In Ziegfeld Follies ( 1946 ) – which was produced in 1944 but not released until 1946 – Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire – for whom he had the greatest admiration – in the famous " The Babbitt and the Bromide " challenge dance routine.

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.

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.

Paramount Pictures ' Bob Hope was Caught In The Draft, Warner Brothers told Phil Silvers and Jimmy Durante You're In The Army Now, Columbia Pictures put Fred Astaire in the army declaring You'll Never Get Rich, Hal Roach gave his new comedy team of William Tracy and Joe Sawyer Tanks a Million and 20th Century Fox had the former Hal Roach team of Laurel & Hardy going Great Guns.

For " Top Hat, White Tie and Tails ", probably Astaire's most celebrated tap solo, the idea for the title song came from Astaire who described to Berlin a routine he had created for the 1930 Ziegfeld Broadway flop Smiles called " Say, Young Man of Manattan ," in which he gunned down a chorus of men – which included teenagers Bob Hope and Larry Adler – with his cane.

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.

According to Astaire, when they were first teamed together in Flying Down to Rio, " Ginger had never danced with a partner before.

" Astaire also had this to say to Raymond Rohauer, curator at the New York Gallery of Modern Art: " Ginger was brilliantly effective.

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

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.

" According to Astaire, " Ginger had never danced with a partner before Down to Rio ".

His next partner, Lucille Bremer, was featured in two lavish vehicles, both directed by Vincente Minnelli: the fantasy Yolanda and the Thief, which featured an avant-garde surrealistic ballet, and the musical revue Ziegfeld Follies ( 1946 ), which featured a memorable teaming of Astaire with Gene Kelly to " The Babbit and the Bromide ," a Gershwin song Astaire had introduced with his sister Adele back in 1927.

Astaire personally won the Emmy for Best Single Performance by an Actor but the choice had a controversial backlash because many felt that his dancing in the special was not the type of " acting " the award was designed for.

The Annenberg Estate or Sunnylands, owned by philanthropists Walter and Leonore Annenberg, had long been popular with the wealthy and powerful, including Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Queen Elizabeth II, and Mary Martin.

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

The title selection was accompanied by a video directed by Stanley Donen, which drew inspiration from Royal Wedding, a 1951 Fred Astaire film Donen had directed.

Powell worked side by side with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding ( 1951 ), when she was brought in to replace June Allyson, who had become pregnant, and then Judy Garland, who dropped out due to illness.

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.

She returned in triumph to Columbia Pictures and was cast in the musical You'll Never Get Rich ( 1941 ) opposite Fred Astaire, in one of the highest-budgeted films Columbia had ever made.

( Fred Astaire and Morton DaCosta had already declined.

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 ".

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.

As Horton leaves to investigate, Astaire continues to hammer his way around the suite, during which he feigns horror at seeing his image in a mirror – a reference to his belief that the camera was never kind to his face.

For her part, Rogers described Astaire's uncompromising standards extending to the whole production, " Sometimes he'll think of a new line of dialogue or a new angle for the story ... they never know what time of night he'll call up and start ranting enthusiastically about a fresh idea ... No loafing on the job on an Astaire picture, and no cutting corners.

" As Astaire himself observed, " I've never yet got anything 100 % right.

Politically, Astaire was a conservative and a lifelong Republican Party supporter, though he never made his political views publicly known.

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.

Although he was labeled " box office poison " in 1938 by an exhibitor publication ( he shared this dubious distinction with Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Fred Astaire and Katharine Hepburn ), he never lacked for work.

* Michel Lucas aka " Tango " ( played by Laurent Piemontesi ), according to the chief of police " the banlieue's Fred Astaire ", who works as a metalworker and never misses a chance to pull an elegant stunt

Hollywood sometimes built elaborate funhouse sets with devices never seen in a real funhouse, as in the 1937 Fred Astaire musical, A Damsel in Distress, and the 1939 Joe E. Brown film, Beware Spooks !.

whereas Astaire and Pan never used such diagrams in their work.

Whitney met Fred Astaire in New York while the former was a student at Yale University and they became lifelong friends, sharing a passion for horse racing.

He met Fred Astaire, whom he physically resembled, on the set of Flying Down to Rio ( 1933 ), in which he worked as an assistant to dance director Dave Gould.

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

Of his experience with Astaire in Top Hat Berlin wrote: " He's a real inspiration for a writer.

With Fred Astaire dancing and singing Irving Berlin tunes!

" 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.

Easter Parade is a 1948 American musical film starring Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, featuring music by Irving Berlin, including some of Astaire and Garland's best-known songs, such as " Steppin ' Out With My Baby " and " We're a Couple of Swells.

Astaire soon lashes out with a swirling tap step and the chorus responds timidly before leaving the stage in a sequence of overlapping, direction-shifting, hitch steps and walks.

With the music reaching its grand climax Astaire and Rogers rush toward the camera, then away in a series of bold, dramatic manoeuvers culminating in three ballroom lifts which showcase Rogers ' dress before abruptly coming to a halt in a final, deepest backbend, maintained as the music approaches its closing bars.

Rogers, having conducted the dance in a state of dreamlike abandon now glances uneasily at Astaire before walking away, as if reminded that their relationship cannot proceed.

" 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.

In 1986, shortly before his death, Astaire remarked, " All the girls I ever danced with thought they couldn't do it, but of course they could.

Both before and immediately after her dancing and acting partnership with Fred Astaire ended, Rogers starred in a number of successful dramas and comedies.

Her last big-screen appearance came in the spectacular disaster film The Towering Inferno ( 1974 ), in which she danced with Fred Astaire before a fire threatened partygoers in a new San Francisco skyscraper who were celebrating its official opening as tallest building in the world.

* " Bojangles of Harlem ": Once again, Kern, Bennett and Borne combined their talents to produce a jaunty instrumental piece ideally suited to Astaire, who here-while overtly paying tribute to Bill Robinson-actually broadens his tribute to African-American tap dancers by dancing in the style of Astaire's one-time teacher John W. Bubbles, and dressing in the style of the character Sportin ' Life, whom Bubbles played the year before in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

Here the music switches again to a frantic, fast-paced, recapitulation of " Never Gonna Dance " as the pair dance a last, desperate, and virtuosic routine before Ginger flees and Astaire repeats his pose of dejection, in a final acceptance of the affair's end.

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.

The idea occurred to Astaire years before and was first mentioned by him in the MGM publicity publication Lion's Roar in 1945.