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Image:fredastaire.jpg|thumb|Fred Astaire 
Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987),
born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, was
an United States|American film and Broadway
Ballroom dancing|ballroom dancer and actor. He is
particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with
whom he made ten films. His unparalleled skill as
a dancer leads many critics to cite him as the
best dancer ever to come out of Hollywood.

"Astaire" was a name taken by him and his sister
Adele Astaire|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 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 theatre|Broadway in shows such as Lady Be
Good, Funny Face, The Band Wagon, and The Gay
Divorce, winning popular acclaim with the theater
crowd. They split in 1932 when she married her
first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of
the duke of Devonshire.

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. He
eventually ended up at RKO Studios, where he made
the top musicals of that era, with Rogers as his
costar.  

He was a virtuoso dancer, able to convey
lighthearted adventuresomeness or deep emotion
when called for. His technical control and sense
of rhythm were astonishing; according to one
anecdote, he was able, when called back to the
studio to redo a dance number he had filmed
several weeks earlier for a special effects
number, to reproduce the routine with pinpoint
accuracy, down to the last gesture. He drew from a
variety of influences, including tap and other
African-American styles, classical dance and the
elevated style of Vernon and Irene Castle.

His singing voice was not great, yet composers
such as 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", and "Change Partners". Irving Berlin, Jerome
Kern, and the Gershwins contributed classic songs
for his musicals, in large part because of his
sincere, unmannered delivery of their songs.

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 in film|1934), Top
Hat (1935 in film|1935) and Carefree (1938 in
film|1938). Their partnership elevated them both
to stardom: as Katharine Hepburn reportedly said,
"He gives her class and she gives him sex."

He also teamed up with other stars, notably with
Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (film)|Holiday Inn
(1942 in film|1942) and Blue Skies (movie)|Blue
Skies (1946 in film|1946). He was also nearly
outdanced in Broadway Melody of 1940 by one of his
first post-Rogers dance partners, Eleanor Powell.
Other partners during this period included Rita
Hayworth and Joan Leslie. 

After announcing his retirement in 1946, he soon
returned to the screen to replace the injured Gene
Kelly in Easter Parade (1948 in film|1948)
opposite Judy Garland and for The Band Wagon (1953
in film|1953) with Cyd Charisse. Astaire went on
to make several more musicals in the 1950s,
including Funny Face (1957 in film|1953) with
Audrey Hepburn and Silk Stockings (1958 in
film|1958) with Charisse. His legacy at this point
was thirty musicals in a twenty-five year period.
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 in film|1959).

Astaire did not give up dancing completely, and
made a series of high-rated specials for
television into the early 1960s. One of these
programs, 1958 in television|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.

Image:FredAstaire.jpg|left|frame|With Petula Clark
in Finian's RainbowAstaire's final musical film
was Finian's Rainbow (1968 in film|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 in
film|1974) for which he received his only Academy
Award nomination in the category of Academy Award
for Best Supporting Actor|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 Helen Hayes in
a well-received television film, A Family Upside
Down, in which they play 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 (1978)|Battlestar Galactica
in 1979. His final film was the 1981 in film|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 in television|1961 and 1978 in
television|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 (nÊe Phyllis Livingston Baker,
1908-1954), a Boston-born New York socialite and
former wife of Eliphalet Nott Potter 3rd
(1906-1981). In addition to Phyllis's son
Eliphalet 4th, known as Peter, 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. 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==
   
* Dancing Lady (1933)
* Flying Down to Rio (1933)
* The Gay Divorcee (1934)
* Roberta (1935)
* Top Hat (1935)
* Follow the Fleet (1936)
* Swing Time (1936)
* Shall We Dance (1937)
* A Damsel in Distress (1937)
* Carefree (1938)
* The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)
* Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940)
* Second Chorus (1940)
* You'll Never Get Rich (1941)
* Holiday Inn (1942)
* You Were Never Lovelier (1942)
* The Sky's the Limit (1943)
* Yolanda and the Thief (1945)
* Ziegfeld Follies (1946)
* Blue Skies (movie)|Blue Skies (1946)
* Easter Parade (1948)
* The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
* Three Little Words (1950)
* Let's Dance (1950)
* Royal Wedding (1951)
* The Belle of New York (1952)
* The Band Wagon (1953)
* Daddy Long Legs (1955)
* Funny Face (1957)
* Silk Stockings (1957)
* On the Beach (1959)
* The Pleasure of His Company (1961)
* The Notorious Landlady (1962)
* Paris - When it Sizzles (1964)
* Finian's Rainbow (1968)
* Midas Run (1969)
* Imagine (1973) (documentary)
* Just One More Time (1974) (short subject)
* That's Entertainment! (1974)
* The Towering Inferno (1974)
* The Lion Roars Again (1975) (short subject)
* That's Entertainment, Part II (1976)
* The Amazing Dobermans (1976)
* The Purple Taxi (1977)
* Ghost Story (film)|Ghost Story (1981)
* George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1985)
(documentary)
Forty-seven films in total

==External link==
*imdb name | id=0000001 | name=Fred Astaire

lived|b=1899|d=1987|key=Astaire, Fred