Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 - June 22, 1987), born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American film and Broadway ballroom dancer and actor. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.

"Astaire" was a name taken by him and his sister Adele for their vaudeville act when they were about 5 years old. It is said to have come from an uncle surnamed "L'Astaire". During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway, splitting in 1932 when she married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of the duke of Devonshire.

Famously, a Paramount Pictures screen test report on Astaire read simply: "Can't sing. Can't act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little." In the opinion of millions of fans of his popular films, Astaire could actually dance quite a bit.

His singing voice was weak, yet Cole Porter wrote a number of songs especially for him, and quite a few are among evergreen ballroom foxtrots: Night and Day, Cheek to Cheek, The Way You Look Tonight, A Fine Romance, They Can't Take that Away from Me, Change Partners...

His second film, Flying Down to Rio, paired him with Ginger Rogers for the first time. That partnership, and the choreography of Hermes Pan, helped make dancing an important element of the Hollywood film musical. His films with Rogers included The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935) and Carefree (1938). He also teamed up with other stars, notably with Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1942) and Blue Skies (1946). He was also nearly outdanced in Broadway Melody of 1940 by one of his first post-Rogers dance partners, Eleanor Powell. After announcing his retirement in 1946, he soon returned to the screen to replace the injured Gene Kelly in Easter Parade (1948) (opposite Judy Garland) and for The Band Wagon (1953) with Cyd Charisse. Astaire went on to make several more musicals in the 1950s, including Funny Face (1953) with Audrey Hepburn and Silk Stockings (1958) with Charisse. 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).

Astaire didn't give up dancing completely, and made a series of high-rated specials for television into the early 1960s. One 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.

Astaire continued to act into the 1980s, appearing in films such as Finian's Rainbow (1968) (a return to musical singing and dancing) and The Towering Inferno (1974) for which he received his only Academy Award nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actor. He appeared in the first two That's Entertainment! documentaries in the mid-1970s, in the second performing a song-and-dance routine with Gene Kelly. In 1976, he recorded a disco-styled rendition of of Carly Simon's "Attitude Dancing." He made a well-publicized guest appearance on the science fiction TV series Battlestar Galactica in 1978. His final film was the 1981 adaptation of Peter Straub's Ghost Story.

He received an honorary Academy Award in 1950 "for his unique artistry and his contributions to the technique of musical pictures." He also won Emmys in 1961 and 1978.

He received Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, the first year they were awarded. The American Film Institute awarded him their "Lifetime Achievement Award" for 1981.

Astaire married, as his first wife, in 1933, Phyllis Potter (née Phyllis Livingston Baker, 1908-1954), a Boston-born New York socialite and former wife of Eliphalet Nott Potter 3d (1906-1981). (Potter was a member of a prominent family that supplied two Episcopal bishops of New York; he also was a cousin of Hollywood film director Henry Codman Potter.) In addition to Phyllis's son, Eliphalet 4th, known as Peter (who became a sheriff in Santa Barbara County, California), the Astaires had two children, Fred, Jr. (born 1936, he appeared with his father in the movie "Midas Run" but became a charter pilot and rancher instead of an actor), and Ava (born 1942).

Astaire married, as his second wife, in 1980, Robyn Smith, an actress turned jockey. She was nearly 50 years his junior. Sources indicate that it is uncertain whether the second Mrs. Astaire was born Robin Miller in 1944 or Melody Palm in 1942.

Fred Astaire died in 1987 from pneumonia and was interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

External link

• IMDb filmography (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000001/)

da:Fred Astaire de:Fred Astaire es:Fred Astaire eo:Fred ASTAIRE nl:Fred Astaire pl:Fred Astaire sv:Fred Astaire uk:Астер Фред