astaire/Rogers film, Shall We Dance, and Astaire recorded all six of their contributions for Brunswick, resulting in three singles and another Top Ten entry in the hit parade, "They Can't Take That Away from Me," following the film's release in April 1937. Shall We Dance was only half as profitable as Swing Time, as production costs neared one million dollars. Astaire's next film, A Damsel in Distress (released in November 1937), his first not to feature Rogers since Dancing Lady, actually lost money, due to a production cost that topped one million. He recorded four of its Gershwin songs and scored another Top Ten hit with "Nice Work if You Can Get It." The release of the ninth AstaireRogers film, Carefree, in September 1938, was accompanied by the announcement that the team would be dissolved permanently after their next outing. The film featured a score by Irving Berlin, and it gave Astaire another number one hit with "Change Partners," even though the picture itself lost money for RKO. Nevertheless, the studio pressed ahead with The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, an uncharacteristic film biography of the popular dance team of the '10s that appeared in the spring of 1939 and again cost more money than it made by company estimates.
Astaire ended his relationship with RKO after The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Over the next several years, he accepted one-off offers from different studios, making Broadway Melody of 1940 (February 1940); Second Chorus (January 1941), and Holiday Inn (June 1942), the latter with Bing Crosby, for Paramount; You'll Never Get Rich (September 1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (October 1942), both with Rita Hayworth, for Columbia Pictures; and The Sky's the Limit (July 1943) back at RKO before signing a long-term contract with MGM in 1944. Meanwhile, he made recordings of some of his movie songs and other material for Columbia Records in 1940 and for Decca Records from 1941 to 1946. In 1942, Decca accompanied the release of You Were Never Lovelier, which featured a score written by Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer, with Astaire's first album of three 78s.
Astaire made the long-in-gestation ensemble film Ziegfeld Follies (not in general release until 1946) at MGM and then the unsuccessful Yolanda and the Thief (October 1945) before being loaned to Paramount for Blue Skies, another film with Bing Crosby and the songs of Irving Berlin. As he had with Holiday Inn, he also joined Crosby for a Decca album of songs from Blue Skies, duetting on "A Couple of Song and Dance Men" and contributing a solo re-recording of "Puttin' on the Ritz," and the disc peaked at number two in the Billboard album chart in the fall of 1946. The film also was a big hit, and the 47-year-old Astaire decided the time had come to hang up his dancing shoes. He announced his retirement to spend more time on two other activities, owning and breeding racehorses, and launching a chain of dancing schools. He did not become completely inactive as an entertainer, for example acting in the radio play The Animal Kingdom on ABC's Theatre Guild on the Air on May 4, 1947, but he kept to his decision to retire from films until the fall of 1947, when Gene Kelly broke his ankle just prior to production on MGM's Easter Parade, a musical with Judy Garland featuring Berlin songs, and he agreed to go back to step in as a replacement. The film was released in June 1948, and after its success nothing more was heard publicly of Astaire's retirement. During his absence from the studio, MGM had started its own record label, and it began releasing soundtrack albums from its movie musicals. These became the chief outlet for Astaire's commercial recordings over the next several years, with MGM soundtracks for Easter Parade; The Barkleys of Broadway (March 1949), which marked a reunion with Ginger Rogers; Three Little Words (1950), a film biography of songwriters Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar, which spent 11 weeks at number one in the Billboard chart; Royal Wedding (February 1951), with a score by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane, which reached number three and spawned the gold-selling novelty single "How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been a Liar All My Life? (The Liar Song)," a duet with Jane Powell; The Belle of New York (February 1952); and The Band Wagon (July 1953), much altered from the 1931 stage version. (Let's Dance [August 1950], a loan-out to Paramount, did not result in a soundtrack album initially, although, as with all Astaire's musical films, its songs eventually turned up on an unlicensed disc.)
At the 1949 Academy Awards ceremony, Astaire, whose work as a singing and dancing star of movie musicals did not fit into any Oscar category, was presented with a special award "for his unique artistry and his contributions to the technique of musical pictures." In 1952, he was approached by Norman Granz, a record producer and the impresario of the successful "Jazz at the Philharmonic" concert series, to re-record his catalog of standards backed by a small jazz group. Granz engaged Oscar Peterson (piano), Alvin Stoller (drums), Flip Phillips (tenor saxophone), Charlie Shavers (trumpet), Barney Kessel (guitar), and Ray Brown (bass), and took Astaire into a recording studio in December 1952 for marathon sessions that resulted in the 38-track, four-LP box set The Astaire Story, released by Granz's Clef label through Mercury Records in 1953.
With the completion of his MGM contract in 1953, Astaire again thought of retiring, but he kept accepting offers for films on an ad hoc basis, making Daddy Long Legs (May 1955), accompanied by an RCA Victor single of its song "Something's Gotta Give" (music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer), and an adaptation of his old stage hit Funny Face (March 1957), with a soundtrack album on Granz's Verve Records label, both for Paramount, then Cole Porter's Silk Stockings (May 1957) for MGM, with an MGM Records soundtrack LP. With that, he turned away from movie musicals and focused his attention primarily to television, starting with an acting role in a half-hour comic film, Imp on a Cobweb Leash, broadcast live on the General Electric Theatre program on December 1, 1957. Far more ambitious was the one-hour An Evening with Fred Astaire, broadcast on October 17, 1958, which found him dancing with new partner Barrie Chase. The special won nine Emmy Awards including Outstanding Single Program of the Year and Astaire's award for Best Single Performance by an Actor. He followed with two more similar shows, Another Evening with Fred Astaire (November 4, 1959) and Astaire Time (September 28, 1960), which earned him a second Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Music Program or Series. Meanwhile, he took occasional acting roles in non-musical films: On the Beach (December 1959), The Pleasure of His Company (May 1961), and The Notorious Landlady (June 1962). He also made an album, Now (1959) for Kapp Records, which consisted largely of re-recordings of his old favorites. Also, he issued a combined television soundtrack album, Three Evenings with Fred Astaire (1960) on his own Ava Records label, named after his daughter, as well as a few singles. But most of his work in the '60s continued to be done for television. Starting in 1961, he hosted Alcoa Premiere, an anthology series of one-hour teleplays, and he acted in several of them in 1962. On October 2, 1964, he and Chase danced and acted in Think Pretty, a teleplay that was part of the series Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater. In November 1965, he appeared in several episodes of the medical series Dr. Kildare. He and Chase made a series of appearances on The Hollywood Palace, a variety series, in 1966. The Fred Astaire Show, his fourth TV special, aired on February 7, 1968. And in 1970, he had a continuing role on the series It Takes a Thief. His first feature film appearance in six years was also his first appearance in a movie musical in 11 years, and his last, a belated screen adaptation of the 1947 Broadway musical Finian's Rainbow released in August 1968 and accompanied by a soundtrack LP on Warner Bros. Records that spent six months in the Billboard chart. Less than a year later, he was back onscreen starring in the crime picture Midas Run, released in May 1969.
By 1970, the 70-year-old Astaire was semi-retired, but he continued to work periodically. He co-starred in a Western TV movie, The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again, broadcast on ABC on November 17, 1970, and less than a month later, on December 13, served as a voice for the animated TV film Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, which was accompanied by a soundtrack LP released by MGM. In 1972, he appeared in two television specials, the first a Gershwin tribute, 'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous, 'S Gershwin, broadcast on NBC on January 17, which also had a soundtrack LP released on Daybreak Records, and the second a patriotic program, Make Mine Red, White and Blue, broadcast on NBC on September 9, for which he served as host. In May 1974, he was one of the hosts of the anthology film That's Entertainment!, consisting of clips from MGM musicals. The film was an enormous hit, with a double-LP soundtrack album that reached the charts, and was followed two years later by That's Entertainment, Part II, for which Astaire and Gene Kelly served as hosts, and for which they did a little modest singing and dancing. Of course, it too was accompanied by a soundtrack album. In between, Astaire took a role in the disaster film The Towering Inferno, released in December 1974. It became the biggest box-office hit of the year, and he earned his only Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.
In 1975, Astaire accepted an offer from record producer Ken Barnes to go to England and record a series of albums for United Artists Records. He cut three LPs: A Couple of Song and Dance Men, a duet collection with Bing Crosby; They Can't Take These Away from Me, yet another set of re-recordings of his old favorites; and Attitude Dancing, containing recordings of some new songs and some of his own compositions. In 1976, he returned to filmmaking in the detective film The Amazing Dobermans, released in November, and he followed it with Un Taxi Mauve (The Purple Taxi), an international production released outside the U.S. in May 1977 that failed to find an American distributor. The Easter Bunny Is Coming to Town, broadcast on ABC April 6, 1977, was something of a sequel to Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, with Astaire again providing a voice for an animated character. A Family Upside Down was a made-for-TV movie broadcast on NBC April 9, 1978, in which he co-starred with Helen Hayes; his performance won him his third Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Special. On December 3, 1978, he was one of the recipients of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors, presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and broadcast on CBS two nights later. The following month, he appeared in an episode of the science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica, and he starred in the TV movie The Man in the Santa Claus Suit, broadcast on NBC December 23, 1979, a performance that allowed him the opportunity to make his final recording, of the song "Once a Year Night" (music by Peter Matz, lyrics by Norman Gimbel), issued as a promotional single by Dick Clark Productions. On June 24, 1980, Astaire married for the second time, to jockey Robyn Smith. The bride was 35-years-old, the groom 81. He made his final film appearance in the thriller Ghost Story, released in December 1981. He died of pneumonia at 88 on June 22, 1987.
Astaire's film work is, of course, available extensively on video. The story is somewhat more problematic with regard to his recordings, although there is no dearth of Astaire discs in release at any given moment. European copyright law, which allows recordings to fall into the public domain after 50 years, has led to an unending series of unlicensed compilation albums on which Astaire's performances are remastered from old 78s; they vary wildly in quality. There are also numerous unlicensed compilations of film soundtrack material, also of dubious value. The major American record labels, which claim ownership of the studio recordings for the U.S. market, own different pieces of Astaire's catalog. Sony BMG controls the Victor, Brunswick, and Columbia recordings; Universal has the Decca, Mercury, Verve, and Kapp material. EMI has the early English Columbia tracks and the United Artists recordings. Periodically, these labels repackage their holdings, with notable collections including Starring Fred Astaire (Columbia, 1989), Rarities (RCA, 1990), Top Hat: Hits from Hollywood (Columbia/Legacy, 1994), The Complete London Sessions (EMI, 1999), and DRG's' reissue of The Astaire Story with bonus tracks. Astaire's soundtrack recordings have been compiled by Rhino in the excellent collections Fred Astaire at MGM (1997) and Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers at RKO (1998). DRG has reissued the soundtracks from the TV specials. That such collections continue to appear, both from reputable and questionable sources, testifies to the ongoing appeal of Astaire as a singer of timeless American popular music. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: The Band Wagon, Top Hat, The Gay Divorcee
First Major Screen Credit: Dancing Lady (1933)
Biography
Few would argue with the opinion that American entertainer Fred Astaire was the greatest dancer ever seen on film. Born to a wealthy Omaha family, young Astaire was trained at the Alvienne School of Dance and the Ned Wayburn School of Dancing. In a double act with his sister Adele, Fred danced in cabarets, vaudeville houses, and music halls all over the world before he was 20. The Astaires reportedly made their film bow in a 1917 Mary Pickford vehicle, same year of their first major Broadway success, Over the Top. The two headlined one New York stage hit after another in the 1920s, their grace and sophistication spilling into their social life, in which they hobnobbed with literary and theatrical giants, as well as millionaires and European royalty. When Adele married the British Lord Charles Cavendish in 1931, Fred found himself soloing for the first time in his life.
As with many other Broadway luminaries, Astaire was beckoned to Hollywood, where legend has it his first screen test was dismissed with "Can't act; slightly bald; can dance a little." He danced more than a little in his first film, Dancing Lady (1933), though he didn't actually play a role and was confined to the production numbers. Later that year, Astaire was cast as comic/dancing relief in the RKO musical Flying Down to Rio, which top-billed Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond. Astaire was billed fifth, just below the film's female comedy relief Ginger Rogers. Spending most of the picture trading wisecracks while the "real" stars wooed each other, Astaire and Rogers did a very brief dance during a production number called "The Carioca." As it turned out, Flying Down to Rio was an enormous moneymaker -- in fact, it was the film that saved the studio from receivership. Fans of the film besieged the studio with demands to see more of those two funny people who danced in the middle of the picture. RKO complied with 1934's The Gay Divorcee, based on one of Astaire's Broadway hits. Supporting no one this time, Fred and Ginger were the whole show as they sang and danced their way through such Cole Porter hits as "Night and Day" and the Oscar-winning "The Continental."
Astaire and Rogers were fast friends, but both yearned to be appreciated as individuals rather than a part of a team. After six films with Rogers, Astaire finally got a chance to work as a single in Damsel in Distress (1937), which, despite a superb George Gershwin score and top-notch supporting cast, was a box-office disappointment, leading RKO to re-team him with Rogers in Carefree (1938). After The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Astaire decided to go solo again, and, after a few secondary films, he found the person he would later insist was his favorite female co-star, Rita Hayworth, with whom he appeared in You'll Never Get Rich (1942) and You Were Never Lovelier (1946). Other partners followed, including Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland, Betty Hutton, Jane Powell, Cyd Charisse, and Barrie Chase, but, in the minds of moviegoers, Astaire would forever be linked with Ginger Rogers -- even though a re-teaming in The Barkeleys of Broadway (1949) seemed to prove how much they didn't need each other.
Astaire set himself apart from other musical performers by insisting that he be photographed full-figure, rather than have his numbers "improved" by tricky camera techniques or unnecessary close-ups. And unlike certain venerable performers who found a specialty early in life and never varied from it, Astaire's dancing matured with him. He was in his fifties in such films as The Band Wagon (1953) and Funny Face (1957), but he had adapted his style so that he neither drew attention to his age nor tried to pretend to be any younger than he was. Perhaps his most distinctive characteristic was making it look so easy. One seldom got the impression that Astaire worked hard to get his effects, although, of course, he did. To the audience, it seemed as though he was doing it for the first time and making it up as he went along.
With the exceptions of his multi-Emmy-award-winning television specials of the late '50s and early '60s, Astaire cut down on his dancing in the latter stages of his career to concentrate on straight acting. While he was superb as a troubled, suicidal scientist in On the Beach (1959) and was nominated for an Oscar for his work in The Towering Inferno (1974), few of his later films took full advantage of his acting abilities. (By 1976, he was appearing in such films as The Amazing Dobermans.) In 1981, more than a decade after he last danced in public, Astaire was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. While this award was usually bestowed upon personalities who had no work left in them, Astaire remained busy as an actor almost until his death in 1987. The same year as his AFI prize, Astaire joined fellow show business veterans Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and John Houseman in the movie thriller Ghost Story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Frederick Austerlitz
May 10, 1899(1899-05-10) Omaha, Nebraska,
United States
Died
June 22, 1987 (aged 88) Los Angeles, California,
United States
Occupation
Actor, dancer, singer
Years active
1917–1981
Spouse(s)
Phyllis Livingston Potter
(1933–1954)
Robyn Smith
(1980–1987)
Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987), born Frederick Austerlitz,[1] was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.
Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz).[1][2][3] Astaire's mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire's father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism;[1][4][5][6] Astaire became an Episcopalian in 1912.[7]
After arriving in New York City at age 24 on October 26, 1892, and being processed at Ellis Island,[8] Astaire's father, hoping to find work in his brewing trade, moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and landed a job with the Storz Brewing Company. Astaire's mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by virtue of her children's talents after Adele Astaire early on revealed herself to be an instinctive dancer and singer. She envisaged a "brother-and-sister act," which was fairly common to vaudeville at the time. Although Astaire refused dance lessons at first, he easily mimicked his older sister's step and took up piano, accordion, and clarinet.
When their father became suddenly unemployed, the family moved to New York City to launch the show business career of the children. Adele and Fred had a teasing rivalry, but fortunately they quickly acknowledged their individual strengths, his being durability and hers greater overall talent. "Astaire" was a name taken by him and his sister in 1905 when they were taking instruction in dance, speaking, and singing in preparation for developing an act. Family legend attributes it to an uncle surnamed "L'Astaire".[9]
Finally, their first act took shape and was called Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty. In it, Fred wore a top hat and tails in the first half and a lobster outfit in the second. The goofy act debuted in Keyport, New Jersey, in a "tryout theater", where the local paper wrote: "the Astaires are the greatest child act in vaudeville."[10]
After a short time, as a result of their father's salesmanship, Fred and Adele landed a major contract and they played the famed Orpheum circuit throughout the United States, including Omaha. Soon Adele grew to at least three inches taller than Fred and the pair began to look incongruous. The family decided to take a two-year break from show business, also to avoid trouble from the Gerry Society and the child labor laws of the time.
Their career resumed with mixed fortunes, though with increasing skill and polish, as they began to incorporate tap dancing into their routines. In this, Astaire was inspired by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and John “Bubbles” Sublett.[11] From vaudeville dancer Aurelio Coccia, they learned the tango, waltz, and other ballroom dances popularized by Vernon and Irene Castle.
Some sources[12] state that the Astaire siblings appeared in a 1915 film entitled Fanchon, the Cricket, starring Mary Pickford, but the Astaires have consistently denied this.[13][14]:103
While on the hunt for new music and dance ideas, Fred Astaire first met George Gershwin, who was working as a song plugger in Jerome H. Remick's, in 1916.[15] Their chance meeting was to have profound consequences for the subsequent careers of both artists.
Astaire was always on the lookout for new steps on the circuit and was starting to demonstrate his ceaseless quest for novelty and perfection. Finally, they broke into Broadway with Over The Top (1917), a patriotic revue.
1917–33: stage career in Broadway and London
Fred and Adele Astaire in 1921
They followed up with several more shows, and of their work in The Passing Show of 1918Heywood Broun wrote: "In an evening in which there was an abundance of good dancing, Fred Astaire stood out.... He and his partner, Adele Astaire, made the show pause early in the evening with a beautiful loose-limbed dance."[16]
By this time, Astaire's dancing skill was beginning to outshine his sister's, though she still set the tone of their act and her sparkle and humor drew much of the attention, due in part to Fred's careful preparation and strong supporting choreography.
During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway and on the London stage in shows such as George and Ira Gershwin's Lady Be Good (1924) and Funny Face (1927), and later in The Band Wagon (1931), winning popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic. By then, Astaire's tap dancing was recognized as among the best, as Robert Benchley wrote in 1930, "I don't think that I will plunge the nation into war by stating that Fred is the greatest tap-dancer in the world."[17]:5
After the close of Funny Face, the Astaires went to Hollywood for a screen test (now lost) at Paramount Pictures but were not considered suitable for films.
They split in 1932 when Adele married her first husband, Lord Charles Arthur Francis Cavendish, a son of the Duke of Devonshire. Fred Astaire went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce, while considering offers from Hollywood. The end of the partnership was traumatic for Astaire but stimulated him to expand his range. Free of the brother-sister constraints of the former pairing and with a new partner (Claire Luce), he created a romantic partnered dance to Cole Porter's "Night and Day", which had been written for Gay Divorce. Luce stated that she had to encourage him to take a more romantic approach: "Come on, Fred, I'm not your sister, you know."[17]:6 The success of the stage play was credited to this number, and when recreated in the film version of the play The Gay Divorcee (1934), it ushered in a new era in filmed dance.[17]:23,26,61 Recently, film footage taken by Fred Stone of Astaire performing in Gay Divorce with Luce's successor, Dorothy Stone, in New York in 1933 was uncovered by dancer and historian Betsy Baytos and now represents the earliest extant performance footage of Astaire.[18]
1933–39: Astaire and Rogers at RKO
The announcement of the Astaire–Rogers screen partnership – from the trailer to Flying Down to Rio. This is the only time Rogers took billing over Astaire.
According to Hollywood folklore, a screen test report on Astaire for RKO Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: "Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Can dance a little." The producer of the Astaire-Rogers pictures, Pandro S. Berman, claimed he had never heard the story in the 1930s and that it only emerged years later.[17]:7 Astaire, in a 1980 interview on ABC's 20/20 with Barbara Walters, insisted that the report had actually read: "Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances".[19] In any case, the test was clearly disappointing, and David O. Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, stated in a memo, "I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test."[17]:7 However, this did not affect RKO's plans for Astaire, first lending him for a few days to MGM in 1933 for his Hollywood debut, where he appeared as himself dancing with Joan Crawford in the successful musical film Dancing Lady.
On his return to RKO Pictures, he got fifth billing alongside Ginger Rogers in the 1933 Dolores del Río vehicle Flying Down to Rio. In a review, Variety magazine attributed its massive success to Astaire's presence: "The main point of Flying Down to Rio is the screen promise of Fred Astaire.... He's assuredly a bet after this one, for he's distinctly likable on the screen, the mike is kind to his voice and as a dancer he remains in a class by himself. The latter observation will be no news to the profession, which has long admitted that Astaire starts dancing where the others stop hoofing."[17]:7
Having already been linked to his sister Adele on stage, Astaire was initially very reluctant to become part of another dance team. He wrote his agent, "I don't mind making another picture with her but as for this team idea it's out! I've just managed to live down one partnership and I don't want to be bothered with any more."[17]:8 He was persuaded by the obvious public appeal of the Astaire-Rogers pairing. The partnership, and the choreography of Astaire and Hermes Pan, helped make dancing an important element of the Hollywood film musical. Astaire and Rogers made ten films together, including The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), and Carefree (1938). Six out of the nine musicals he created became the biggest moneymakers for RKO; all of the films brought a certain prestige and artistry that all studios coveted at the time. Their partnership elevated them both to stardom; as Katharine Hepburn reportedly said, "He gives her class and she gives him sex."[20]:134
Astaire easily received the benefits of a percentage of the film's profits, something extremely rare in actors' contracts at that time; and complete autonomy over how the dances would be presented, allowing him to revolutionize dance on film.[21]
Astaire is credited with two important innovations in early film musicals.[17]:23,26 First, he insisted that the (almost stationary) camera film a dance routine in a single shot, if possible, while holding the dancers in full view at all times. Astaire famously quipped: "Either the camera will dance, or I will."[17]:420 Astaire maintained this policy from The Gay Divorcee (1934) onwards (until overruled by Francis Ford Coppola, who directed Finian's Rainbow (1968), Astaire's last film musical).[22] Astaire's style of dance sequences thus contrasted with the Busby Berkeley musicals, which were known for dance sequences filled with extravagant aerial shots, quick takes, and zooms on certain areas of the body, such as the arms or legs. Second, Astaire was adamant that all song and dance routines be seamlessly integrated into the plotlines of the film. Instead of using dance as spectacle as Busby Berkeley did, Astaire used it to move the plot along. Typically, an Astaire picture would include a solo performance by Astaire — which he termed his "sock solo" — a partnered comedy dance routine, and a partnered romantic dance routine.
Dance commentators Arlene Croce,[20]:6 Hannah Hyam[23]:146,147 and John Mueller[17]:8,9 consider Rogers to have been Astaire's greatest dance partner, while recognizing that some of his later partners displayed superior technical dance skills, a view shared[24] by Hermes Pan and Stanley Donen.[25] Film critic Pauline Kael adopts a more neutral stance,[26] while Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel writes "The nostalgia surrounding Rogers-Astaire tends to bleach out other partners."[27]
Mueller sums up Rogers's abilities as follows: "Rogers was outstanding among Astaire's partners not because she was superior to others as a dancer but because, as a skilled, intuitive actress, she was cagey enough to realize that acting did not stop when dancing began ... the reason so many women have fantasized about dancing with Fred Astaire is that Ginger Rogers conveyed the impression that dancing with him is the most thrilling experience imaginable." According to Astaire, "Ginger had never danced with a partner before. She faked it an awful lot. She couldn't tap and she couldn't do this and that ... but Ginger had style and talent and improved as she went along. She got so that after a while everyone else who danced with me looked wrong."[28]
For her part, Rogers described Astaire's uncompromising standards extending to the whole production, "Sometimes he'll think of a new line of dialogue or a new angle for the story...they never know what time of night he'll call up and start ranting enthusiastically about a fresh idea...No loafing on the job on an Astaire picture, and no cutting corners."[17]:16
Astaire was still unwilling to have his career tied exclusively to any partnership, however. He negotiated with RKO to strike out on his own with A Damsel in Distress in 1937, unsuccessfully as it turned out. He returned to make two more films with Rogers, Carefree (1938) and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). While both films earned respectable gross incomes, they both lost money due to increased production costs[17]:410 and Astaire left RKO. Rogers remained and went on to become the studio's hottest property in the early forties. They were reunited in 1949 at MGM for their final outing, The Barkleys of Broadway.
1940–47: drifting to an early retirement
Astaire with Eleanor Powell in Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" from Broadway Melody of 1940
In 1939, Astaire left RKO to freelance and pursue new film opportunities, with mixed though generally successful outcomes. Throughout this period, Astaire continued to value the input of choreographic collaborators and, unlike the 1930s when he worked almost exclusively with Hermes Pan, he tapped the talents of other choreographers in an effort to continually innovate. His first post-Ginger dance partner was the redoubtable Eleanor Powell – considered the finest female tap-dancer of her generation – in Broadway Melody of 1940 where they performed a celebrated extended dance routine to Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine. He played alongside Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1942) and later Blue Skies (1946) but in spite of the enormous financial success of both, was reportedly dissatisfied with roles where he lost the girl to Crosby. The former film is particularly remembered for his virtuoso solo dance to "Let's Say it with Firecrackers" while the latter film featured an innovative song and dance routine to a song indelibly associated with him: "Puttin' on the Ritz." Other partners during this period included Paulette Goddard in Second Chorus (1940), in which he dance-conducted the Artie Shaw orchestra.
He made two pictures with Rita Hayworth: the first You'll Never Get Rich (1941) catapulted Hayworth to stardom and provided Astaire with his first opportunity to integrate Latin-American dance idioms into his style, taking advantage of Hayworth's professional Latin dance pedigree. His second film with Hayworth, You Were Never Lovelier (1942) was equally successful, and featured a duet to Kern's "I'm Old Fashioned" which became the centerpiece of Jerome Robbins's 1983 New York City Ballet tribute to Astaire. He next appeared opposite the seventeen-year-old Joan Leslie in the wartime drama The Sky's the Limit (1943) where he introduced Arlen and Mercer's "One for My Baby" while dancing on a bar counter in a dark and troubled routine. This film which was choreographed by Astaire alone and achieved modest box office success, represented an important departure for Astaire from his usual charming happy-go-lucky screen persona and confused contemporary critics.
His next partner, Lucille Bremer, was featured in two lavish vehicles, both directed by Vincente Minnelli: the fantasy Yolanda and the Thief which featured an avant-garde surrealistic ballet, and the musical revue Ziegfeld Follies (1946) which featured a memorable teaming of Astaire with Gene Kelly to "The Babbit and the Bromide", a Gershwin song Astaire had introduced with his sister Adele back in 1927. While Follies was a hit, Yolanda bombed at the box office and Astaire, ever insecure and believing his career was beginning to falter surprised his audiences by announcing his retirement during the production of Blue Skies (1946), nominating "Puttin' on the Ritz" as his farewell dance.
After announcing his retirement in 1946, Astaire concentrated on his horse-racing interests and went on to found the Fred Astaire Dance Studios in 1947 — which he subsequently sold in 1966.
1948–57: productive years with MGM and second retirement
During 1952 Astaire recorded The Astaire Story, a four volume album with a quintet led by Oscar Peterson. The album provided a musical overview of Astaire's career, and was produced by Norman Granz. The Astaire Story later won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999, a special Grammy award to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old, and that have "qualitative or historical significance."[29]
His legacy at this point was 30 musical films in 25 years. Afterwards, Astaire announced that he was retiring from dancing in film to concentrate on dramatic acting, scoring rave reviews for the nuclear war drama On the Beach (1959).
1958–81: branching out into televised dance and straight acting
Astaire did not retire from dancing completely. He made a series of four highly rated, Emmy-winning musical specials for television in 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1968, each featuring Barrie Chase, with whom Astaire enjoyed an Indian summer 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 show was to earn a further 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 where the tape had deteriorated with kinescope footage.
Astaire's last major musical film was Finian's Rainbow (1968), in which he shed his white tie and tails to play an Irish rogue who believes if he buries a crock of gold in the shadows of Fort Knox it will multiply. His dance partner was Petula Clark, who portrayed his skeptical daughter. He admitted to being as nervous about singing with her as she confessed to being apprehensive about dancing with him. But unfortunately for him, the film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, was a box-office failure.
Astaire continued to act into the 1970s, appearing on television as the father of Robert Wagner's character of Alexander Mundy in It Takes a Thief and in films such as The Towering Inferno (1974), in which he danced with Jennifer Jones and for which he received his only Academy Award nomination, in the category of Best Supporting Actor. He voiced the mailman narrator in 1970's classic animated film Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. He appeared in the first two That's Entertainment! documentaries in the mid 1970s. In the second, aged seventy-six, he performed a number of song-and-dance routines with Kelly, his last dance performances in a musical film. In the summer of 1975, he made three albums in London, Attitude Dancing, They Can't Take These Away From Me, and A Couple of Song and Dance Men, the last an album of duets with Bing Crosby. In 1976, he played a supporting role as a dog owner in the cult movie The Amazing Dobermans, co-starring Barbara Eden and James Franciscus. In 1978, Fred Astaire co-starred with Helen Hayes in a well-received television film, A Family Upside Down, in which they play an elderly couple coping with failing health. Astaire won an Emmy Award for his performance. He made a well-publicized guest appearance on the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica in 1979, as Chameleon, the maybe-father of Starbuck, in "The Man With Nine Lives", a role written for him by Donald P. Bellisario. Astaire asked his agent to obtain a role for him on Galactica because of his grandchildren's interest in the series. His final film role was the 1981 adaptation of Peter Straub's novel Ghost Story. This horror film was also the last for two of his most prominent castmates, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Astaire was a virtuoso dancer, able to convey light-hearted venturesomeness or deep emotion when called for. His technical control and sense of rhythm were astonishing. Long after the photography for the solo dance number "I Want to Be a Dancin' Man" was completed for the 1952 feature "The Belle of New York", it was decided that Astaire's humble costume and the threadbare stage set were inadequate and the entire sequence was re-shot. The 1994 documentary That's Entertainment! III shows the two performances side-by-side in split screen. Frame for frame, the two performances are absolutely identical, down to the subtlest gesture.
Astaire's execution of a dance routine was prized for its elegance, grace, originality and precision. He drew from a variety of influences, including tap and other black rhythms, classical dance and the elevated style of Vernon and Irene Castle, to create a uniquely recognizable dance style which greatly influenced the American Smooth style of ballroom dance, and set standards against which subsequent film dance musicals would be judged. He termed his eclectic approach his "outlaw style", an unpredictable and instinctive blending of personal artistry. His dances are economical yet endlessly nuanced, as Jerome Robbins stated, "Astaire's dancing looks so simple, so disarming, so easy, yet the understructure, the way he sets the steps on, over or against the music, is so surprising and inventive."[17]:18 Astaire further observes:
Working out the steps is a very complicated process—something like writing music. You have to think of some step that flows into the next one, and the whole dance must have an integrated pattern. If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement. It should build to a climax and stop!"[17]:15
With very few exceptions, Astaire created his routines in collaboration with other choreographers, primarily Hermes Pan. They would often start with a blank slate:
"For maybe a couple of days we wouldn't get anywhere—just stand in front of the mirror and fool around... Then suddenly I'd get an idea or one of them would get an idea... So then we'd get started... You might get practically the whole idea of the routine done that day, but then you'd work on it, edit it, scramble it, and so forth. It might take sometimes as long as two, three weeks to get something going."[17]:15
Frequently, a dance sequence was built around two or three principal ideas, sometimes inspired by his own steps or by the music itself, suggesting a particular mood or action.[17]:20 Many of his dances were built around a "gimmick", such as dancing on the walls in "Royal Wedding," or dancing with his shadows in Swing Time, that he or his collaborator had thought up earlier and saved for the right situation. They would spend weeks creating all the dance sequences in a secluded rehearsal space before filming would begin, working with a rehearsal pianist (often the composer Hal Borne) who in turn would communicate modifications to the musical orchestrators.
His perfectionism was legendary; however, his relentless insistence on rehearsals and retakes was a burden to some. When time approached for the shooting of a number, Astaire would rehearse for another two weeks, and record the singing and music. With all the preparation completed, the actual shooting would go quickly, conserving costs. Astaire agonized during the entire process, frequently asking colleagues for acceptance for his work, as Vincente Minnelli stated, "He lacks confidence to the most enormous degree of all the people in the world. He will not even go to see his rushes...He always thinks he is no good."[17]:16 As Astaire himself observed, "I've never yet got anything 100% right. Still it's never as bad as I think it is."[17]:16
Although he possessed a light voice, he was admired for his lyricism, diction and phrasing[31] – the grace and elegance so prized in his dancing seemed to be reflected in his singing, a capacity for synthesis which led Burton Lane to describe him as "The world's greatest musical performer."[17]:21 Irving Berlin considered Astaire the equal of any male interpreter of his songs – "as good as Jolson, Crosby or Sinatra, not necessarily because of his voice, but for his conception of projecting a song."[32] Jerome Kern considered him the supreme male interpreter of his songs[17]:21 and Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer also admired his unique treatment of their work. And while George Gershwin was somewhat critical of Astaire's singing abilities, he wrote many of his most memorable songs for him.[17]:123,128 In his heyday, Astaire was referenced[32] in lyrics of songwriters Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart and Eric Maschwitz and continues to inspire modern songwriters.[33]
Astaire was a songwriter of note himself, with "I'm Building Up to an Awful Letdown" (written with lyricist Johnny Mercer) reaching number four in the Hit Parade of 1936.[34] He recorded his own "It's Just Like Taking Candy from a Baby" with Benny Goodman in 1941, and nurtured a lifelong ambition to be a successful popular song composer.[35]
1950 – Ginger Rogers presented an honorary Academy Award to Astaire "for his unique artistry and his contributions to the technique of musical pictures".
Astaire's hand and foot prints at Grauman's Chinese Theater
1961 – Emmy Award for "Program Achievement" in 1961 for Astaire Time.
1961 – Voted Champion of Champions – Best Television performer in annual television critics and columnists poll conducted by Television Today and Motion Picture Daily.
1965 – The George Award from the George Eastman House for "outstanding contributions to motion pictures".
1968 – Nominated for an Emmy Award for Musical Variety Program for The Fred Astaire Show.
1972 – Named Musical Comedy Star of the Century by Liberty Magazine.
1973 – Subject of a Gala by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
1982 – The Anglo-American Contemporary Dance Foundation announces the Astaire Awards "to honor Fred Astaire and his sister Adele and to reward the achievement of an outstanding dancer or dancers." The awards have since been renamed The Fred and Adele Astaire Awards.
1987 – The Capezio Dance Shoe Award (co-awarded with Rudolph Nureyev).
Built in 1905, the Gottlieb Storz Mansion in Astaire's hometown of Omaha includes the "Adele and Fred Astaire Ballroom" on the top floor, which is the only memorial to their Omaha roots.[38]
Astaire is referenced in the 2003 animated feature, The Triplets of Belleville, in which he is eaten by his shoes after a fast-paced dance act.
Personal life
Always immaculately turned out, Astaire remained something of a male fashion icon even into his later years, eschewing his trademark top hat, white tie and tails (which he never really cared for)[39] in favor of a breezy casual style of tailored sports jackets, colored shirts, cravats and slacks — the latter usually held up by the idiosyncratic use of an old tie in place of a belt.
Astaire married for the first time in 1933, to the 25-year-old Phyllis Potter (née Phyllis Livingston Baker, 1908–54), a Boston-born New York socialite and former wife of Eliphalet Nott Potter III (1906–81), after pursuing her ardently for roughly two years. Potter's death from lung cancer, at the age of 46, ended 21 years of a blissful marriage and left Astaire devastated.[40] Consumed with grief, Astaire wanted to drop out of the film Daddy Long Legs (1955), his project at the time. He even made an unprecedented offer to the studio to pay all production costs to date out of his own pocket. But he ultimately decided to continue with the picture as a distraction from his grief (and also because Potter had wanted him to make it).[41] Thereafter, he remained as busy as possible.
In addition to Potter's son, Eliphalet IV, known as Peter, the Astaires had two children. Fred, Jr. (born 1936) appeared with his father in the movie Midas Run, but became a charter pilot and rancher instead of an actor. Ava Astaire McKenzie (born 1942) remains actively involved in promoting her late father's heritage. Ava continues to lecture on topics about her father today. She appears in the documentary "A Couple of Song and Dance Men" with film historian Ken Barnes, a supplement on the DVD release of Holiday Inn (1942) starring Astaire and Bing Crosby.[42] She is married to Richard McKenzie and divides her time between London and Ireland.[43]
His friend David Niven described him as "a pixie — timid, always warm-hearted, with a penchant for schoolboy jokes." Astaire was a lifelong golf and Thoroughbred horse racing enthusiast. In 1946 his horse Triplicate won the prestigious Hollywood Gold Cup and San Juan Capistrano Handicap. He remained physically active well into his eighties. At age seventy-eight, he broke his left wrist while riding his grandson's skateboard.[44]
He remarried in 1980, to Robyn Smith, an actress turned jockey almost 45 years his junior. Smith was a jockey for Alfred G. Vanderbilt II.
Astaire died from pneumonia on June 22, 1987, at the age of eighty-eight. He was interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.[45] One last request of his was to thank his fans for their years of support.
Astaire has never been portrayed on film.[46] He always refused permission for such portrayals, saying, "However much they offer me – and offers come in all the time – I shall not sell."[47] Astaire's will included a clause requesting that no such portrayal ever take place; he commented, "It is there because I have no particular desire to have my life misinterpreted, which it would be."[48]
Croce, Arlene. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, Galahad Books 1974, ISBN 0-88365-099-1
Crouse, Jeffrey. "Letting His Wish Provide the Occasion: Fred Astaire in Top Hat", Film International, No. 5, 2003.
Freeland, Michael. Fred Astaire An Illustrated Biography, Grosset & Dunlap, 1976. ISBN 0-448-14080-2
Garofalo, Alessandra. Austerlitz sounded too much like a battle: The roots of Fred Astaire family in Europe, Editrice UNI Service, 2009. ISBN 978-88-6178-415-4
Giles, Sarah. Fred Astaire — His Friends Talk, Bloomsbury, London, 1988, ISBN 0-7475-0322-2
Green, Benny. Fred Astaire, Bookthrift Co. 1980, ISBN 0896730182
Green, Stanley, & Burt Goldblatt. Starring Fred Astaire, Dodd 1973, ISBN 0-396-06877-4
Hyam, Hannah. Fred and Ginger — The Astaire-Rogers Partnership 1934-1938, Pen Press Publications, Brighton, 2007. ISBN 978-1-905621-96-5
Lamparski, Richard. Manhattan Diary. BearManor Media 2006 ISBN 1-59393-054-2
Mueller, John. Astaire Dancing — The Musical Films of Fred Astaire, Knopf 1985, ISBN 0-394-51654-0
Satchell, Tim. Astaire, The Biography. Hutchinson, London. 1987. ISBN 0-09-173736-2
Thomas, Bob. Astaire, the Man, The Dancer. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985. ISBN 0-297-78402-1
The Astaire Family Papers, The Howard Gotleib Archival Research Center, Boston University, MA, U.S.A.
Notes
^ abcBillman, Larry (1997). Fred Astaire – A Bio-bibliography. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN0-313-29010-5.
^ e.g., Croce, 1st edition, 1972, footnote p. 14, removed at Astaire's request in 2nd edition, 1974, – see Giles (p. 24). Satchell pp. 41-43 claims to have detected their presence as extras "Even with the benefit of an editing machine, slow-motion, and stop-frame, the Astaires are almost lost in the mass of bodies"
^ Astaire p. 42 and Billman p. 4: "They observed the filming as visitors but insisted they did not appear in the film."
^ "The cast may also have included Fred Astaire, then sixteen, and his sister Adele. There is no proof of this, and they do not surface in surviving reels." — Brownlow, Kevin (1999). Mary Pickford Rediscovered. New York, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. ISBN0810943743.
^ Astaire p. 65: "We struck up a friendship at once. He was amused by my piano playing and often made me play for him."
^ Bill Adler, Fred Astaire: A Wonderful Life, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1987, p. 35, ISBN 0-88184-376-8
^ Astaire was balding at the time he began his movie career and thus wore a toupee in all of his films.
^ abCroce, Arlene (1972). The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book. London: W.H. Allen. ISBN9780810943742.
^ The only other entertainer to receive this treatment at the time was Greta Garbo.
^ Coppola also fired Hermes Pan from the film. cf. Mueller p. 403
^Hyam, Hannah (2007). Fred and Ginger – The Astaire-Rogers Partnership 1934-1938. Brighton: Pen Press Publications. ISBN978-1-905621-96-5.
^ Giles, p. 33 Pan: "I do not think Eleanor Powell was Fred's greatest dancing partner. I think Ginger Rogers was. Not that she was the greatest of dancers. Cyd Charisse was a much finer technical dancer"
^ Kael: "that's a bit much", in an otherwise laudatory review of Croce's The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book, writing in the The New Yorker, November 25, 1972
^ Thomas, p. 135: "I'd love to have been able to do more with my music, but I never had the time. I was always working on dance numbers. Year after year I kept doing that. Somehow or other I always blame myself, because I say, 'Well, I could have found the time; why the hell didn't I do it?'"
^ Wishart, D.J. (2004) Encyclopedia of the Great Plains University of Nebraska Pres. p 259.
^ Astaire, Steps in Time, p. 8: "At the risk of disillusionment, I must admit that I don't like top hats, white ties and tails.
^ Niven, David: Bring on the Empty Horses, G. Putnam 1975, p. 248, 255: "The combination of Fred and Phyllis was a joy to behold...Theirs was the prototype of a gloriously happy marriage."
^ Billman, p. 22: "Astaire's intense professionalism — and the memory that Phyllis had wanted him to make the film — made him report back for work. The first few weeks were difficult, with most of the time being spent on Leslie's ballets and requiring as little as possible from the grieving man. Caron remembered, "Fred used to sit down during a rehearsal and put his face in his towel and just cry."
^ (Thomas p. 301) Astaire was awarded a life membership in the National Skateboard Society (Satchell p. 221). He remarked "Gene Kelly warned me not to be a damned fool, but I'd seen the things those kids got up to on television doing all sorts of tricks. What a routine I could have worked up for a film sequence if they had existed a few years ago. Anyway I was practicing in my driveway." (Satchell p. 221)
^ Rogers, who died in 1995, is also interred in this cemetery.
^ In 1986, Federico Fellini released Ginger and Fred, which, although inspired by Astaire and Rogers, portrays an Italian ballroom dancing couple. In 1996, his widow allowed footage of him to be used in a commercial for Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners in which he dances with a vacuum. His daughter stated that she was "saddened that after his wonderful career he was sold to the devil." cf Royal Wedding
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