Fred Astaire

(born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987)

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 Astaire’s 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.

Ginger Rogers

In step with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers was one half of the most legendary dancing team in film history; she was also a successful dramatic actress, even winning a Best Actress Oscar. Born Virginia McMath on July 16, 1911, in Independence, MO, as a toddler, she relocated to Hollywood with her newly divorced mother, herself a screenwriter. At the age of six, Rogers was offered a movie contract, but her mother turned it down. The family later moved to Fort Worth, where she first began appearing in area plays and musical revues. Upon winning a Charleston contest in 1926, Rogers' mother declared her ready for a professional career, and she began working the vaudeville circuit, fronting an act dubbed "Ginger and the Redheads." After marrying husband Jack Pepper in 1928, the act became "Ginger and Pepper." She soon traveled to New York as a singer with Paul Ash & His Orchestra, and upon filming the Rudy Vallee short Campus Sweethearts, she won a role in the 1929 Broadway production Top Speed.

On Broadway, Rogers earned strong critical notice as well as the attention of Paramount, who cast her in 1930's Young Man of Manhattan, becoming typecast as a quick-witted flapper. Back on Broadway, she and Ethel Merman starred in Girl Crazy. Upon signing a contract with Paramount, she worked at their Astoria studio by day and returned to the stage in the evenings; under these hectic conditions she appeared in a number of films, including The Sap From Syracuse, Queen High, and Honor Among Lovers. Rogers subsequently asked to be freed of her contract, but soon signed with RKO. When her Broadway run ended, she went back to Hollywood, starring in 1931's The Tip-Off and The Suicide Fleet. When 1932's Carnival Boat failed to attract any interest, RKO dropped her and she freelanced around town, co-starring with Joe E. Brown in the comedy The Tenderfoot, followed by a thriller, The Thirteenth Guest, for Monogram. Finally, the classic 1933 musical 42nd Street poised her on the brink of stardom, and she next appeared in Warner Bros.' Gold Diggers of 1933.

Rogers then returned to RKO, where she starred in Professional Sweetheart; the picture performed well enough to land her a long-term contract, and features like A Shriek in the Night and Sitting Pretty followed. RKO then cast her in the musical Flying Down to Rio, starring Delores Del Rio; however, the film was stolen by movie newcomer Astaire, fresh from Broadway. He and Rogers did not reunite until 1934's The Gay Divorcee, a major hit. Rogers resisted typecasting as strictly a musical star, and she followed with the drama Romance in Manhattan. Still, the returns from 1935's Roberta, another musical venture with Astaire, made it perfectly clear what kinds of films audiences expected Rogers to make, and although she continued tackling dramatic roles when the opportunity existed, she rose to major stardom alongside Astaire in classics like Top Hat, 1936's Follow the Fleet, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance? Even without Astaire, Rogers found success in musical vehicles, and in 1937 she and Katharine Hepburn teamed brilliantly in Stage Door.

After 1938's Carefree, Rogers and Astaire combined for one final film, the following year's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, before splitting. She still harbored the desire to pursue a dramatic career, but first starred in an excellent comedy, Bachelor Mother. In 1940, Rogers starred as the titular Kitty Foyle, winning an Academy Award for her performance. She next appeared in the 1941 Garson Kanin comedy Tom, Dick and Harry. After starring opposite Henry Fonda in an episode of Tales of Manhattan, she signed a three-picture deal with Paramount expressly to star in the 1944 musical hit Lady in the Dark. There she also appeared in Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor and Leo McCarey's Once Upon a Honeymoon. Rogers then made a series of films of little distinction, including 1945's Weekend at the Waldorf (for which she earned close to 300,000 dollars, making her one of the highest-paid women in America), the following year's Magnificent Doll, and the 1947 screwball comedy It Had to Be You.

Rogers then signed with the short-lived production company Enterprise, but did not find a project which suited her. Instead, for MGM she and Astaire reunited for 1949's The Barkleys of Broadway, their first color collaboration. The film proved highly successful, and rekindled her sagging career. She then starred in a pair of Warner Bros. pictures, the 1950 romance Perfect Strangers and the social drama Storm Warning. After 1951's The Groom Wore Spurs, Rogers starred in a trio of 1952 Fox comedies -- We're Not Married, Monkey Business, and Dreamboat -- which effectively halted whatever momentum her reunion with Astaire had generated, a situation remedied by neither the 1953 comedy Forever Female nor by the next year's murder mystery Black Widow. In Britain, she filmed Beautiful Stranger, followed by 1955's lively Tight Spot. With 1957's farcical Oh, Men! Oh, Women!, Rogers' Hollywood career was essentially finished, and she subsequently appeared in stock productions of Bell, Book and Candle, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Annie Get Your Gun.

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