Throughout this period, Astaire continued to value the input of choreographic collaborators and, unlike the 1930s when he worked almost exclusively with Hermes Pan, he tapped the talents of other choreographers in an effort to continually innovate.

Cohn continued to showcase Hayworth's dance talents ; she was the first dancer featured on film to partner with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

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.

Pan continued to collaborate with Astaire right up until the latter's last musical picture, Finian's Rainbow ( 1968 ), which was a disaster on a number of fronts, not least for Pan himself.

Astaire later insisted that the report had actually read: " Can't act.

Astaire is referenced in the 2003 animated feature, The Triplets of Belleville, in which he is eaten by his shoes after a fast-paced dance act.

In 1905 Adele Astaire had a successful vaudeville act with her younger brother, Fred Astaire.

* No. 41: Fred Astaire, Adele Astaire, Brother-sister actor / dancing act leased a flat here, along with their mother, Ann Astaire when playing the West End production, ' Stop Flirting ,' in 1923.

But the dance act for the archives is The Babbitt and the Bromide Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly trade taps and double-takes to a photo finish.

Aside from the dancing-which contains a famous solo performance to the standard " One For My Baby ", described by Astaire as " the best song specially written for me " -- the script provided him with his first opportunity to act in a serious dramatic role, and one with which his acting abilities, sometimes disparaged, appear to cope.

It was a measure of his powers of persuasion that he managed to coax the 77-year-old Astaire – who had insisted that his contract rule out any dancing, having long since retired – into performing a series of song and dance duets, evoking a powerful nostalgia for the glory days of the American musical film.

" According to choreographer Hermes Pan, Astaire lost his temper and yelled at Rogers, who promptly burst into tears, whereupon her mother, Lela, " came charging at him like a mother rhinoceros protecting her young.

Astaire sings it through twice and during the last phrase leaps into a ballet jump, accompanied by leg beats, and launches into a short solo dance that builds in intensity and volume progressing from tap shuffles sur place, via traveling patterns, to rapid-fire heel jabs finishing with a carefree tour of the suite during which he beats on the furniture with his hands.

Astaire incorporates this into his routine, first startling him with a tap burst then escorting him ostentatiously to the telephone.

In the first part of the solo which follows, Astaire embarks on a circular tap movement, embellished with cane taps into which he mixes a series of unpredictable pauses.

The first backbends occur at the end of a sequence where Astaire sends Rogers into a spin, collects her upstage and maneuvers her into a linked-arm stroll forward, repeats the spin but this time encircles her while she turns and then takes her in his arms.

" The Piccolino ( reprise )": After the various parties confront each other in the bridal suite with Rogers ' marriage to Rhodes revealed as a fake, the scene is set for Astaire and Rogers to dance into the sunset, which they duly do, in this fragment of a much longer duet – the original was cut after the July 1935 previews – but not before they parade across the Venetian set and reprise the Piccolino step.

The career of the Astaire siblings resumed with mixed fortunes, though with increasing skill and polish, as they began to incorporate tap dancing into their routines.

Second, Astaire was adamant that all song and dance routines be seamlessly integrated into the plotlines of the film.

He made two pictures with Rita Hayworth, the daughter of his former vaudeville dance idols, the Cansinos: the first You'll Never Get Rich ( 1941 ) catapulted Hayworth to stardom and provided Astaire with his first opportunity to integrate Latin American dance idioms into his style, taking advantage of Hayworth's professional Latin dance pedigree.

Astaire remained a male fashion icon even into his later years, eschewing his trademark top hat, white tie and tails ( for which he never really cared ) in favor of a breezy casual style of tailored sports jackets, colored shirts, cravats and slacks — the latter usually held up by the idiosyncratic use of an old tie in place of a belt.

It has had four major revivals ( 1955, 1960 and 1967, 2009 ), and was also made into a film starring Fred Astaire and Petula Clark, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in 1968.

In 1939, the Castles ' life was turned into a movie, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, produced by RKO and starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Her previous dance training is also called into play, not only in the two dance numbers she performs with Astaire but also for a Bohemian-style solo dance in a nightclub, which has since often been replayed in retrospectives of her career.

Finian's Rainbow has had four major revivals ( 1955, 1960, 1967, and 2009 ), and was also made into a film starring Fred Astaire and Petula Clark, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in 1968.

The play was made into a 1935 film by RKO starring Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Randolph Scott.

Astaire introduces two new elements into his approach to filmed song and dance, both of which represent the abandonment of theatrical staging conventions.

It was made into a musical film by RKO Radio Pictures in 1934, starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and renamed The Gay Divorcee.

" That same night, Bubbles mentioned that Astaire had brought him into the rehearsal hall to work on " Bojangles of Harlem " and John's chops are right there in the number.

The picture was very successful at the box office, turning Hayworth into a major star, and provided a welcome boost to Astaire who felt his career had flagged since breaking with Ginger Rogers.

Dance director was Val Raset, the only time he collaborated with Astaire, and his choreographic input into the film is unclear.

What is not unusual is the selection of dance routines, which is the standard Astaire formula of a comic partnered routine, a romantic partnered routine and a " sock " solo, each of which is seamlessly integrated into the plot.

Other performers appearing at the Palace included Sarah Bernhardt, Al Jolson, Enrico Caruso, Helen Kane, Eddie Cantor, Frank Fay, Bob Hope, Sophie Tucker, George Jessel, Mae West, Vernon and Irene Castle, Gus Edwards, Eddie Leonard, Burns and Allen, Fred Astaire, Benny Fields, Kate Smith, Bill Robinson, Ethel Merman, Bing Crosby, Wheeler and Woolsey, Rudolph Valentino, and Jack Benny.

Also from the Homeless Brother album, " Wonderful Baby " was a number 1 on the AOR chart in 1975 and was later recorded by Fred Astaire.

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 ).

While Fred Astaire had revolutionized the filming of dance in the 1930s by insisting on full-figure photography of dancers while allowing only a modest degree of camera movement, Kelly freed up the camera, making greater use of space, camera movement, camera angles and editing, creating a partnership between dance movement and camera movement without sacrificing full-figure framing.

Astaire had never met Berlin before this film, although he had danced on stage to some of his tunes as early as 1915.

Due to the enormous labour involved in sewing each ostrich feather to the dress, Astaire — who normally approved his partner's gowns and suggested modifications if necessary during rehearsals — saw the dress for the first time on the day of the shoot, and was horrified at the way it shed clouds of feathers at every twist and turn, recalling later: " It was like a chicken attacked by a coyote, I never saw so many feathers in my life.

An additional night's work by seamstresses resolved much of the problem, however, careful examination of the dance on film reveals feathers floating around Astaire and Rogers and lying on the dance floor.

In " No Strings ( reprise )", Rogers, after storming upstairs to complain, returns to her room at which point Astaire, still intent on dancing, nominates himself her " sandman ", sprinkling sand from a cuspidor and lulling her, Horton and eventually himself to sleep with a soft and gentle sand dance, to a diminuendo reprise of the melody, in a scene which has drawn considerable admiration from dance commentators, and has been the subject of affectionate screen parodies.

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.

* In the film The Pleasure of His Company, Fred Astaire, acting as Biddeford ' Pogo ' Poole, mentions that his going to visit Brooke's grave on the Greek island of Skyros.

She went on to make a series of films with Fox, Warner Bros. (" Gold Diggers of 1933 "), Universal, Paramount, and RKO Radio Pictures and, in her second RKO picture, Flying Down to Rio ( 1933 ), she worked for the first time with Fred Astaire.

In later life, Rogers remained on good terms with Astaire: she presented him with a special Academy Award in 1950, and they were co-presenters of individual Academy Awards in 1967, during which they elicited a standing ovation when they came on stage in an impromptu dance.

This event, which was shown on television, was somewhat marred when Astaire's widow, Robyn Smith, who permitted clips of Astaire dancing with Rogers to be shown for free at the function itself, was unable to come to terms with CBS Television for broadcast rights to the clips ( all previous rights holders having donated broadcast rights gratis ).

Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that " the history of dance on film begins with Astaire ".

Astaire's mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by virtue of her children's talents, after Astaire's sister, Adele Astaire, early on revealed herself to be an instinctive dancer and singer.

Astaire was always on the lookout for new steps on the circuit and was starting to demonstrate his ceaseless quest for novelty and perfection.

Fred Astaire went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce, while considering offers from Hollywood.

According to Hollywood folklore, a screen test report on Astaire for RKO Radio Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: " Can't sing.

In any case, the test was clearly disappointing, and David O. Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, stated in a memo, " I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test.