#fred and adele

[fayegonnaslay]

Fred and Adèle Astaire by Cecil Beaton, 1930.

[semioticapocalypse]

Cecil Beaton. Adele and Fred Astaire. 1929

Follow my new AI-related project «Collective memories»

[clarulitas]

The Astaire gesture drawing study 2024

[citizenscreen]

Adele Astaire and Fred Astaire in the stage production “Lady, Be Good!”, which opened on Broadway in 1924.

[vintage-every-day]

Ca. 1908: Fred Astaire with his sister Adele at about ages 9 and 10, respectively.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Two great pairs of stage partners meet: Fred and Adele Astaire, then starring in Funny Face, call at the Guild Theater to greet Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, December 8, 1927. Lunt led the cast of Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma. Others in the cast included Morris Carnovsky, Dudley Digges, Margalo Gilmore, and Sanford Meisner.

Photo: Associated Press

[1talapia-007]

[kafkasapartment]

Adele and Fred Astaire, c.1920. James Abbe. Gelatin silver print.

[justice-for-jacob-marley]

The main male cast of my AU, plus the all-important three ghosts.

[seventh-victim]

images of Fred Astaire with his sister, Adele 1921 (photos: James Abbe)

[wolfstarlights]

So I had this class about a specific niche of Hollywood history this year and my main take-away from it is that Bolin’s arc in TLoK s2 is 100% inspired by Fred Astaire.

A sibling duo who rose to fame together but the older one leaves the industry so the younger one has to adjust and find his own path? Check.

Starts a career as an actor in black and white films that already have audio? Check.

Gets paired with an actress called Ginger and together they rise to new heights of fame/success? Check.

Anyway, I guess this is my contribution to the fandom. Do with it what you will.

[clarulitas]

Signed picture of Fred and Adele Astaire, c. early 1920s [x]

[citizenscreen]

Adele and Fred Astaire in the London production of "Lady Be Good" (January 1926)

[aslightlydifferentchristmascarol]

Fred: Uncle Scrooge, you have to go out there, face that mob and apologize for what you did. Scrooge: I would, but I'm afraid if I open the door, they'll take all of you! Townsperson: No, we won't. We just want Scrooge! Scrooge: Well, maybe not you, but they'll kill Marley! Marley: I'm part of the mob!

[corallapis]

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Vol. 1), 1918-38, entry for 29th June 1923

— Friday 29th June Lunched at Lady Cunard’s. The usual potpourri and brilliant chat. She told Lord Balfour he was like God and ‘yet so Christ-like’! Dined with Michael Horby¹ at Shelley House² and we went to Stop Flirting, the popular revue in which two charming little people, Americans, called Fred and Adele Astaire, are the stars.³ Later a most lovely ball at Someries House⁴ ... Lady Zia Wernher’s.⁵ It was successful indeed and starts a new era in entertaining .... I was presented to a tallish gentleman, the Crown Prince of Sweden⁶ ... he is to marry the Lady Louise Mountbatten.⁷ It will be announced next week. What luck for her as she has only about £300 a year and is living in obscurity at Kensington Palace. The Mountbattens after being degraded during the war⁸ to the rank of mere marquises and earls are now much on the ascendant ... they are ever a lucky family, poverty-stricken, they specialise in brilliant marriages. I sat in the garden with Lady Desborough⁹ and found her witty and wily as ever ... does everyone realise, as I do, that she is the character of the age?

—

1. Michael Charles St John Hornby (1899-1987), son of St John Hornby, was the founding partner of WH Smith.

2. The Hornby family’s house in Chelsea.

3. Frederick Austerlitz (1899-1987), who took the name Fred Astaire, was an American actor, dancer and singer who achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s in a series of Hollywood musicals renowned for their dance routines; and his sister Adele Marie (1896-1981), with whom he began a vaudeville act as children as 1905, when they changed their name to Astaire. By 1923 they had a Broadway act, which they were touring in London.

4. A Crown State property rented by the Wernhers in Regent’s Park, designed by John Nash and damaged by bombing during the Second World War. It was demolished in 1958.

5. Countess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Torby (1892-1977), elder daughter of the Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia, and therefore a great-granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I. She married, in 1917, Harold Wernher (1893-1973), later 3rd Bt. She was granted the rank and precedence of an earl’s daughter after her marriage and stopped using her Russian title, being known as Lady Zia Wernher thereafter.

6. Oscar Fredrik Wilhelm Olaf Gustaf Adolf (1882-1973), from 1950 King Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden. He was the widower of Princess Margaret of Connaught (1882-1920), whom he had married in 1905; she was the cousin of King George V, and had died suddenly while eight months pregnant with her sixth child. 7. Louise Alexandra Marie Irene Mountbatten (1889-1965), previously Princess Louise of Battenberg, married the Crown Prince of Sweden (vide supra) in 1923, and was Queen Consort of Sweden from 1950. She was daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg, who became 1st Marquess of Milford Haven when renouncing the German titles in 1917. She had earlier turned down proposals from King Manuel II of Portugal and had been secretly engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece, who was unable to marry her because he had no money; a second engagement was to Stuart Hill, an artist, whom she met while nursing in the Great War and who turned out to be homosexual. 8. There was a protracted debate between Lloyd George, King George V and Lord Stamfordham, the King’s private secretary, in 1917 about the titles to be bestowed on German members of the King’s family who had pledged allegiance to him and had been prepared to forfeit their German ranks. The King was cautioned against granting too many titles and to avoid bestowing any dukedoms. The Mountbatten marquessate was a compromise and their rise would indeed be unstoppable, with the surname of members of the House of Windsor becoming Mountbatten-Windsor in 1960, thirteen years after the marriage of the future Queen Elizabeth II to Philip Mountbatten. 9. Ethel ‘Ettie’ Fane (1867-1952), married in 1887 William Henry Grenfell (1855-1945), 1st Baron Desborough, a former Liberal MP who had joined the Conservatives in 1893 over his disagreement with the second Home Rule Bill for Ireland. Their three sons (qqv) predeceased them, two killed in the Great War and a third in a car crash.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Fred and Adele Astaire arrive in New York on the SS Europa, March 4, 1931.

Photo: Associated Press via WXYZ