Adele Astaire

Adele Astaire, born Adele Marie Austerlitz on September 10, 1896, in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American dancer, stage actress, and singer whose Broadway career spanned from 1917 to 1931. Her parents were Johanna "Ann" Geilus, an American-born Lutheran of German descent, and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz, an Austrian-born Roman Catholic of Jewish descent. Her younger brother, Fred Austerlitz, was born three years after her.

Astaire demonstrated an early aptitude for dance and was enrolled in a local dance school, where she quickly distinguished herself. Her parents subsequently enrolled her younger brother Fred as well, partly to help him build physical strength. When Astaire was eight and Fred was five, a teacher suggested the two children might have a stage career with proper training, prompting the family to relocate from Omaha to New York. There the children attended the Alviene Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts. The siblings adopted the surname Astaire, choosing it over several variations of their original name Austerlitz, and their mother Ann took the new surname as well. In late 1905, with assistance from dance instructor Claude Alvienne, Astaire began a professional vaudeville act with Fred. Alvienne helped develop a routine built around two large, elaborate set pieces shaped like wedding cakes, with the siblings dressed as a miniature bride and groom, dancing up and down the structures and activating electric lights and musical bells with their feet. Their mother Ann served as their manager and costume designer, and the children received additional training from the ballet school of the Metropolitan Opera and from choreographer Ned Wayburn.

After a period during which Adele had grown considerably taller than her younger brother, making their pairing look awkward, the siblings paused their performance career for roughly two and a half years to attend regular school in New Jersey. They returned to the vaudeville circuit in 1911 but struggled to find steady work for the next couple of years, as agents were initially uninterested in representing the relatively unknown pair. In 1913, their father introduced them to Aurelio Coccia, an experienced dance instructor and showman who taught them several new dances and developed a more mature vaudeville routine for them, after which bookings became more frequent. In 1916, a workers' strike staged by the White Rats of America, a union of vaudeville performers, spread nationally and disrupted the industry. Although Astaire and her brother were not union members, they lost valuable income, and their father was simultaneously unable to offer financial support after state-wide prohibition in Nebraska shuttered the brewery where he worked. When the strike ended, the siblings returned to work and completed a highly successful season.

In 1917, after Fred purchased a full-page advertisement on the back cover of Variety, the siblings secured roles in their first Broadway production, Lee Shubert's Over the Top, which opened on November 28, 1917, and ran for 78 performances. The siblings received a weekly salary of $250 for their dance numbers and comedy skits, and a critic from The New York Globe noted that their dancing was "one of the prettiest features of the show." To prepare for the vocal demands of Broadway musicals, Astaire took voice lessons with Estelle Liebling, a voice teacher associated with the Metropolitan Opera and Broadway. Astaire and her brother subsequently appeared in The Passing Show of 1918, which ran for 125 performances and included an opening solo for Astaire, singing "I Really Can't Make My Feet Behave." In November 1919, the siblings appeared in the operetta Apple Blossoms, beginning a professional relationship with Broadway producer Charles Dillingham; the show ran for 256 performances, and their weekly salary had by then risen to $550.

Throughout the 1920s, Astaire became known as a skilled dancer and comedienne, starring in hit Broadway musicals including Lady, Be Good! in 1924 and Funny Face in 1927. She also appeared in the musical Smiles, and her Broadway career concluded with The Band Wagon in 1931. The siblings brought several of their more popular productions to Britain's West End during the 1920s, where they became international celebrities and met members of the British royal family as well as prominent figures from contemporary arts and literature circles.

The contrasting personalities of the siblings were well established by the time they reached Broadway. Astaire was lively, gregarious, and known for her directness and colorful language, while Fred was a quieter perfectionist who worried constantly about the details of their work. Astaire affectionately nicknamed her brother "Moaning Minnie" for his tendency to anticipate everything that could go wrong.

In 1932, after a 27-year performing partnership with her brother, Astaire retired from the stage to marry Lord Charles Cavendish, the second son of Victor Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire. The couple settled at the Cavendish estate of Lismore Castle in Ireland. Despite receiving offers of both stage and film roles, Astaire declined to return to performing. Following Cavendish's death in 1944, she remarried and moved back to the United States, subsequently dividing her time between properties in the United States, Round Hill in Jamaica, and Lismore Castle, where she continued to spend summers until the end of her life.

In 1972, Astaire was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame, and in 1975 she was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame List. She died on January 25, 1981.