Biography for
Fred Astaire
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Mini biography
The son of an Austrian immigrant, Fred Astaire entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in
vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in _Dancing Lady_ before starting work
on RKO's _Flying Down to Rio_. In the latter film he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures. During these years he was also active in recording and radio. On
film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during which he opened a chain of dancing schools, Astaire returned to film to star in more
musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.
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Spouse
Smith, Robyn (1980 - 1987) (his death)
'Phyllis Livingston Potter' (1932 - 1954) (widowed); 1 son Fred Jr., 1 daughter Ava
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Trivia
(October 1997) Ranked #73 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list.
Interred at Oakwood Memorial Park, Chatsworth, California, USA, the same cemetery where
long-time dancing partner, Ginger Rogers, is located.
Children: son Fred Jr. (1936), daughter Ava (1942).
The (probably legendary) evaluation of Astaire's first screen test: "Can't act. Can't sing.
Balding. Can dance a little."
Astaire starred in Broadway versions of _Lady, Be Good!_ in 1924, _Funny Face_ in 1927, _The Band Wagon_ in 1931, and _The Gay Divorce_ in 1932.
Astaire would disguise his very large hands by curling his middle two fingers while dancing.
First met lifelong best friend Irving Berlin on the set of Top Hat (1935).
After Blue Skies (1946), New York's
Paramount Theater generated a petition of 10,000 names to persuade him to come out of retirement.
Born at 9:16pm-CST
The only time Astaire and Gene Kelly ever danced together onscreen (other than the
compilation 1974 movie, "That's Entertainment") was in one routine, titled "The Babbitt and the Bromide" in the 1946 movie "Ziegfeld Follies."
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Personal quotes
"I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies
and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything."
On
modern movies: "They tend to overdo the vulgarity. I'm not embarrassed by the language itself, but it's embarrassing to be listening to it, sitting next to perfect strangers."
"Of course, Ginger
was able to accomplish sex through dance. We told more through our movements instead of the big clinch. We did it all in the dance."
"I had some ballet training but didn't like it. It was like a game to me."
"Fred Astaire danced himself so thin that I could almost spit through him." - Bing Crosby
"People think I was born in top hat and tails."
"I don't care what crown a guy wears, I don't care if he's president, the one person I was ever speechless around was Fred Astaire - the greatest
dancer who ever lived. He's almost perfection." - Goldie Hawn
"I have been invited to say something about how dancers feel about Fred Astaire. It's no secret that we hate him. He gives us complexes
because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity." - Mikhail Baryshnikov, at a tribute to Fred.
"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."
"It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item."
"As a talent Fred Astaire was pure gold, and as a friend no one came closer." - Irving Berlin
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Actor, dancer. (b. May 10, 1899, Omaha, Nebr.; d.
June 22, 1987.) "Can't sing. Can't act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little." Fittingly, the studio toad who wrote that screen-test ev aluation is long forgotten, but the greatest dancer in movie history is
not. With his sister Adele, he danced his way from vaudeville to Broadway, where they starred in hit musicals for nearly 15 years (and reportedly appeared in a 1915 Mary Pickford movie, Fanchon the Cricket He played
himself in Dancing Lady (1933), his first film; later that year, he was teamed with Ginger Rogers as the second leads in Flying Down to Rio where their footwork in "The Carioca" stole the show.
RKO
quickly realized it had a potential gold mine, and over the next six years Astaire and Rogers made eight more films together, all of them a blend of astonishing choreography (usually in concert with Hermes Pan),
brilliant songs by the likes of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Jerome Kern, eye-popping sets, and vintage comedy plots propelled by vintage comedy actors. Buffs all have their favorites, but Top Hat (1935) and Swing
Time (1936) are generally considered the best of the lot. (The others: The Gay Divorcee 1934; Ro- berta 1935; Follow the Fleet 1936; Shall We Dance? 1937; Carefree 1938; The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle 1939) Though
worshipped as a dancer, in these and other films Astaire winningly introduced more enduring song hits than any other performer of his generation.
After Rogers broke up the team to concentrate on her acting,
Astaire embarked on his "solo" career, giving full vent to his imaginative terpsichorean ideas, and dancing opposite-among othersEleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1940 Rita Hayworth in 1941's You'll Never
Get Rich and You Were Never Lovelier Bing Crosby in 1942's Holiday Inn and 1946's Blue Skies Gene Kelly in 1946's Ziegfeld Follies Judy Garland in 1948's Easter Parade Jane Powell in 1951's Royal Wedding Cyd Charisse in
1953's The Band Wagon and 1957's Silk Stockings and Audrey Hepburn in 1957's Funny Face as well as reuniting with Rogers in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).
With the passing of the studio musical, he produced and
starred in three TV specials that remain landmarks of the medium. He also took a few straight acting roles in such films as On the Beach (1959), The Pleasure of His Company (1960), The Notorious Landlady (1962), The
Towering Inferno (1974, which inex plicably earned him an Oscar nomination), and Ghost Story (1981), made one final musical, Finian's Rainbow (1968), and cohosted the two That's Entertainment! compilations (1974 and
1976), the second of which featured his last dancing on film-alongside compatriot Gene Kelly. Having won two Emmys for his musical specials, he added another for acting in the TV movie A Family Upside Down (1978). In
any medium, he epitomized elegance and style. He never won an Academy Award for a specific performance, but did receive a special Oscar in 1949. Biography for
Ginger Rogers
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Mini biography
Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri on July 16, 1911. Her family moved
to Texas when she was a toddler because her father had found employment there. It wasn't long before Ginger's parents separated and she and her mother moved into a hotel. Her father, twice, kidnapped her, but both times
she was returned to her mother. He received very little in visitation rights and Ginger only saw him sporadically thereafter. He died when she was 11 years old. She, then, moved with her mother to her grandparents in
Kansas City, Missouri where Mrs. McMath managed to get Ginger in some advertising films. Now she was developing a taste for the cinema. Ginger's mother left her child in the care of her parents while she went in search
of a job as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and later to New York City. Mrs. McMath found herself with an income good enough to where she could send for Ginger. Later, the two packed up and moved to Fort Worth, Texas where
Ginger attended high school and appeared in the school productions, while her mother remarried. The theater became Ginger's passion. At the age of 14, she was also appearing in vaudeville acts which she did until she
was 17. Now she had discovered true acting. She went to New York where she appeared in the Broadway production of TOP SPEED. She did a superb job which began to encourage her to seek work in feature films. A screen test
turned out well and she was off to the movies. Her first film was in 1929 in A NIGHT IN A DORMITORY. It was a bit part, but it was a start. Later that year, Ginger appeared, briefly in two more films, A DAY OF A MAN OF
AFFAIRS and CAMPUS SWEETHEARTS. The following year she began to get better parts in films such as OFFICE BLUES and THE TIP OFF. But the movie that enamored her to the public was GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933. She did not have
top billing but her beauty and voice was enough to have the public want more. One song she popularized in the film was the now famous, "We're in the Money". In 1934, she starred with Dick Powell in TWENTY
MILLION SWEETHEARTS. It was a well received film about the popularity of radio. Ginger's real stardom occurred when she was teamed with Fred Astaire where they were one of the best cinematic couples ever to hit the
silver screen. This is where she achieved real stardom. They were first paired in 1933's FLYING DOWN TO RIO and later in 1935's ROBERTA and TOP HAT. Ginger also appeared in some very good comedies such as BACHELOR
MOTHER and FIFTH AVENUE MOTHER both in 1939. Also that year she appeared with Astaire in THE STORY OF VERNON AND IRENE CASTLE. The film made money but was not anywhere successful as they had hoped. After that studio
executives at RKO wanted Ginger to strike out on her own. She made several dramatic pictures but it was 1940's KITTY FOYLE that allowed her to shine. Playing a young lady from the wrong side of the tracks, she played
the lead role well, so well in fact, that she won an Academy Award for her portrayal. Ginger followed that project with the delightful comedy, TOM, DICK, AND HARRY the following year. It's a story where she has to
choose which of three men she wants to marry. Through the rest of the 1940's and early 1950's she continued to make movies but not near the caliber before World War II. After OH, MEN! OH, WOMEN! in 1957, Ginger didn't
appear on the silver screen for seven years. By 1965, she had appeared for the last time in HARLOW. Afterward, she appeared on Broadway and other stage plays traveling in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. After 1984, she
retired and wrote an autobiography in 1991 entitled, "Ginger, My Story" which is a very good book. On April 25, 1995, Ginger died of natural causes in Rancho Mirage, California. She was 83.
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Spouse
William Marshall (II) (16 March 1961 - 1962) (divorced)
Jacques Bergerac (7 February 1953 - 7 July 1957) (divorced)
Jack Briggs (I) (16 January 1943 - 7 September 1949) (divorced)
Lew Ayres (13 November 1934 - 13 March 1940) (divorced)
'Edward Jackson Culpepper' (29 March 1929 - 11 July 1931) (divorced)
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Trivia
Received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award in 1995.
Daughter of Lela E. Rogers
Was a Christian Scientist.
Was given the name "Ginger" by her little cousin who couldn't pronounce "Virginia" correctly.
Her grandmother on her mother's side was a descendent of George Washington
Brought her
cousin Helen Nichols to Hollywood, renamed her Phyllis Fraser, and guided her through a few films.
Interred at Oakwood Memorial Park, Chatsworth, California, USA, the same cemetery as long-time dancing/acting
partner Fred Astaire is located.
At age 19, she briefly dated famed, founding editor of New Yorker magazine Harold Ross, then 37.
Sort-of cousin of Rita Hayworth. Ginger's aunt married Rita's uncle.
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Personal quotes
"My mother told me I was dancing before I was born. She could feel my toes tapping wildly inside her
for months."
"When two people love each other, they don't look at each other, they look in the same direction."
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Actress. (b. July 16,
1911, Independence, Mo., as Virginia McMath; d. Apr. 25, 1995.) To remember her only as the beautiful, vivacious dancing partner of Fred Astaire in their classic 1930s musicals is to do Ginger Rogers a great disfavor:
She was a much better actress than most Hollywood wags gave her credit for, even before her Oscar win for Kitty Foyle (1940). Rogers was a performer from childhood, the product of an aggressive stage mother. She danced
professionally in vaudeville while still in her teens, married to partner Jack Pepper at the age of 17. Her first film was Campus Sweethearts (1929), a short subject starring Rudy Vallee; she made several minimusicals
in New York while performing in the Gershwin stage smash "Girl Crazy," in which she had the second female lead.
Paramount, at that time operating a stu dio in Astoria, Queens, gave Rogers a break in
feature films, slotting her in the Claudette Colbert starrer Young Man of Manhattan (1930). She appeared in a few more minor films for the studio before going in 1931 to Hollywood, where she worked as leading lady in a
slew of program pictures including The Tip Off, Suicide Fleet (both 1931), Carnival Boat, The Tenderfoot, Hat Check Girl, You Said a Mouthful, The Thirteenth Guest (all 1932), A Shriek in the Night, Broadway Bad, Don't
Bet on Love, Sitting Pretty (introducing the song "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?"), and Chance at Heaven (all 1933). Unlike many attractive young women in Hollywood, Rogers seldom played dewy-eyed
ingenues; her characters were nearly always wisecracking, worldly dames who knew their apples.
The year 1933 provided Ginger with her best breaks to date. First, she won star billing for the first time at a major
studio in RKO's Professional Sweetheart. Second, she won plum supporting roles in two Warner Bros. musicals, 42nd Street (as monocled "Anytime Annie") and Gold Diggers of 1933 (introducing the song "We're
in the Money"-and singing one chorus in pig latin). Third, she was teamed with dancer Fred Astaire for the first time in Flying Down to Rio also for RKO, in which they danced to the lilting strains of the
"Carioca."
RKO put Rogers under contract in 1934 (after she'd finished Twenty Million Sweethearts for Warners), developing a starring vehicle for her and Astaire. The Gay Divorcee sported songs by Cole
Porter (including "Night and Day") and gave the Astaire-Rogers team plenty of opportunity to strut their stuff. The picture's overwhelming success kept the pair together in a series of delightful, lavishly
mounted musicals, all of which featured songs by the country's top tunesmiths (Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, the Gershwins) and provided escapist entertainment for Depression-battered moviegoers. Rogers and
Astaire were an incomparably well-matched team; as perceptive critics noticed, they seemed to make love through their dance routines, and their smart comic performances as on-again, off-again lovers were a treat. Rogers
also made sure she always had one prime solo song in each film. Audiences loved Top Hat, Roberta (both 1935), Swing Time, Follow the Fleet (both 1936), Shall We Dance? (1937), Carefree (1938), and the more serious The
Story of Vernon & Irene Castle (1939).
Although RKO allowed her to make films without Astaire-including Romance in Manhattan (1934), Star of Midnight (1935, opposite William Powell in this imitation Thin
Man), In Person (1936), Stage Door (1937, in which she provided a lively and engaging counterpart to top-billed Katharine Hepburn), Vivacious Lady, Having Wonderful Time (both 1938), and Bachelor Mother (1939)-she felt
she'd never blossom on her own without shedding her demanding dancing partner. For his part, Astaire had had enough of Rogers and the RKO musicals, and was more than willing to leave for greener pastures elsewhere.
After starring in two relatively minor films, Lucky Partners and The Primrose Path Rogers hit pay dirt by letting her blond hair go naturally dark and forgoing glamour-girl treatment to play the feisty, independent
working girl in Kitty Foyle (all 1940), pleasantly surprising critics and audiences with her warm, impassioned performance. She won a Best Actress Academy Award, and solidified her position as RKO's top star.
Tom, Dick and Harry (1941) gave her a delightful romantic comedy vehicle. The following year, off the RKO lot, Rogers shined in Roxie Hart (playing a gumchomping, wisecracking publicity hound) and The Major and the
Minor (as another high-spirited, self-reliant working girl, who disguises herself as a 12-year-old to save on train fare). By contrast, her RKO vehicles of the period, including Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) and Tender
Comrade (1943), seemed weak. Paramount's overproduced, Technicolor Lady in the Dark though, gave Rogers her first real flop, being the tale (based on a Moss Hart play-but shorn of most of its Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin
songs) of a "boss lady" who undergoes psychoanalysis.
Rogers' star never again shone as brightly, even though she still retained the power to hold and satisfy audiences. Weekend at the Waldorf (1945),
Heartbeat, Magnificent Doll (both 1946, miscast in the latter as Dolley Madison), It Had to Be You (1947), The Barkleys of Broadway (1949, reteamed one last time with Astaire, this time at MGM), Perfect Strangers
(1950), the highly dramatic Storm Warning and The Groom Wore Spurs (both 1951) saw a gradual diminution in her popularity. She made something of a comeback with three 1952 comedies-We're Not Married, Dreamboat (playing
a silent-screen star, a part for which she seemed too young), and Monkey Business-but she couldn't compete with a newer, younger group of stars such as Monkey Business's Marilyn Monroe.
Rogers gave tolerably good
performances in Forever Female (1953), Black Widow (1954, as a temperamental actress), Tight Spot (1955), and The First Traveling Saleslady (1956), but found decent starring vehicles fewer and far between, and after
Teenage Rebel (also 1956) and Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1957), she returned to the stage and nightclubs. (Some years later, she played a madam opposite Ray Milland in 1964's mercifully unreleased The Confession/aka Quick,
Let's Get Married/aka Seven Different Ways and was Carol Lynley's mother in 1965's Harlow.)
She remained a star, however, as she proved when she took over the leading role in the Broadway smash "Hello,
Dolly!" in 1965, and played the title role in the 1969 London production of "Mame." Professionally inactive in her later years, she was confined to a wheelchair but still made myriad personal appearances,
especially to promote her 1991 autobiography, "Ginger: My Story." (A 1942 juvenile novel, "Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak," was written by her mother Lela, who also worked for
years as a talent scout and nurturer at RKO, and caused considerable ripples as a Communist witch-hunter in the 1950s.) Rogers was married to actors Lew Ayres (1934-41), Jacques Bergerac (1953-57), and William Marshall
(1961-62). |
