Astaire steps quietly towards birthday

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 22

Astaire steps quietly towards birthday

By

BOB THOMAS

of the

Associated Press (through NZPA-AAP) Beverley Hills Fred Astaire, who marks most events in his life 3uietly without much public isplay, doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about as he approaches his eightyfifth birthday. “I never really thought about my age until I reached 80,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press. “Then everybody made a big thing of it, and people were saying, ‘Oh, he’s one of those octagenarians’.” “Well, I didn’t feel any different then, and I don’t now. My health is good, I’m happy, and I’m doing what I want to do. So what’s all the fuss about?” Astaire will be 85 on May 10. He seems little changed from his prime. The eyes are clear, the cheeks pink, the mind alert. He is the most reticent of stars, and he customarily declines offers of honorary degrees from universities. He has turned down offers of television specials saluting his career. He hesitated two years before agreeing to accept the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1981. Astaire’s last film was “Ghost Story” two years ago. Offers continue to come in, but Astaire has issued orders to his agent that he will not play doddering oldsters or do show business stories. He won’t dance again. The last real dancing he did was in his fourth television special with Barrie Chase 15 years ago. He and Gene Kelly did a few turns for “That’s Entertainment, Part II.” “Dancing is a part of my career that is over,” Astaire said. “That’s all behind me. I’m an actor now.” It is Fred Astaire’s dancing that made and keeps him a world legend. His classic musicals with Ginger Rogers and other partners play on television almost nightly. No dancer has ever displayed the range and skill of Astaire. “He is the greatest dancer who ever lived,” the late choreographer, George Balanchine, once proclaimed. Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, son of an Austrian brewer and a mother who had been trained as a schoolteacher. When his older sister Adele showed promise as a dancer, Mrs Austerlitz took her two children to New York so Adele could train professionally. Fred was five, too young to leave at home, so he went along to dancing school. As Fred and Adele Astaire, they were prodigies in . Vaudeville, then grown-up stars on Broadway. When Adele retired to marry an English nobleman, Fred moved into films and formed the sublime partnership with Ginger Rogers. Thereafter he danced with Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, Audrey Hepburn and others, then turned dramatic actor with

“On The Beach” in 1959. He was nominated for a supporting-actor Oscar for “The Towering Inferno” in 1975.

Astaire lives with his second wife, the former jockey Robyn Smith, in a glistening white house on a hill behind the Beverly Hills hotel. Their friends say it has proved a successful match, despite the 45-year gap in their ages. The Astaires lead a quiet life, seldom appearing in public. “Fred hates parties and so do I,” Mrs Astaire said. “We go out only when we have to, when there is some event that Fred feels obliged to attend.” “Sometimes I wish we could go out more. I’m so proud of Fred, I’d like to show him off,” she said. “The trouble is that people won’t leave him alone.

Everybody thinks he or she knows Fred, and that includes everyone from old people to young kids. People of all ages want to shake his hand and tell him thanks for all the wonderful movies and TV shows. That’s very nice, but it embarrasses Fred.”

A lifelong shopper, Astaire likes to browse among the shops of Beverly Hills. He enjoys seeing movies, often attending theatres in the daytime when the crowds are few. He keeps up with the music scene by way of television and said he admires the singer, Michael Jackson. “I’ve known him since he was a small boy,” Astaire said. “He’s very talented, and I’m flattered that he gives me some of the credit for his success. He claims that watching me helped him. In fact, he keeps send-

ing me the awards he receives, saying that I deserve to have them.”

Mrs Astaire had seen little of her husband’s work when she was younger because she didn’t like musicals.

“Now I can’t get enough of Fred’s dancing,” she said. “What I love to do is see them on the video cassette player so I can see how he moves in slow motion. The things he does are fantastic.”

Astaire has developed more regard for his work.

“Once in a while one of my old pictures will appear on television, and I’ll watch it,” he said, “like ‘Second Chorus,’ which I remembered for all the problems we had and poor reviews. But I looked at it again, and you know something? It was pretty darned good.”