Celebrity Name : Fred Astaire

Celebrity Real Name : Frederick Austerlitz

Date of Birth :

Birth Location :

Biography of Frederick Austerlitz :
Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987), born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of seventy-six years, during which he made thirty-one musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films which revolutionized the genre.
Balanchine and Nureyev rated him the greatest dancer of the 20th century, and he is generally acknowledged to have been the most influential dancer in the history of filmed and televised musicals. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

Early life and career :
His father was an Austrian immigrant and a Catholic; his mother was born in the U.S. to Lutheran German parents; Astaire became an Episcopalian in 1912.
Astaire was a name taken by him and his sister Adele Astaire for their vaudeville act in 1905. Family legend attributes it to an uncle surnamed “L’Astaire”. Their vaudeville career continued, with mixed fortunes and some interruptions due to the actions of the Gerry Society, until they broke into Broadway with Over The Top in 1917. Many sources state that the Astaire siblings appeared in a 1915 film entitled Fanchon, the Cricket, starring Mary Pickford, but this is uncorroborated. Fred Astaire first met George Gershwin, who was working as a song plugger in Jerome H. Remick’s, in 1916 and struck up a close friendship which was to have profound consequences for the subsequent careers of both artists.
During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway and on the London stage in shows such as Lady Be Good, Funny Face and The Band Wagon, winning popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic. As a team they made a few recordings. They split in 1932, when Adele married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of the Duke of Devonshire. Fred went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce, while considering offers from Hollywood.

Trivia :
Fred Astaire is biographical entry number at the Internet Movie Database.
Astaire made headlines again at age 78 when hospitalized after breaking his left wrist while riding his grandson’s skateboard, and was awarded life membership of the National Skateboard Society. At the time he remarked: “Gene Kelly warned me not to be a damned fool, but I’d seen the things those kids got up to on television doing all sorts of tricks. What a routine I could have worked up for a film sequence if they had existed a few years ago. Anyway I was practising in my drive-way.” [wikipedia]