LYCOS RETRIEVER
Fred Astaire
built 222 days ago
Fred Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz on May 10, 1899, in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents, Frederic E. and Ann Gelius Austerlitz, enrolled him in dancing school at age four to join his older sister Adele. The two Austerlitz children proved extraordinarily talented and the family moved to New York, where the children continued their training in singing, dancing, and acting. In 1905 Fred and Adele began performing in vaudeville. By 1917 they had changed their last name to Astaire and began performing in musicals. They appeared in successful productions on Broadway and in London, England, including the musical comedies Lady, Be Good in 1924, Funny Face in 1927, and a revue titled The Band Wagon in 1931.
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Synopsis: A lesser Fred Astaire effort, Belle of New York is set during the turn of the century. Astaire plays a footloose and fancy-free playboy who falls in love with Salvation Army lass Vera-Ellen. To prove his worth to the girl, Astaire breaks down and gets a job. Naturally, there's plenty ofRead More
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Fred Astaire guest stars as Chameleon, an intergalactic con artist on the run from the Boralean's Nomen henchmen. Hoping to find refuge on Galactica, Chameleon poses as Captain Dmitri--the long-lost father of Lt. Starbuck (Dirk Benedict). But others on board are doubtful of "Dmitri's" claims. . .and the Nomen are rapidly approaching. "The Man With Nine Lives" was later combined with the Battlestar Galactica episode "Baltar's Escape" and reissued as the two-hour "TV movie" Space Prison. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Dancer, actor, and singer Fred Astaire worked steadily in various entertainment media during nine decades of the 20th century. The most celebrated dancer in the history of film, with appearances in 31 movie musicals between 1933 and 1968 (and a special Academy Award in recognition of his accomplishments in them), Astaire ... danced on-stage and on television (garnering two Emmy Awards in the process), and he even treated listening audiences to his accomplished tap dancing on records and on his own radio series. He appeared in another eight non-musical feature films and on numerous television programs, resulting in an Academy Award nomination and a third Emmy Award as an actor. His light tenor voice and smooth, conversational phrasing made him an ideal interpreter for the major songwriters of his era, and he introduced dozens of pop standards, many of them written expressly for him, by such composers as Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Burton Lane, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Arthur Schwartz, Harry Warren, and Vincent Youmans. Although his efforts as a dancer necessarily overshadowed his purely musical work, he made hundreds of recordings over a period of more than 50 years, resulting in several major hits.
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