" routine: " shows Astaire dressed in the style he would make famous: soft-shouldered tweed sports jacket, button-down shirt, bold striped tie, easy-cut gray flannels, silk paisley pocket square, and suede shoes.

Astaire received a percentage of the films ' profits, something extremely rare in actors ' contracts at that time ; and complete autonomy over how the dances would be presented, allowing him to revolutionize dance on film.

Typically, an Astaire picture would include a solo performance by Astaire — which he termed his " sock solo "— a partnered comedy dance routine, and a partnered romantic dance routine.

When time approached for the shooting of a number, Astaire would rehearse for another two weeks and record the singing and music.

Le Mesurier became friends with Astaire during the filming and the two would dine together in a local cafe while watching the horse racing on television.

This is likely the only Astaire performance to have imperfections, as it was live, and Levant would repeatedly change the tempo of his accompaniment to Astaire's singing during the bridges between verses, which appeared to get him quite off balance at first.

It was on these days he would date younger women, while Loos consoled herself by entertaining her friends: the Talmadge sisters, Mama Peg Talmadge, Marion Davies, Marilyn Miller, Adele Astaire and an assortment of chorus girls kept by prominent men.

Powell would go on to star opposite many of the decade's top leading men, including James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Fred Astaire, George Murphy, Nelson Eddy, and Robert Young.

He dreamed of starring in movie musicals and would go to the movie theater to see Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in some of his favorite of their films including Easter Parade, Royal Wedding, On the Town and Summer Stock.

" Then he added, " Honestly, if I had to name the best dancer, it would be Fred Astaire.

Astaire did not retire from dancing completely.

Kaye starred in several movies with actress Virginia Mayo in the 1940s, and is well known for his roles in films such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty ( 1947 ), The Inspector General ( 1949 ), On the Riviera ( 1951 ) co-starring Gene Tierney, Knock on Wood ( 1954 ), White Christmas ( 1954, in a role originally intended for Fred Astaire, then Donald O ' Connor ), The Court Jester ( 1956 ), and Merry Andrew ( 1958 ).

In this number Astaire had to compromise on his one-take philosophy, as Sandrich acknowledged: " We went to huge lengths to make the ' Top Hat ' number look like one take, but actually it's several.

They followed up with several more shows, and of their work in The Passing Show of 1918 Heywood Broun wrote: " In an evening in which there was an abundance of good dancing, Fred Astaire stood out ...

They adopted the more American sounding name ' Astaire ' after trying several variations on the original family surname.

At the suggestion of Roddy McDowall, Astaire donated her papers and memorabilia — amounting to several trunks of material — to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

He went on in the late 1930s to direct several Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies, not only with the two actors together, but on their own.

Prominent owners of Facel Vegas included Pablo Picasso, Ava Gardner, Ringo Starr, Joan Fontaine, Stirling Moss, Tony Curtis, Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Maurice Trintignant, Brian Rix and several Saudi princes.

It is the resting place for several movie stars such as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gloria Grahame and Stephen Boyd.

Some of his noteworthy films include The Front Page ( 1931 ), Trouble in Paradise ( 1932 ), Alice in Wonderland ( 1933 ), The Gay Divorcee ( 1934 ), Top Hat ( 1935, one of several Astaire / Rogers films in which Horton appeared ), Danger-Love at Work ( 1937 ), Lost Horizon ( 1937 ), Holiday ( 1938 ), Here Comes Mr. Jordan ( 1941 ), Arsenic and Old Lace ( 1944 ), Pocketful of Miracles ( 1961 ), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World ( 1963 ).

He continued to work on Broadway and the West End and took roles in several Hollywood musicals, including The Band Wagon ( 1953 ), his best-known film, in which he plays camp theatre director Jeffrey Cordova opposite Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.

He suffered from spinal arthritis, though this didn't stop him from performing several dance numbers with Astaire in Band Wagon.

Fred Asataire, after several hosting assignments, made a NBC Fred Astaire Special in 1968.

The company produced several variety and dramatic television specials such as the Fred Astaire specials, Henry Fonda and the Family, An Evening with Carol Channing and The Scene ' 66, to name a few.

The film was highlighted by several newly-filmed musical numbers featuring Astaire and Kelly, including a couple of routines in which they danced together for the first time since the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies, and for only the second time in their careers.

Choreographer Nick Castle collaborated with Astaire on several of the numbers.

Early tappers like Fred Astaire provided a more ballroom look to tap dancing, while Gene Kelly used his extensive ballet training to make tap dancing incorporate all the parts of the ballet.

There ensued a lifelong friendship with Berlin contributing to more Astaire films ( six in total ) than any other composer.

From 1941 to 1947, the USO presented more than 400, 000 performances, featuring entertainers such as Bing Crosby, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Hattie McDaniel, Eubie Blake, Ann Sheridan, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, Larry Adler, Ossy Renardy, Zero Mostel, James Cagney, James Stewart, Gary Cooper, Doraine and Ellis, Lena Horne, Danny Kaye, The Rockettes, Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Curly Joe DeRita, The Andrews Sisters, Joe E. Brown, Joe E. Lewis, Ray Bolger, Lucille Ball, Glenn Miller, Martha Raye, Mickey Rooney, Betty Hutton, Dinah Shore, and most famously, Bob Hope.

Blore, in his role as an English butler, appeared more frequently than any other supporting player in the series of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO Radio Pictures, five of ten.

Others who appeared on the show over the years include Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Meredith, Sam Sheppard, Mother Teresa, Jerry Rubin, Angela Davis, Madelyn Murray O ' Hair, Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Gene Kelly, Gene Tierney, Lucille Ball, Vivian Vance, Mark Hamill, Ginger Rogers, Ricardo Montalban, Howard Keel, Celeste Holm, Dorothy Lamour, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Natalie Wood, Joan Crawford, Cliff Robertson, Peter Lawford, Nanette Fabray, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Lee Marvin, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Carrie Fisher, Robert Wagner, Diahann Carroll, George Hamilton, Victor Buono, Peter Ustinov, Tammy Grimes, Valerie Harper, Richard Dreyfuss, John Travolta, Louis Armstrong, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, Sammy Davis, Jr., Harrison Ford, Eydie Gorme, Jack Jones, Harry Belafonte, Liza Minnelli, Paul Anka, Robert Goulet, Carol Lawrence, Edie Adams, Debbie Reynolds, Gwen Verdon, Connie Francis, Olivia Newton-John, Ben Vereen, Joey Heatherton, Frankie Laine, Eartha Kitt, Sergio Mendes, Buddy Rich, Jerry Vale, Lola Falana, Frankie Valli, Pearl Bailey, Lou Rawls, Yank Barry, Tina Turner, Tom Waits, Eddy Arnold, Johnny Cash, Roy Clark, Kenny Rogers, Ray Stevens, Janis Ian, Bernie Taupin, Ian Anderson, Marcel Marceau, Muhammad Ali, Howard Cosell, Joe Namath, Mason Reese, Ralph Nader, Rex Reed, Martha Mitchell, Victor Borge, Kreskin, Imogene Coca, Phyllis Diller, Fannie Flagg, Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers, Elayne Boosler, Milton Berle, George Burns, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Alan King, Bill Cosby, Henny Youngman, Jack Carter, Redd Foxx, Rodney Dangerfield, Jan Murray, Shecky Greene, Buddy Hacket, Joey Bishop, Red Skelton, Steve Allen, Dan Rowan, Dick Martin, George Schindler, Marty Allen, Robert Klein, George Carlin, Sandy Baron, Artie Johnson, Frank Gorshin, Soupy Sales, Jonathan Winters, Charlie Callas, Norm Crosby, Rip Taylor, Foster Brooks, Irwin Corey, Leonard Barr, Pat Cooper, Rich Little, Stan Kann, Steve Landesberg, Andy Kaufman, Jimmie Walker, Jay Leno, Moe Howard of The Three Stooges, Gloria Parker with her Musical Glasses, Ruth Dickson, Jimmy Edmonson ( better known as " Professor Backwards " who appeared more times than any other guest ).

Among those receiving such special treatment ( some more than once ) were Groucho Marx, Laurence Olivier, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn ( without an audience ), Bette Davis, Orson Welles, Noël Coward ( who appeared on the same show along with Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Tammy Grimes, and Brian Bedford ), John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Astaire, Woody Allen, Gloria Swanson, Jerry Lewis, Lucille Ball, Zero Mostel (" on some shows I've had just one guest, but tonight I have Zero ") and David Bowie.

He greatly admired Fred Astaire, describing him as " the most interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our times ... you see a little bit of Astaire in everybody's dancing —- a pause here, a move there.

* " A Fine Romance ": Kern's third standard, a quickstep to Field's bittersweet lyrics, is sung alternately by Rogers and Astaire, with Rogers providing an object lesson in acting while a bowler-hatted Astaire appears at times to be impersonating Stan Laurel.

This final routine was shot forty-seven times in one day before Astaire was satisfied, with Rogers ' feet left bruised and bleeding by the time they finished.

" Night and Day " has been recorded many times, notably by Fred Astaire, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey, Ringo Starr, Sondre Lerche, Doris Day, Deanna Durbin, Jamie Cullum, Etta James, and U2.

The song is performed a couple of times in the film by Fred Astaire, Jack Buchanan, Nanette Fabray, Oscar Levant, and India Adams ( singing for Cyd Charisse ).

MGM stars included at various times " King of Hollywood " Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Gary Cooper, Mary Pickford, Henry Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Ava Gardner, James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Grace Kelly, Gene Kelly, Gloria Stuart, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck, John Barrymore, Audrey Hepburn and Buster Keaton.

* Likenesses of Astaire and Rogers, apparently painted over from the Cheek to Cheek dance in Top Hat, are in the " Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds " section of The Beatles film Yellow Submarine ( 1968 ).

This is the only time Rogers took billing over Astaire.

During the course of filming the series in 1969 Le Mesurier was flown to Venice over a series of weekends for filming Midas Run, an Alf Kjellin-directed crime film that also starred Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood and Fred Astaire.

The first dancer featured on film as a partner of both the stars Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Hayworth appeared in a total of 61 films over 37 years.

This alludes to the song " Pick Yourself Up " from the 1936 film Swing Time, for which Jerome Kern had written the music, in which Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire sang Fields's words " Pick yourself up ; dust yourself off ; start all over again ".

The film is jokingly regarded as the first ( and only ) M-G-M musical made at Paramount Studios since Roger Edens was the producer, Stanley Donen was the director, and quite a few of the staff members under the Arthur Freed Unit at Metro ( including Adolph Deutsch, Conrad Salinger, and Skip Martin ), along with Astaire and Kay Thompson, were brought over to Paramount to make this film.

He received top billing over Pat O ' Brien in the TV-movie The Over-the-Hill Gang in 1969 and Fred Astaire in The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again the following year.

In 1957, she rejoined Astaire in the film version of Silk Stockings, a musical remake of 1939's Ninotchka, with Charisse taking over Greta Garbo's role.

Matthew Bourne has twice been nominated as Best Director at the Olivier Awards, and his achievements in choreography have been recognised with over 30 international awards, including the Evening Standard Award, The South Bank Show Award, Time Out Award and the Astaire Award for Dance on Broadway.

In one of these, a succession of men ( ranging from Lennon and Ono's assistants to celebrities including Fred Astaire, Jack Palance, Dick Cavett, and even George Harrison ) escort Ono over and over through a doorway ; in another, John and Yoko lose each other on the Tittenhurst grounds, and go looking.

While Astaire was trying to work out a series of steps for " The Carioca " number, it was suggested to him that Pan had a few ideas and Pan was invited over.

The young director Francis Ford Coppola had no prior experience with musical films, and proceeded to ride roughshod over Astaire and Pan's plans for the film's dance routines, reintroducing the style of dancing camera of the early 1930s which Astaire had done so much to banish from the Hollywood musical.

Sung by Astaire with a short solo dance by Cyd Charisse, followed by Lucille Ball cracking a whip over eight chorus-girl panthers, and finally Virginia O ' Brien spoofs the previous scene by singing " Bring on those Wonderful Men "