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.

During his retirement years he remained friends with Fred Astaire and also became friends with the Reverend Billy Graham.

In the " Opening Sequence ", after the RKO logo appears, Astaire, shown only from the waist down, dances onto a polished stage floor, backed by a male chorus sporting canes.

" Irving Berlin considered Astaire the equal of any male interpreter of his songs —" as good as Jolson, Crosby or Sinatra, not necessarily because of his voice, but for his conception of projecting a song.

She and famous fashion photographer Dick Avery ( Fred Astaire ) want models who can " think as well as they look.

As a film actress, Thompson played fashion editor Maggie Prescott in the musical Funny Face ( 1957 ), which starred Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.

Although the dance routines were choreographed by Astaire and his collaborator Hermes Pan, both have acknowledged Rogers's input and have also testified to her consummate professionalism, even during periods of intense strain, as she tried to juggle her many other contractual film commitments with the punishing rehearsal schedules of Astaire, who made at most two films in any one year.

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.

At one point Astaire even offered to return the award, but the Television Academy refused to consider it.

The liner notes for Alone explain that the chorus, in its most primitive form, originally was sung as: " Oo-wee-oo you look just like Ginger Rogers / Oh, oh, I move just like Fred Astaire ," the rest of the chorus the way it appears even in the Blue Album version.

Cohn even wanted to cast Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, and Rita Hayworth and have them perform in blackface, something that the Gershwin estate was violently opposed to.

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.

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 continued to act into the 1970s, appearing on television as the father of Robert Wagner's character of Alexander Mundy in It Takes a Thief and in films such as The Towering Inferno ( 1974 ), in which he danced with Jennifer Jones and for which he received his only Academy Award nomination, in the category of Best Supporting Actor.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Astaire Story later won the Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999, a special Grammy award to honor recordings that are at least twenty-five years old and that have " qualitative or historical significance.

They went on to co-write the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Carefree a few months later.

Much later, it was reprised in the ballet " Limehouse Blues " featuring Fred Astaire and Lucille Bremer in the musical film Ziegfeld Follies ( 1946 ).

Here, Astaire conveys a sunny yet nostalgic romanticism but later, when the music is danced to as part of " Never Gonna Dance ", the pair will create a mood of sombre poignancy.

The dance is a nostalgic celebration of love, in the form of a syncopated waltz with tap overlays-a concept Astaire later reworked in the similarly impressive " Belle of New York " segment of the " Currier and Ives " routine from The Belle of New York ( 1952 ).

*" Begin the Beguine "-words and music by Cole Porter, sung first in an operatic style by Lois Hodnott ( who was also used to dub the vocals for screwball soprano Carmen D ' Antonio in the comedy audition sequence Il Bacio in the middle of the movie ) and later in a jazz style by The Music Maids, danced by Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, including a lengthy passage in which they tap dance with no musical accompaniment.

Gehry originally named the house as Fred and Ginger ( after the famous dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers – the house resembles a pair of dancers ) but this nickname is now very rarely used ; moreover, Gehry himself was later " afraid to import American Hollywood kitsch to Prague ", so refused his own idea.

Hayworth, a talented and sensual dancer of astonishing natural grace and beauty, cooperated enthusiastically with Astaire's intense rehearsal habits, and was later to remark: " I guess the only jewels in my life are the pictures I made with Fred Astaire ".