Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American dancer, actor, singer, musician, choreographer, and presenter, whose career in stage, film, and television spanned 76 years. He is widely regarded as the "greatest popular-music dancer of all time". He received an Honorary Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a David di Donatello Award, three Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award.
As a dancer, he drew influences from many sources, including tap, classical dance, and the elevated style of Vernon and Irene Castle. His trademark style greatly influenced the American Smooth style of ballroom dance. He called his eclectic approach "outlaw style", a following of an unpredictable and instinctive muse.
Astaire had a long dancing partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he co-starred in ten Hollywood musicals during the classic age of Hollywood cinema, including Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937). Astaire's fame grew in films like Holiday Inn (1942), Easter Parade (1948), The Band Wagon (1953), Funny Face (1957), and Silk Stockings (1957). For his performance in Irwin Allen and John Guillermin's disaster film, The Towering Inferno (1974), Astaire received his only competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Astaire received several honors including an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1960, the Film Society of Lincoln Center tribute in 1973, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1978, and AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980. He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1972, and the Television Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Astaire the fifth-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema in 100 Years... 100 Stars.
1899–1916: Early life and career
Fred Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz on May 10, 1899, in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus; 1878–1975) and Friedrich "Fritz" Emanuel Austerlitz (1868–1923), known in the U.S. as Frederic Austerlitz. Astaire's mother was born in the U.S. to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace. Astaire's father was born in Linz in Upper Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Catholic parents who had converted from Judaism.
Astaire's father Fritz Austerlitz arrived in New York City at the age of 25 on October 26, 1893, at Ellis Island. Fritz was seeking work in the brewing trade and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he was employed by the Storz Brewing Company. Astaire's mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by means of her children's talents. Astaire's older sister Adele was an instinctive dancer and singer early in her childhood. Johanna planned a brother-and-sister act, common in vaudeville at the time, for her two children. Although Fred refused dance lessons at first, he imitated his older sister at the Chambers Dance Academy in Omaha, and also studied piano, accordion and clarinet.
When their father lost his job, the family moved to New York City in January 1905 to launch the show business careers of the children. They began formal training at the Alvieni Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts. Fred and Adele's mother suggested that they change their name to Astaire, as she felt that Austerlitz was reminiscent of the Battle of Austerlitz. Family legend attributes the name to an uncle surnamed L'Astaire.
The children were taught dance, speaking and singing in preparation for developing an act. Their first act was called Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty. Astaire wore a top hat and tails in the first half and a lobster outfit in the second. In an interview, Astaire's daughter Ava Astaire McKenzie, observed that he was often given a top hat to make him look taller. In November 1905, the comedic act debuted in Keyport, New Jersey at a "tryout theater." The local paper wrote that "the Astaires are the greatest child act in vaudeville."
As a result of their father's salesmanship, Fred and Adele Astaire landed a major contract and played the Orpheum Circuit in the Midwest, West and some Southern cities in the U.S. 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 to let time take its course and to avoid trouble from the Gerry Society and the child-labor laws of the time. In 1912, Astaire became an Episcopalian. The career of the Astaire siblings resumed with mixed fortunes, but with increasing skill and polish, as they began to incorporate tap dancing into their act. From vaudeville dancer Aurelio Coccia they learned the tango, waltz and other ballroom dances popularized by Vernon and Irene Castle. Some sources state that the Astaire siblings appeared in a 1915 film titled Fanchon, the Cricket, starring Mary Pickford, but the Astaires have consistently denied this.
By age 14, Astaire had assumed the musical responsibilities for their act. He first met George Gershwin, who was working as a song plugger for Jerome H. Remick's music publishing company, in 1916. Astaire had already been hunting for new music and dance ideas, and their chance meeting was to affect the careers of both artists profoundly. Astaire was always on the lookout for new steps on the circuit and was starting to demonstrate his quest for novelty and perfection.
1917–1933: Stage career on Broadway and in London
The Astaires broke into Broadway in 1917 with Over the Top, a patriotic revue, and performed for U.S. and Allied troops at this time as well. They followed up with several more shows. Of their work in The Passing Show of 1918, Heywood 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."
Adele contributed intuitive talent, whereas Fred's perfectionism provided support, as he took care of the planning behind the choreography and the logistics of the shows. He considered his skills were shadowed by his sister's talent, so he focused on boosting her performance. By the late 1920s he would begin to develop a dancing style of his own, gaining a greater psychological independence from his sister.
During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway and the London stage. They won popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic in shows such as Jerome Kern's The Bunch and Judy (1922), George and Ira Gershwin's Lady, Be Good (1924), and Funny Face (1927) and later in The Band Wagon (1931). Astaire's tap dancing was recognized by then as among the best. For example, 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." While in London, Fred studied piano at the Guildhall School of Music alongside his friend and colleague Noël Coward, and in 1926, was one of the judges at the 'Charleston Championship of the World ' competition at the Royal Albert Hall, where Lew Grade was declared the winner.
After the close of Funny Face, the Astaires went to Hollywood for a screen test at Paramount Pictures, but the siblings were unhappy with the results and, although they were close to signing a deal to make a movie adaptation of Funny Face, the project was abandoned.
They split in 1932 when Adele married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire. Fred went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce (later made into the film The Gay Divorcee) 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 working with new partner Claire Luce, Fred 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." The success of the stage play was credited to this number, and when recreated in The Gay Divorcee (1934), the film version of the play, it ushered in a new era in filmed dance. In 2008, 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 known performance footage of Astaire.