Success and the Astaire Name

CD: Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers at RKO
This soundtrack CD album features music from
Astaire's RKO days when he was teamed with
Ginger Rogers. Order it directly from Amazon.com.

Fred claims it was his father's idea to change the dance team's last name to Astaire, but there are several other explanations for the origin of the Astaire name. According to Fred, the family realized that their surname was a tough sell on theater marquees (“Austerlitz sounded like a battle”). Mr. Austerlitz suggested borrowing the name of an uncle (or perhaps another relative on his wife's side?) from Alsace-Lorraine named L'Astaire. Even though in the early days of their act Adele was older and taller, the team was billed as Fred and Adele Astaire. By 1914, despite a few lows along with highs, brother and sister had become vaudeville pros... but the big time was still elusive.

Eventually Fred and Adele ended up with stage successes on Broadway and even in London. The big time had arrived. In fact, London gave them a bigger welcome than New York, but it was in London in 1924 that word arrived of their father's worsening health. Their mother and constant companion returned to America to be with her ailing husband, and it was not much later, during the London run of “Stop Flirting,” that Fred learned of his father's death. He and Adele managed to go on stage that night and finished the remainder of the one-and-a-half-year run of “Stop Flirting.” (Their mother would live to the venerable age of 96. A widow for 51 years, Ann Geilus Austerlitz succumbed to a stroke in July 1975. She is buried near her son in Chatsworth, California.)

Fred and his sister returned to New York and enjoyed a very successful run of a new George Gershwin musical called “Lady, Be Good!” In 1926 they repeated this success in the same musical in London. The Astaires were now stage stars on both sides of the Atlantic. In June 1927 they returned to the US and had more success in musicals. But Adele was growing tired of show business. In 1932 Adele announced her retirement from the grueling song-and-dance circuit and her intention to marry Lord Charles Cavendish, second son of the Duke of Devonshire.

So Fred was on his own, but he would not be alone. He had met and fallen in love with 25-year-old New York socialite Phyllis Potter, the former Phyllis Livingston Baker of Boston. In 1933 they were married (one day after Phyllis' divorce settlement) and flew off to Hollywood to begin their life together and Fred's new film career at RKO. Twenty-six hours later, with a very brief stopover at the Omaha airport to visit Fred's relatives, their Ford Tri-Motor touched down at the Burbank airport... and the rest is history.

An Astaire (Austerlitz) Timeline

Key Events in Fred Astaire's Family History >>
• Sept. 8, 1868  Fred Astaire's future father, Friedrich (Fritz) Austerlitz, is born in Linz, Austria.
• Dec. 22, 1878  Fred's future mother, Johanna Geilus, is born in Omaha, Nebraska to German-born parents.
• 1892  Fritz Austerlitz leaves Austria for the United States.
• Oct. 26, 1892  According to the ship's manifest, Fritz Austerlitz, a “clerk” aged 24, arrives in New York harbor aboard the S.S. Westernland from Antwerp, Belgium. A few days later he heads for Omaha, Nebraska.
• Nov. 17, 1894  Fritz Austerlitz and Johanna (Ann) Geilus are married at the First German Lutheran Church in Omaha.

	Fred Astaire leaves a lasting impression in cement at Graumann's Chinese Theater in 1938. Photo courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

• Sept. 10, 1896  Adele Austerlitz (later Adele Astaire) is born in Omaha, Nebraska
• May 10, 1899  Frederick Austerlitz (later Fred Astaire) is born in Omaha, Nebraska at the family's home at 2326 S. 10th Street (See house photo).
• 1904  Ann Austerlitz takes Adele (7) and Fred (5) to New York by train. The two children are enrolled for lessons at the Claude Alvienne dance academy.
• 1905  Billed as Fred and Adele Astaire, the brother and sister act makes its vaudeville debut in Keyport, N.J.
• 1905-1924  For most of the time during these years Ann Austerlitz and her husband are estranged, rarely living together as she manages her children's Vaudeville career. According to biographers, Fritz had drinking problems and mistreated his wife. In his autobiography Fred says very little about his father and much of what he writes (“born in Vienna”) is inaccurate.
• Feb. 20, 1922  Fred and Adele Astaire debut in their first on-stage speaking roles in "For Goodness Sake" at the Lyric Theater in New York City.
• May 30, 1923  Opening night for the Astaires in the London production "Stop Flirting" (an Anglicized version of "For Goodness Sake"). They receive rave reviews.
• 1924  In London, while "Stop Flirting" is still running, Fred and Adele learn of their father's death in Pennsylvania.
• 1932  Adele Astaire retires from show business, marries Lord Charles Cavendish, the first of three husbands
• 1933  Fred Astaire marries Phyllis Potter and begins his new dancing/musical career in Hollywood. Fred and Phyllis will have two children, Fred, Jr. and Ava.
• Sept. 13, 1954  Phyllis Astaire, a longtime smoker, dies of lung cancer.
• July 1975  Ann Geilus Austerlitz dies of a stroke aged 96.
• June 24, 1980  Fred Astaire (81) and jockey Robyn Smith (36) wed in a quiet ceremony at the Astaire home in Beverly Hills. They had first met at Santa Anita racetrack in 1973.
• January 1981  Adele Astaire dies of a stroke in Tucson, Arizona.
• June 22, 1987  Fred Astaire dies of pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital with wife Robyn at his side.

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