Biography
Friends and Family
Carol Lynley
[Friend]
::
Douglas Fairbanks
[Friend]
::
Irving Berlin
[Friend]
::
Adele Astaire
[Sister]
(He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister)
Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 "I don`t want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don`t want to look like a little old man dancing out there." "I suppose I made it look easy, but gee whiz, did I work and worry."
[on actress/dancer Leslie Caron] A ballet dancer really, but technically good. I called her the sergeant major.
[on Gene Kelly] You know, that Kelly, he`s just terrific. That`s all there is to it. He dances like crazy, he directs like crazy. I adore this guy. I really am crazy about his work.
[on Ginger Rogers] She may have faked a little, but we knew we had a good thing going.
[on John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever"] He`s not a dancer. What he did in those dance scenes was very attractive but he is basically not a dancer. I was dancing like that years ago, you know. Disco is just jitterbug.
[on Judy Garland] She was just simply wonderful. She danced beautifully, learned beautifully. She was very adept at whatever she did. Really in fine form. We were all set to do another picture together, but she got sick and that was the end of that.
[on Rita Hayworth] A great dancer but a different style to me.
[on tap dancer Eleanor Powell] Eleanor was an out and out dancer. She danced like a man. She slammed the floor and did it great and that`s fine and suddenly she`s on her toes in the ballet sequence -- it did look kinda funny.
[To Jack Lemmon] "You`re at a level where you can only afford one mistake. The higher up you go, the more mistakes you`re allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it`s considered to be your style".
"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."
"People think I was born in top hat and tails."
"The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any."
"I had some ballet training but didn`t like it. It was like a game to me."
"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."
"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."
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."
Trivia
Appears on sleeve of The Beatles` "Sgt Pepper`s Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.
Astaire disguised his very large hands by curling his middle two fingers while dancing.
Don McLean`s song "Wonderful Baby" was written with Astaire in mind; Astaire reportedly loved the song, and recorded it for an album.
Famously wore a necktie around his waist instead of a belt, an affectation he picked up from his friendship with actor Douglas Fairbanks but often mistakenly attributed to Astaire alone.
He and Ginger Rogers acted in 10 movies together
His legs were insured for one million dollars.
Inducted into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2002 (inaugural class).
One of the first Kennedy Center Honorees in 1978.
The evaluation of Astaire`s first screen test: "Can`t act. Can`t sing. Balding. Can dance a little."
The only time he and Gene Kelly ever danced together on screen (other than the compilation 1974 movie, _That`s Entertainment (1974)_) was in one routine, titled "The Babbitt and the Bromide" in the 1946 movie Ziegfeld Follies (1946).
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