Always in Step

MOVE OVER, GINGER ROGERS — FRED’S GREATEST DANCE PARTNER WAS HIS SISTER “She was the whole

show, she really

was.”

— Fred, about Adele

When Fred Astaire was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Film Institute in 1981, he credited his sister, Adele, with helping to launch his showbusiness career. During their 27-year partnership in vaudeville and stage shows, “Delly was the one who was the shining light,” Fred said. “And I was just there pushing away.”

In fact, “Adele was the bigger star,” Fred’s grandson Ty McKenzie tells Closer. “And they were incredibly close.” Now Fred and Adele’s lives will be turned into a big-screen biopic, based on Kathleen Riley’s book The Astaires: Fred & Adele. “Their close bond as brother and sister certainly nourished and helped illuminate their professional relationship,” Riley tells Closer. “They were fiercely protective of each other.”

SHALL WE DANCE?

Adele was 3 when her mother, Anna, gave birth to Fred in Omaha, Neb., in 1899. “My brother was born half-dead — Fred was born too big a baby and deflated like a balloon,” Adele said. “[My mother] was determined the frail little boy would live and devoted herself to building up his strength and immunity.” To that end, Fred was sent to accompany Adele at her dance classes, and both showed promise as performers.

The family soon moved to New York City, where Fred and Adele developed their brother-sister act. “They were remarkably free of sibling rivalry,” reveals Riley. “Fred felt himself inferior in talent, but he never resented Adele’s natural star quality.”

Their working styles couldn’t have been more different. “Adele called Fred ‘Moaning Minnie,’ and he called her ‘Goodtime Charlie,’” says Riley. “Fred was the disciplined workhorse and compulsive worrier; Adele hated to rehearse.” As Adele put it, “I was a lazy slob. I wanted things to come to me without having to work for it.”

Fred and Adele’s personalities were also opposite. “He was shy and politely reserved,” says Riley. “She was vivacious, carefree and outrageous.”

Both had surprising sides to their characters. “For all her gaiety, Adele was a voracious reader and enjoyed the company of writers such as George Bernard Shaw,” says Riley. “Fred was a prankster, and, according to James Cagney,

had a touch of the hoodlum in him.”

Their fundamentally disparate temperaments fueled their onstage chemistry. “Part of the reason they worked so well together was their contrasting, complementary personalities,” says Riley. “As a pair, they projected a wonderful youthfulness and sweetness — modernity yet vulnerability.”

SWING TIME

The duo spent 12 years polishing three routines and eventually began headlining their own shows. Fred referred to himself as “still a detriment to my sister” because he was “in a sort of blank stage.” Yet they became wildly popular, as “Astairia” spread from New York to London, with Adele earning the bulk of the raves. “Heaven doesn’t send every generation an Adele Astaire,” one critic gushed.

“She was one of the first true pop stars of the 20th century,” Riley explains. “But because she never had a film career, Adele is now much less known than her brother.” Sadly, no filmed footage of Fred and Adele dancing together has ever been found.

Their career suffered a temporary setback in 1928, when both Adele and Fred were eerily involved in separate accidents on the same day on Long Island. She was badly burned after a motorboat in which she was riding burst into flames; he was in a car crash but sustained only minor injuries.

Once Adele recovered, the siblings returned to performing together, but she suddenly announced in 1932 she was retiring at 35 so she could wed Lord Charles Cavendish, a British royal. “I wanted somebody who had something in his background that I wouldn’t have to worry about,” she explained.

After Fred and Adele’s final performance in Chicago, she cried on the train ride “all the way to New York,” she said. “My pillow was

soaked! I kept wondering if I was doing the right thing.”

Fred found stardom on the big screen with new partners like Ginger Rogers (see sidebar at right) and bliss in real life with wife Phyllis Potter, whom he wed in 1933. Adele and her mother were skeptical of Fred’s marriage to the wealthy divorcée, and his sister even jealously wished Fred were gay.

Adele’s relationship wasn’t nearly as happy as her brother’s. Cavendish was an alcoholic whose drinking problem worsened after his father died in 1938. He became verbally abusive to Adele, who suffered several miscarriages. Finally, Cavendish died of alcohol poisoning at 38 in 1944. “His weakness for drink is not to be blamed on him — he had a tortured soul and has never been meant for this hard, cruel world,” Adele said. “Every worry I had about him is washed away and only great love and devotion and undying faith in him will live with me forever.”

The Astaires “remained very close” through such difficult times, says Riley. Fred was devastated when Phyllis died of lung cancer at 46 in 1954. Adele’s second husband, ex–CIA deputy director Kingman Douglass, passed away of a brain hemorrhage in 1971.

During their later years, “Adele would often stay with [Fred] at his house in Beverly Hills,” grandson McKenzie recalls. “When he built the home, he built three wings — one for himself, one for Adele and one for my mother.” The siblings would spend hours watching daytime soap operas together.

In 1980, Fred wed Robyn Smith, a jockey four decades his junior, and Adele’s friends believe her concern for him contributed to her death at 84 the next year. “Fred’s grief was tremendous,” says Riley. “Their relationship was very loving and mutually supportive.” Or, as a critic once declared, “Two Astaires are better than one.” — Reporting by

Amanda Champagne-Meadows