- The evaluation of Astaire's first screen test: "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."
- Tony Martin, the husband of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star/dancer Cyd Charisse, said he could tell who she had been dancing with that day on the set. If she came home covered with bruises on her, it was the very physically-demanding Gene Kelly, if not it was the smooth and agile Fred Astaire.
- His legs were insured for one million dollars.
- Wore his trademark top hat and tails in his very first movie appearance, Dancing Lady (1933).
- First met lifelong best friend Irving Berlin on the set of Top Hat (1935).
- For Daddy Long Legs (1955), Leslie Caron told Fred that she wanted to create her own costumes for the film. Fred Astaire told her: "Okay, but no feathers, please", recalling the troubles he had with one of Ginger Rogers' elaborate ostrich feathered gowns in a dance from Top Hat (1935). A feather broke loose from Ginger Rogers' dress and stubbornly floated in mid air around Astaire's face. The episode was recreated to hilarious effect in a scene from Easter Parade (1948) in which Fred Astaire danced with a clumsy, comical dancer portrayed by Judy Garland.
- Famously wore a necktie around his waist instead of a belt, an affectation he picked up from his friendship with actor Douglas Fairbanks but often mistakenly attributed to Astaire alone.
- He took up skateboarding in his seventies and was awarded a life membership in the National Skateboard Society.
- Don McLean's song "Wonderful Baby" was written with Astaire in mind; Astaire reportedly loved the song, and recorded it for an album.
- Became a father for the first time at age 36 when his first wife Phyllis Potter gave birth to their son Fred Astaire Jr. on January 21, 1936.
- Appears on the cover of The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.
- While all music and songs were known to be dubbed (recorded before filming), his tap dancing was dubbed also. He "over-dubbed" his taps - recording them live as he danced to the previously recorded taps.
- Astaire disguised his very large hands by curling his middle two fingers while dancing.
- When Ginger Rogers received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1992, Robyn Smith, widow of Fred Astaire, withheld all rights to clips of Rogers' scenes with Astaire, demanding payment. The Kennedy Center refused and Rogers received her honor without the retrospective show.
- After Blue Skies (1946), New York's Paramount Theater generated a petition of 10,000 names to persuade him to come out of retirement.
- Following his death, he was interred at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California, where longtime dancing partner, Ginger Rogers, is located.
- He was one of the first Kennedy Center Honorees in 1978.
- Always wore a toupee unless he was wearing a hat, which is why he so often wore hats in his films.
- He and Ginger Rogers appeared in 10 movies together: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Carefree (1938), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) and The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).
- He was really 5 foot 7 and wore 2-inch heels (very visible in most of his films) to heighten to 5 foot 9. Even then, most of his dance partners towered over him if they wore high heels.
- Made a cameo appearance in John Lennon and Yoko Ono's film Imagine (1972), escorting Yoko through a doorway; after one successful take, he asked to try again, believing he could do a better job.
- He named Swing Time (1936) as his favourite of the films he made with Ginger Rogers.
- Became a father for the second time at age 42 when his first wife Phyllis Potter gave birth to their daughter Ava Astaire-McKenzie on March 28, 1942.
- Politically, Astaire was a conservative and a lifelong Republican Party supporter, though he never made his political views publicly known. Along with Bing Crosby, George Murphy, Ginger Rogers and others, he was a charter (founding) member of the Hollywood Republican Committee.
- The only time he and Gene Kelly ever danced together on screen (other than the linking-segments in the 1976 compilation movie, That's Entertainment, Part II (1976)) was in one routine, titled "The Babbitt and the Bromide" in the 1946 movie Ziegfeld Follies (1945).
- First wife Phyllis Potter (née Phyllis Livingston Baker) passed away from lung cancer at age 46 while Astaire was filming Daddy Long Legs (1955).
- He wrote in his autobiography, Steps in Time, that he met Ginger Rogers in New York, before they went to Hollywood. They were both stage performers then, he was partnered with his sister, Adele. He wrote that he and Rogers went to a nightclub in New York where they danced together. He met her mother, Lela Rogers, and he, Lela, and Ginger would "chat about theater business".
- He was interested in playing Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), but was deemed too old for the role.
- Died 18 years to the day after his Easter Parade (1948) co-star, Judy Garland. Garland on June 22, 1969 and Astaire on June 22, 1987.
- He first saw Robyn Smith, who would become his second wife, when she was a jockey in a horserace.
- He was considered for Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music (1965).
- Fred's father was born in Austria. Fred's paternal grandparents, Salomon Stefan Austerlitz and Lucie Hellerová, were Czech Jews who had converted to Catholicism. Fred's mother was born in Nebraska, to David Geilus and Wilhelmine Klaatke, Lutheran immigrants from Germany.
- Founder of Ava Records, named for his daughter, Ava Astaire-McKenzie.
- He was voted the 23rd Greatest Movie Star of All Time by Premiere magazine.
- He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6756 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.
- Named the #5 Greatest Actor on the 50 Greatest Screen Legends by the American Film Institute.
- He has appeared in three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936) and The Band Wagon (1953).
- Inducted into the International Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2002 (inaugural class).
- Gene Kelly was originally scheduled to play Don, inn Easter Parade but he broke his ankle when he stamped his foot in anger after losing a volleyball game. It was at his suggestion that he be replaced by Fred Astaire.
- Although he spent most of his childhood touring on the vaudeville circuit, he would occasionally settle down with his family and their neighbors and friends, who were almost all families of Austrian immigrants.
- Owned Blue Valley Ranch, a Thoroughbred horse breeding farm in the San Fernando Valley. He maintained a racing stable of four or five horses which competed at racetracks in California. His most famous racehorse was Triplicate, winner of the 1946 Hollywood Gold Cup.
- Born only 18 months after his sister Adele Astaire.
- Received his only Oscar nomination for a disaster movie, The Towering Inferno (1974).
- He was powerless to prevent the reuse of the footage from Follow the Fleet (1936) in Pennies from Heaven (1981) and utterly detested the film, though he did praise the dancing of Christopher Walken.
- He was an accomplished musician, adept on both piano and the drum kit. He enjoyed displaying his skills in his films, examples include an impressive ragtime piano performance in Follow the Fleet (1936), a genre of music that was particularly difficult to master due to the syncopated nature of the playing style, and a tap dance that incorporated a drum kit in the film A Damsel in Distress (1937).
- Aside from starring in the film Funny Face (1957), he also starred in the original 1927 Broadway version of the George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin musical "Funny Face". Although he was the male lead in the show, he did not play the same character he does in the film, and the storyline of the original stage musical was entirely different from the one in the film. Both play and film used many of the same songs. The studio may have felt that the original plot of "Funny Face" could not be properly adapted into a movie as it was an "ensemble" musical with people dropping out and parts changing all the time. Apparently the studio bought the rights to the title just so they could use the song. The plot of this movie is actually that of the unsuccessful Broadway musical "Wedding Bells" by Leonard Gershe. His character in the film is based on photographer Richard Avedon, who in fact, set up most of the photography shown in the film. The soggy Paris weather played havoc with the shooting of the wedding dress dance scene. Both Astaire and Audrey Hepburn were continually slipping in the muddy and slippery grass.
- Astaire was a notorious perfectionist as a dancer and was rarely satisfied with his performances. In fact, he often believed that he had no business being a dancer despite his reputation as Hollywood's greatest dancer.
- George Gershwin's dying words were, "Fred Astaire".
- Appeared in 4 films in a dramatic role, (No singing or dancing ) Notable performance as scientist Julian Osborne in the film "On The Beach" which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award For Best Supporting Actor but lost to Stephen Boyd.
- Joining ASCAP in 1942, he collaborated with Johnny Mercer and Gladys Shelly. His popular song compositions include "I'm Building Up to an Awful Let-Down", "Blue Without You", "If Swing Goes, I Go Too", "Just Like Taking Candy from a Baby", "Just One More Dance, Madame", "I'll Never Let You Go", "Oh, My Achin' Back" and "Sweet Sorrow".
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