The London critics pronounced themselves not so much charmed by the Astaires' performance as winded by it. There had, spluttered one, been "nothing like them since the Flood". It was Adele, though, who really shone. Her pixie quickness, boneless body and large, amusing face was the antithesis of blousy showgirl glamour.

Credited with putting "all the flap into flapperdom", Adele raced about the London stage like an exquisite hoyden, managing always to keep in strict rhythm. Acknowledged as the better dancer of the two, she instinctively produced effects that Fred had to practice in the wings. She had, too, an older-child confidence that allowed her to work the audience with a quick and dirty wit while her little brother stood bashfully by.

The Astaires: Fred & Adele by Kathleen Riley – review

Bisexuals, such as Prince George who saw the show scores of times, wanted both things at once, but had to be content with writing her long, infatuated letters. Over the next eight years the Astaires consolidated their position as theatre superstars, reproducing on Broadway the magic of their London debut. But then suddenly, in , it was over. In a move that neatly symbolised the way the pair had used their chic modernity to conquer the British establishment, Adele married Lord Charles Cavendish, younger son of the Duke of Devonshire and retired to Lismore Castle in Ireland.

Left to try Hollywood alone, Fred put down his elegantly-shod foot he had picked up a Savile Row habit in London about this whole business of being partnered with Ginger Rogers. His reluctance was to do with the fact that no one could ever match "Delly". The fact that the movie moguls insisted that their new signing would be partnered with Ginger whether he liked it or not speaks volumes about the industry's perception that without his sister, or someone a bit like her, Fred was nothing more than a goofy-looking, slightly sexless, already veteran vaudevillian.

In this sprightly book whose every sentence shines with the author's love of her dual subjects, Kathleen Riley writes Adele back into the story of her brother. A relationship that usually gets squashed into the first three or four chapters of a standard Fred Astaire biography is now given a whole book.


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This also allows Riley to explore in detail the rich bank of dance practice from which Fred's later work emerged. The Astaires together laid down a library of beats, taps and turns from which Fred would go on to make some of the most sublime physical art of the 20th century. The Astaires — or the Austerlitzes to give them their real name — have in the past been described as mid-Western and middle-class. Riley's careful foraging, however, reveals a family background far less corn-fed.

Their mother was a first-generation German while their father had been born in Vienna to a Jewish family that had pragmatically turned Catholic.

Fritz Austerlitz had fetched up in Omaha as a beer salesman, a job that fitted neatly with his growing alcoholism. Return to Book Page. Preview — The Astaires by Kathleen Riley. Before "Fred and Ginger," there was "Fred and Adele," a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other. In our celebrity-saturated era, it's hard to comprehend what a genuine phenomenon these two siblings from Omaha were. At the height of their success in the mids, the Astaires seemed to define the Jazz Age. They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fasc Before "Fred and Ginger," there was "Fred and Adele," a show-business partnership and cultural sensation like no other.

They were Gershwin's music in motion, a fascinating pair who wove spellbinding rhythms in song and dance. In this book, the first comprehensive study of their theatrical career together, Kathleen Riley traces the Astaires' rise to fame from humble midwestern origins and early days as child performers on small-time vaudeville stages where Fred, fatefully, first donned top hat and tails to their debut on Broadway to star billings on both sides of the Atlantic. They became ambassadors of an art form they helped to revolutionize, adored by audiences, feted by royalty, and courted socially by elites everywhere they went.

From the start, Adele was the more natural performer, spontaneous, funny, and self-possessed, while Fred had to hone his trademark timing and elegance through endless hours of rehearsal, a disciplined regimen that Adele loathed. Ultimately, Fred's dancing expertise surpassed his sister's, and their paths diverged: Adele married into British aristocracy, and Fred headed for Hollywood.

The Astaires examines in depth the extraordinary story of this great brother-sister team, with full attention to its historical and theatrical context. It is not merely an account of the first part of Fred's long and illustrious career but one with its own significance. Born at the close of the s, Fred and Adele grew up together with the new century, and when they reached superstardom during the interwar years, they shone as an affirmation of life and hope amid a prevailing crisis of faith and identity.

Hardcover , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Astaires , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Jul 22, GoldGato rated it really liked it Shelves: Most of us probably think Fred Astaire simply came into the world dancing.

That innate sense of elegance and rhythm which set him apart from the rest was earned the hard way, as a small child who accompanied his older sister, Adele, in vaudeville routines. It was Adele Astaire who was the star of the family and if it hadn't been for her retirement in order to marry English aristocracy, Fred Astaire may have never been a screen legend.

The Astaires revolutionized musical theatre. The vaudeville s Most of us probably think Fred Astaire simply came into the world dancing. The vaudeville sketch focus rolled into flashy set pieces which then became Fred and Adele maintaining a full book of song and story from start to finish. Adele was not the better dancer, but she had the ebullient personality which made her famous in London and New York. Little brother Fred was more concerned with dance and came into his own when the act matured. Gershwin and the Astaires were made for each other, filling that gap of post-WWI shell-shocked Europe with American enthusiasm and energy.

Adele retired from performing when she married Lord Charles Cavendish in The author takes a very these-are-the-facts approach to the siblings from birth to death. It was very illuminating as there are NO existing visual recordings of Fred and Adele performing, which is a shame. The aim of the book appears to be explaining just how charismatic Adele was and how she was the big star, not baby brother. Certainly a different biography, and of course, I went running to YouTube for some Astairia. Adele did not have the happiest of lives, though it didn't seem to diminish her zest for life.

Her husband died young from the effects of alcoholism and her children didn't survive long. During WWII, she went to London to help, while her mother cared for Cavendish in the lonely Irish castle, where he died a lonely death none of his Devonshire family came to his funeral. Such are the facts that were interesting to learn and kept me absorbed in the book.

Scott Fitzgerald defined a particular American quality as a "willingness of the heart". Perhaps this best describes Fred and Adele Astaire and the impact they brought to music. View all 3 comments. Mar 16, Kathryn rated it liked it Shelves: Fred Astaire is permanently recorded in our collective consciousness only because his electrifying dance routines were cinematically preserved. Delving just a little below that celluloid image immediately reveals a biographical surprise: The study of Fred and Adele Fred Astaire is permanently recorded in our collective consciousness only because his electrifying dance routines were cinematically preserved.

The study of Fred and Adele Astaire is an important in the history of pop culture, not only because it helps us understand Fred, the film star, but also because the team of Astaire and Astaire was an absolute phenomenon in its day.

Fred & Adele Astaire -- Fascinating Rhythm, 1926/Gershwin on Piano

Not one moment of their wildly successful partnership was preserved on film and here is the irony of Astaire and Astaire: Her narrative traces their Midwestern origins all the way to the end of their lives, painting a detailed picture of everything in between: When Riley sticks to narration, the story of the Astaire siblings is told in a lovely, thorough, and relatively clear manner but when she steps forward and attempts to elucidate, she utilizes a puzzling style, quoting entire poems in a highly non-sequitur fashion and utilizing phrases such as: While the book was published by a university press, arguably giving Riley an automatic green light for her questionable style, a compelling argument for something a bit less elaborate for this particular subject is that Fred Astaire is universally loved, hence his biography belongs to the world, not only to those who believe poetry can be used to explain anything and who enjoy communicating with densely ornamental language.

However, when Riley lets the facts — especially contemporary testimony — speak without interruption, one can almost catch a glimpse of the magic that was once this pair of brilliantly talented siblings and for that reason, "The Astaires" is an important addition to the canon of pop culture history. A version of this review also appears at www. Jan 28, Julie Barrett rated it liked it Shelves: Once engaged, Charles sailed back first to England, to prepare for the wedding.

Adele followed a few months later and arrived alone to the great family estate of Chatsworth. When she was introduced, the heavy doors at the far end of the library opened and there stood this tiny girl, beautifully dressed. We waited for her to approach but instead of walking towards us, she suddenly began turning cartwheels and ended up in front of us. I've read a fair amount of books set in that period and rather frequently Adele is mentioned in passing.

Apparently everyone loved her. He said she'd be a perfect Pan. Sadly she could not get out of her contract with another producer. PJ Wodehouse also wanted her to star in a play of his. Prince George Queen Elizabeth's uncle was obsessed with Adele for years. George Bernard Shaw was another big fan of hers. The top critics in America and Europe raved over Adele, writing gushing reviews about her. Now Adele is barely known, a footnote in the history of theater, but prior to her retirement in the early 's she was a famous star and everyone knew her.

The hardest part for the author of this book is having to try to impart just how brilliant and adored Adele was. There is no record of her dancing - she was never filmed.

Fred And Adele Astaire | The Stars | Broadway: The American Musical | PBS

It's Fred that, thanks to the movies, has been remembered as a world renowned dancer. There are only so many rhapsodic reviews one can quote in an attempt to portray the brilliance of a performance. I wish the book had given more details about Adele's life after retirement, but of course, that is not the focus of the book - the partnership between the siblings is. Even after leaving the stage, Adele had a fascinating life. Her marriage ended up being rather tragic - giving birth to three children who all died within days of birth.

The Astaires

Her husband's severe alcoholism had him in and out of hospitals and sanitariums, culminating in his early death at the age of She remained friends with many in the entertainment business. What the book did provide was an in-depth look at American theater from the turn of the century through the 's. I'm a fan of the theater and especially musicals, but I don't know much about it's history. I enjoyed learning about the transition from Vaudeville and reviews such as Ziegfield's Follies into more of what is considered modern theater.

Apr 11, J.

The Astaires: Fred & Adele

Australian Kathleen Riley offers a marvelous look into the early years of Fred and his older sister Adele Astaire. Riley writes with such affection for Adele Astaire that it is hard not to have similar feelings. She is flighty, flirty and a woman ahead of her time. As Fred huffs and puffs through temper tantrums, loses himself in worry and woe, Adele breezes through show business until it no longer satisfies her.

She leaves her brother and heads to England to marry a man who would eventually Australian Kathleen Riley offers a marvelous look into the early years of Fred and his older sister Adele Astaire. She leaves her brother and heads to England to marry a man who would eventually disappoint due to his alcohol dependency. Riley questions what regrets Adele may have had for leaving show business, but she never really shows any. This book is also a very interesting look at the theater during the late 's and early 's in both New York and London when the brother-sister act rubbed elbows with the Gershwin brothers, the Shubert brothers, and even British Royalty.

I suggest it to anyone interested in the history of the Western Stage or fans of Fred Astaire. Jan 07, Victoria Moore rated it it was amazing Shelves: Not only was Adele his partner, on stage, she was also his sister, friend and confidante. Tracing their professional lives from their childhood performances at Ned Wayburn's dance school to Vaudeville, Broadway and across the pond in England, Riley tells their story in nine illuminating and lengthy chapters chock full of interesting f If you thought Fred Astaire's ultimate dance partner was Ginger Rogers, Kathleen Riley's book "The Astaires Fred and Adele" will open your eyes in a profound way.

Tracing their professional lives from their childhood performances at Ned Wayburn's dance school to Vaudeville, Broadway and across the pond in England, Riley tells their story in nine illuminating and lengthy chapters chock full of interesting facts, beautiful black and white photos, critiques and song lyrics.

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Surprisingly their story has a lot of ups and downs, but despite that it's a wonderful trip back in time and a delight for any Astaire fan. Apr 27, BookishStitcher rated it liked it. Most of this book was filler. Lots of random information about the people around them, with scattered bits of information about the pair. I really enjoyed the pictures and letters, but was overall very disappointed in the book. I am a very big fan of the Astaires and was hoping for fresh insights. None were found here.

The book was also not well written, it reads like a text book instead of an interesting story. Aug 04, Paula rated it it was ok. I was disappointed in this book. It seems to be one-sided in that it offers an in-depth description of Adele and Fred's partnership on stage, but virtually nothing about any other part of their lives. They come across as flat, one-sided characters. In spite of the book's lack of appeal for me, there is a wealth of information about their stage lives in the book, and the book is certainly heavily researched and well written. Just not what I was expecting.

Aug 31, Marilyn added it. I enjoy books about musical theatre and I love Fred Astaire.

Fred & Adele

This book had much interesting history in it about a period of time that must have been scintillating. I wish I could time-travel back then, but since I can't, books like this one and films will have to do. Oct 30, Cory rated it it was ok. Interesting story but unfortunatly reads like one of my college theatrical text books. It felt as if the author needed to use every big, flowery word she had ever encountered. Jun 25, Sara rated it really liked it Shelves: The prevalence of this latter social arena in the lives of the Astaire siblings at first surprised me.

Before reading this book, I knew Fred had danced with his sister named Adele, but I knew nothing else about her. I did not, for instance, know that In The Astaires: I did not, for instance, know that she retired from the stage to marry the Duke of Devonshire. Nor did I realize the pair's first wild successes came to them in London's West End rather than on Broadway. They became the darlings of London before America took much notice, their talent furnishing an "in" with English "society" that usually only birth or money can get one.

And they carried this success back with them to America. Riley frequently observes the discontinuity between the Astaires' Omaha, Nebraska upbringing and the circles in which they later moved, however I was left at the end of this book with a sense of the complete appropriateness of it; both the upper crust's adoption of them and their unselfconscious adoption of it. I'm going to add a caveat here that I admire and respect Fred Astaire's work ethic and talent and I have loved his movies since I was a child. I also inherently appreciate a pretty girl who will make a clown of herself, as Adele famously did.

With the following critique, I mean less to vilify the Astaires though perhaps a little of that is due than to criticize Riley's color blind interpretation of their careers. Certainly, the Astaires grew up working class without much luxury. Equally obviously, they excelled through natural talent and, in the case of Fred, punishing hard work. However they also received professional dance and theater instruction from early ages; and did so in a time period whose social inequities specifically favored white artists. To be fair, the instruction they received seems largely a function of their parent's, and specifically their mother's, willingness to throw the whole family's lot in with the ability of these children to entertain.

They went to dance classes, were taken to New York, etc. However, once Ma and Pa Austerlitz made this incredible decision to rely on the fruits of their children's labors for survival and only incidentally on their own , something else began working in the Astaires' favor; namely white privilege. Riley, albeit obliviously, even gestures at this fact a couple of times when she quotes Fred talking about the songs they danced to as "nigger music" or when she describes the "Bojangles of Harlem" routine in Swing Time This number, which Fred performed in blackface, is made more not less disquieting by the fact that he clearly believed himself to be offering homage to Bill Robinson and the host of other black performers he had emulated on the road to developing his own style.

Of course a dancer of Fred Astaire's talent and drive brought his own moves and interpretations to the dance. Yet I still have a hard time comprehending how a biography about his and Adele's early stage days could completely ignore the fact that, ultimately, they made their living as white dancers interpreting an art form created and pioneered by black dancers.

More so, they became wildly wealthy and famous doing so, where most of the black dancers they would have encountered, admired and drawn artistic ideas from during their vaudeville days, earned very little money and were not even allowed into the establishments in which the Astaires would go on to perform. I do not argue that Fred and Adele Astaire should not be well known for their gifts, that they should not have been compensated although the celebrity pay scale is I think an issue worth considering sociologically , or that there is something inherently wrong with artists emulating and drawing inspiration from each other.

However, I am asserting that in the case of popular American art forms of the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been a well-observed pattern of white artists gaining great fame and wealth using songs, sounds, rhythms and styles developed by African-Americans who never enjoyed a fraction of the same success. This fact does not negate the talent of dancers like Fred and Adele, but any self-respecting biography that purports to talk about their careers should pay attention to the fact that they, too, participated in this shameful trend.

Moreover, the time period of their initial success was so deeply racist that Fred, rich and famous, could paint his face black and perform, believing he was paying tribute to a set of artists he must have known several alarming things about: That Fred and Adele come across as compassionate, kind and joyful individuals in this book does not belie the racist attitudes of themselves and their time that contributed to their unique success. It is not disrespectful to their talent to contextually situate them in a difficult and racially biased historical moment.

It is, rather, disrespectful to the talents of all the individuals who could not and did not enjoy the same success as the Astaires, even while their work contributed to it. Kathleen Riley is a theater historian from Australia, so her focus on Anglo theater is perhaps not surprising. Her apparently color blindness is. I applaud the clearly encyclopedic research she performed to retrace the Astaires' early career. Her archival chops are obviously intact.

In a limited anecdotal sense, I really enjoyed parts of this book. But the theoretical, interpretive components of her research are impoverished. And I still love watching Fred Astaire dance. May 18, blake rated it it was amazing Shelves: A lovely portrait of a little vaudeville family that made good, with the charismatic and naturally gifted sister supported by her less talented but harder working brother, and shepherded by a a reluctant stage mom. Which is kind of an interesting look at Fred Astaire's history odd years later when the movies have preserved his talent long after the stage history is forgotten by most people.

Although, these days, I suppose "most" people have forgotten Fred's movies. Much like Paul Whiteman A lovely portrait of a little vaudeville family that made good, with the charismatic and naturally gifted sister supported by her less talented but harder working brother, and shepherded by a a reluctant stage mom.

Much like Paul Whiteman Paul Whiteman: Pioneer in American Music, , a great deal of the Astaires' brilliance is lost to a time when recording things was a really big deal. There's a fair amount of inside baseball here though nowhere near Black and Conservative , the bulk of which covers the same time period and there is a limit to how much you can convey the artistry of music and dance with words, but Riley is game for the task and provides a story of a tightly-knit and largely functional family navigating art and show biz.

The end of Fred and Adele's stories aren't super happy, as endings for human beings often aren't. The struggle over-all, however, of making it to the big time is as fun and funny as an old-time "let's put on a show"-style movie, and I can recommend to any fan of the vaudeville era and jazz age. May 22, Alethea rated it really liked it Shelves: I really enjoyed this from a historical perspective. The book offers an interesting glimpse into the lives and careers of an iconic dancing partnership, only half of which was lucky enough to be memorialized on celluloid.

But it was also fun to read for the glimpses it provides into a time before recorded content changed the way we interact with art and entertainment forever as the book provides peeks into the worlds of vaudeville, jazz and the New York and London theater scenes at various momen I really enjoyed this from a historical perspective. But it was also fun to read for the glimpses it provides into a time before recorded content changed the way we interact with art and entertainment forever as the book provides peeks into the worlds of vaudeville, jazz and the New York and London theater scenes at various moments leading up to the mids.

For the most part it's a glowing tribute to two amazing performers and a lovely sibling relationship. Sep 01, Wileyacez rated it really liked it. Great book on the Astaires and theatre at the turn of the century through the early 's. Really a tragedy that no film exists of Adele dancing, because based on the the reviews of her work in theatre, she was something else.

At least we do have Fred on film. Real tragedy is that publisher cheaped out and did not do high quality full-paged photos. I spent a lot of time googling various people and recordings--yay for the age we live in.


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So much additional info available. Feb 12, Maj rated it really liked it Recommends it for: I've been making my way through Fred Astaire's filmography for years now, savouring it all: But until now I haven't actually read a biography about him. The catalyst for choosing this particular book for my first Astaire reading was finding, by complete chance, a few tidbits here and there online that indicated how huge Fred's joint career with his sister actually was.

Try looking up Adele's name on Tumblr There are a lot of photos of her, surviving to this day, and being digitised. And yes, her star quality shines through on those photos. Not a great beauty, but those eyes! And so I thought this book, chronicling the early life and the musical theatre career of the Astaire siblings, seemed like a perfect place to start with my biographical reading about Fred. And I was right!