Adele Astaire – From American Vaudeville to English Aristocracy

The dancing partner who made Fred Astaire famous isn’t the one most people remember. Adele Astaire was Fred Astaire's older sister. They had a 27-year vaudeville and theatre career which began when he was five and she was eight. Adele was considered to be the better dancer out of the two but today her story has faded into obscurity. They starred in 11 stage musicals together but Adele gave up performing in 1932 to marry Lord Charles Cavendish. She became a member of the British Aristocracy; while her brother Fred went on to gain Hollywood fame with his new dancing partner Ginger Rogers.

Born Adele Marie Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska in 1897, she and Fred were the children of Johanna Geilus an American-born Lutheran of German descent, and Frederic "Fritz" Emanuel Austerlitz an Austrian Roman Catholic brewer of Jewish descent who had left Austria for the USA in 1895. They adopted the more American-sounding name 'Astaire' after trying several variations on the original family surname.  Adele’s younger brother Fred was born on May 10, 1899.

The Astaire's were home schooled and their mother was manager, promoter and chaperone

except for about a year or so when they had to take a year off because Adele had matured and Fred was to small for Adele to perform with. During this time they actually went to school in Highwood, New Jersey.

Their parents sent Fred along to Adele’s dance classes, so he could keep her company, but he got just as interested in learning the steps himself. A teacher suggested that the two children might have a stage career if they were properly trained for it, so the family moved from Omaha to New York. Adele, Fred and their mother lived in a boarding house, while Fred Senior returned to Omaha to work. The two

children began attending the Alviene Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts.

By 1905 Adele Astaire had established a vaudeville act with her younger brother, Fred. The Astaire’s appeared in their first show in New York in 1912, and had their first triumph on Broadway in 1917, with ''Over the Top'' at the Winter Garden. In 1923, they also found success on the London stage in Stop Flirting. They were an immediate hit and settled into a West End run of 418 performances, returning to London throughout the 1920s.

Adele was the bigger and more charismatic star and it was she who usually got the better notices of the two, for her vivacity and natural comic timing. Fred was the more serious and disciplined younger brother.

One of the steps, incorporated into most of their shows, was the “oompah trot” or the runaround, where Adele and Fred, side by side, would ape riding in huge circles on an imaginary bicycle. Audiences went wild for this particular antic, especially in London, where the bright-eyed, exuberant Americans were welcomed even more enthusiastically than in their own country.

Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie asked Adele to act in his play but contractual reasons forced her to turn down the part.

Back in New York the duo appeared in Jerome Kern's The Bunch and Judy (1922), and then they starred in Gershwin brothers' first Broadway collaborations Lady, Be Good and Funny Face. Fred had known George Gershwin since 1916, when he went to the composer looking for a vaudeville number. They had vowed they’d work together some day; that day came on December 1, 1924, when the Astaire’s headlined George and Ira’s first full-length New York musical, “Lady, Be Good!” Playing a brother-and-sister dance team down on their luck, the Astaire’s had found the perfect vehicle for their talents. George not only provided them with some of their best tunes, he suggested a couple of dance steps to help Fred with the ending for “The Half of It, Dearie, Blues.” Fred got his first solo, while the romantic end of things was held down by his sister and the leading man. It proved to be such a felicitous match that critic Alexander Woollcott later wrote: 

 “I do not know whether Gershwin was born into this world to write rhythms for Fred Astaire’s feet or whether Fred Astaire was born into this world to show how the Gershwin music should really be danced.”

The Astaire’s followed up that success with another Gershwin smash, “Funny Face” (1927), where Adele got to introduce “‘S Wonderful.” When the show made its inevitable visit to London, Adele met a besotted stage-door Johnnie from the British aristocracy and was soon falling head over heels in love. The romance was something of an international sensation, as Adele kept putting off accepting Lord Charles's marriage proposal until she had one final hit show.

After a successful stint with Fred in the revue The Band Wagon (1931) on Broadway, Adele Astaire retired from the stage. It was one of the finest revues of the period, with an impeccable Schwartz-Dietz score including “A New Sun in the Sky,” in which Fred dressed for a night on the town in an attempt to beef up his stage presence so that his transition into a solo career would be easier.

On May 9, 1932, Adele married Lord Charles Cavendish, the second son of the 9th Duke of Devonshire and they moved to Ireland, where they lived at Lismore Castle and she was known as Lady Cavendish. 

At the time of their engagement she had been performing in Florenz Ziegfeld's ''Smiles,'' which received less than happy reviews when it opened in 1930. However, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times singled out the Astaire’s for praise:

''Strictly speaking, the Astaire’s are dancers. But they have more than one string to their fiddle. With them, dancing is comedy of manners, very much in the current mode. Free of show-shop trickery, they plunge with spirit into the midst of the frolic. Once to the tune of 'If I Were You, Love,' with a squealing German band accompaniment, they give dancing all the mocking grace of improvisation with droll dance inflections and with comic changes of pace. Adele Astaire is also an impish comedian; she can give sad lines a gleam of infectious good-nature. Slender, agile and quick-witted, the Astaire’s are ideal for the American song-and-dance stage.''

Fred said of his sister on her retirement, ''She was a great artist and inimitable, and the grandest sister anybody could have.''

 “Fred struggled on without Adele for a while,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse,” but finally threw his hand in and disappeared. There is a rumour that he turned up in Hollywood. It was the best the poor chap could hope for after losing his brilliant sister.”

Adele and Lord Charles Cavendish

The marriage of Lord and Lady Charles, though happy, was marked by tragedy. A daughter was born in 1933, and died the same day. Two years later, twin sons, who were born prematurely, died within hours of their births. She was to have no more children.

After Fred Astaire's success in Hollywood, Adele gave serious consideration in 1935 to making a musical film there. She visited Hollywood and appeared in January 1936 on the Music Variety Show, but she admitted to feeling intimidated by her brother's reputation. During their partnership, Fred, whose perfectionism earned him the nickname "Moaning Minnie" from her, had always been the dominant creative force. 

In 1937 Adele began filming in England with Jack Buchanan and Maurice Chevalier but withdrew after two days. She later recalled: "Oh boy, if my brother Fred sees this—I'm gone".

 

During World War II, at the urging of her husband, Adele worked at a famous Red Cross canteen in London, the Rainbow Corner, helping out at the information desk, dancing with G.I.'s and shopping and writing letters for them. To the letters she signed herself, ''Adele Astaire (Fred's sister).''

Lord Charles fell ill from a liver damage due to long-term alcoholism. This made him an invalid and led to his death on March 23, 1944, aged just 38.  Afterwards, Adele turned down an offer from Irving Berlin to return to the stage in Annie Get Your Gun. 

Three years later, on April 20, 1947, Adele Cavendish married her second husband, Col. Kingman Douglass, an American investment banker with Dillon Read & Company. He had also been an Air Force officer who became an Assistant Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for two years. Adele had originally met him while working at the Rainbow Corner. It was his second marriage.

Kingman Douglass died in 1971. Afterwards, Adele lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and continued, until 1979, to summer at the castle in Ireland she had shared with her first husband.

Unlike her brother, Adele was extremely gregarious and took great delight in shocking friends and strangers alike. Even when in later years beset by illness, she had enormous recuperative powers, and, according to her stepson Kingman Douglass Jr., "she soon would be up and in Marine-type English telling what she thought of the world."

In 1972, Fred and Adele Astaire were inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Adele Astaire died in Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, Scottsdale, Arizona, after suffering a stroke. She was 84. Her remains were interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. 

Built in 1905, the Gottlieb Storz House in Omaha includes the "Adele and Fred Astaire Ballroom" on the top floor, which is the only memorial to their Omaha roots.

At the suggestion of Roddy McDowall, Astaire donated her papers and memorabilia—amounting to several trunks of material—to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

There is no known film record of Adele performing or dancing, but she made eight audio recordings, all duets with Fred, George Vollaire or Bernard Clifton.

The BBC One Show recently featured the fascinating stoty of Adele Astaire in the following video:

 Enjoy the magic of Adele singing "S'Wonderful with Bernard Clifton in 1928