Fred Astaire Newsletter
Sign-up to receive daily news on Fred Astaire by email.
Fred Astaire Filmography
Source:
Theiapolis
Fred Astaire Resources
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". Many sources erroneously state that the Astaires appeared in a 1915 film entitled Fanchon, the Cricket starring
Mary Pickford, but this is a myth (although it is believed that they were present to watch the filming).
During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway in shows such as Lady Be Good, Funny Face, , and
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's final 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 last on-screen 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.
Astaire continued to act into the 1980s, appearing in films such as 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 Carly Simon's "Attitude Dancing." In 1978, Fred Astaire co-starred with legendary actress
Helen Hayes in a well-received television film,
A Family Upside Down. They played 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 TV series Battlestar Galactica in 1979. 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.
-
Filmography >>
Table of Content
Latest Film News
Latest news on Fred Astaire
LiteratureJonathan Carroll's The Ghost in Love: magical and wonderful fantasy novel about ghosts and love and nostalgia
Jonathan Carroll's latest novel, The Ghost in Love is the latest of thirteen genuinely magical fantasy novels in which the author makes magic the way Fred Astaire danced: effortless, simple, wondrous. In the Ghost in Love, Ben and his girlfriend German have just broken up a long-term relationship that seems to have been as wonderful as love can be (Carroll has a special gift for bringing happy family relations to life). Now they are on the outs, and sharing custody of Pilot, their shelter-dog, and every time they meet to swap the dog, their hearts break anew. Ben should have died the day he got the dog, when he slipped on ice and broke his head. But he didn't. So the Angel of Death sent Ben's ghost, Ling, to earth, to investigate why the universe has stopped obeying its divine destiny. Ling is hopelessly in love with German, and the ghost is also a fantastic cook (as is Ben), so whenever German is due to come over, Ling spends the whole day cooking elaborate, invisible meals for her, while chatting morosely with the dog (all ghosts speak Dog). That's all in the first few pages. Then it gets weird. Carroll's standard formula for his novels is to introduce us to wonderful people living magical blessed lives, lives so achingly rendered that you want to crawl into the page and snuggle under the covers with them. Then he smashes their lives like sand-castles, and his wonderful people fall apart while magic unmakes them, rewriting the rules of their world to reveal hidden truths about love, family, self-regard, self-loathing, and other emotionally charged subjects. In Ghost in Love, Carroll does this again, but even moreso, using a kind of dreamlike fluidity to constantly rewrite the rules of his world and its magic as evil and good tear apart the lives of Ben, German, Pilot and Ling and the people around them. The story grows ever-more existential, allegorical and weird as the pages fly past. But it's all handled so gracefully that the dream-logic never falters. Carroll is the omnipotent god of his characters and situations, and he is totally in control of every variable, so that we trust him throughout, even though he never plays fair. And the message, the conclusion in the end? Without spoiling things, I'll say this: The Ghost in Love contains genuinely profound and illuminating truths about the way that we love others and ourselves, and about the power of owning up to your bad deeds, and about the danger and wonder of nostalgia for our simpler pasts. I've read and enjoyed all thirteen of Carroll's novels, and this one is going right on the shelf with the others, and will occupy the same oft-visited part of my mental landscape wherein dwell his other magical books. The Ghost in Love on Amazon, The Ghost in Love, author's site with free first chapter...
Published: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:19:27 GMT - Source: Boingboing.Net - Read the articleNewspapersRafael Nadal moves relentlessly toward dethroning tennis's reigning king
This week will tell whether Roger Federer, the Fred Astaire of tennis, can regain his footing after losing the No. 1 ranking to the hustling Spaniard, or whether a once-in-a-generation shift is under way.
Published: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:00:00 GMT - Source: Features.Csmonitor.Com - Read the article
Sign-up to receive daily news on Fred Astaire by email. See Also:
