In our celebrity-saturated era, it''s hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mid-1920s, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin''s music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatrical career together, Kathleen Riley traces the Astaires'' rise to fame from humble midwestern origins and early days as child performers on small-time vaudeville stages (where Fred, fatefully, first donned top hat and tails) to their 1917 debut on Broadway to star billings on both sides of the Atlantic. They became ambassadors of an art form they helped to revolutionize, adored by audiences, feted by royalty, and courted socially by elites everywhere they went. From the start, Adele was the more natural performer, spontaneous, funny, and self-possessed, while Fred had to hone his trademark timing and elegance through endless hours of rehearsal, a disciplined regimen that Adele loathed. Ultimately, Fred''s dancing expertise surpassed his sister''s, and their paths diverged: Adele married into British aristocracy, and Fred headed for Hollywood. The Astaires examines in depth the extraordinary story of this great brother-sister team, with full attention to its historical and theatrical context. It is not merely an account of the first part of Fred''s long and illustrious career but one with its own significance. Born at the close of the 1800s, Fred and Adele grew up together with the new century, and when they reached superstardom during the interwar years, they shone as an affirmation of life and hope amid a prevailing crisis of faith and identity.
So much has been written about the great films of Fred and Ginger, and those of Fred himself, but little on his long and arduous rise to fame, with, and usually tagging behind, his sister, Adele...of whom most know so little. The reason cited by this author, is because we literally have none of their dancing on film. The book is a serious attempt to redress this vacancy.This partial bio that takes us from the birth of Adele and Fred, to the moment of that fortuitous partnership of Astaire and Rogers. There ..
Fred Astaire is permanently recorded in our collective consciousness only because his electrifying dance routines were cinematically preserved. Delving just a little below that celluloid image immediately reveals a biographical surprise: before Astaire and Rogers there was Astaire and Astaire -- Fred and his sister Adele -- a pair who rose together through the ranks of American vaudeville to become mega-stars on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1920s and 1930s. The study of Fred and Adele Astaire is a..
If you grew up watching Fred Astaire dancing in those early black and white musicals as I did, then this is a book for you to learn about his sister Adele. I had no idea that Fred and Adele Astaire were so enormously popular as a stage act in both London and New York prior to Adele's retirement and Fred's film career. She was apparently the anchor in the stage act, much as Grace Allen was for George Burns. The author's liberal use of reviews from the stage era of the Astaires' act bring alive what it must h..
