Want to know the best Fred Astaire movies? How about the worst Fred Astaire movies? Curious about Fred Astaire box office grosses or which Fred Astaire movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Fred Astaire movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
A little while ago, I got the idea that I needed to have a page for the Top 25 Classic Actors and the Top 25 Classic Actresses according to the American Film Institute. A quick check of my existing pages found I had already done movie pages on 19 of the actors and 10 of the actresses. So now that I have 21 pages to write, I figure I should get started with the 5th highest rated actor, Fred Astaire.
Fred Astaire (1899-1987) was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska. Fred Astaire’s first dance partner was his older sister Adele. They became a very popular vaudeville dance act when Fred Astaire was only 7 years old. By 1917 the brother and sister dancing act was already appearing on Broadway. In 1932 Adele retired from dancing and Fred moved to Hollywood to appear in movies. In 1933 he appeared in Flying Down To Rio. Astaire got 5th billing in the movie and his dance partner in the movie, Ginger Rogers got 4th billing. Reviewers singled out their dancing and the pair would be matched up 9 more times in their career.
The Rogers-Astaire team owned the box office for the rest of the 1930s. The pinnacle of their collarboration was 1935’s Top Hat which has some of the best dancing ever filmed for motion pictures. Fred Astaire had many successes without Ginger Rogers, as he appeared in the box office hits, Holiday Inn, Blue Skies, Easter Parade, and The Towering Inferno. His last movie was 1981’s Ghost Story which was almost 50 years after his screen debut.
His IMDb page shows 50 acting credits from 1933-1981. This page will rank 39 Fred Astaire movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, cameos and some of his movies made outside of the Hollywood system were not included in the rankings.
Fred Astaire Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Fred Astaire Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Fred Astaire movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Fred Astaire movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Fred Astaire movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Fred Astaire movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Fred Astaire movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Fred Astaire movie won.
- Sort Fred Astaire movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive.
- ### If worldwide box office is the same as domestic box office…then worldwide grosses were not available.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Fred Astaire Table
- Twenty-nine Fred Astaire movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 74.35% of his movies listed. The Towering Inferno (1974) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average Fred Astaire movie grosses $147.70 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 32 Fred Astaire movies are rated as good movies…or 82.05% of his movies. Top Hat (1935) is his highest rated movie while The Amazing Dobermans (1976) is his lowest rated movie.
- Twenty-four Fred Astaire movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 61.53% of his movies.
- Five Fred Astaire movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 15.15% of his movies.
- A “good movie” Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 60.00. 33 Fred Astaire movies scored higher that average….or 84.16% of his movies. Top Hat (1935) got the the highest UMR Score while The Amazing Dobermans (1976) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Fred Astaire
1. Fred Astaire survived a disastrous screen test. According to Astaire the result of the screen test was “He can’t act…his is going bald…also dances”. Others claim it said “Can’t act, can’t sing, going bald, can dance a little”….either way not a good screen test.
2. Between 1933 and 1939 Fred Astaire starred with Ginger Rogers in 9 movies. They would appear in their 10th and final film in 1949’s The Barkleys of Broadway. Their screen partnership is one of the greatest of all-time.
3. Fred Astaire was married twice in his life. He married Phyllis Potter in 1933 and they were married until 1954 when she passed away after a battle with cancer. Fred Astaire had three kids with Potter: step son Peter, son Fred Jr. and daughter Ava Astaire McKenzie. In 1980 he married Robyn Smith.
4. Fred Astaire received one Oscar® nomination for acting in his career. He was nominated but did not win Best Supporting Actor for 1974’s The Towering Inferno. He was given an Honorary Oscar® in 1950 “For unique artistry and his contributions to the technique of musical pictures”.
5. Fred Astaire received more love from the Golden Globe® voters as he received 5 Golden Globe® nominations. Those five movie were: The Towering Inferno, Finian’s Rainbow, The Pleasure of His Company, On The Beach and Three Little Words.
6. Fred Astaire became good friends with legendary music composer George Gershwin back in 1916 many years before they both would become famous.
7. Fred Astaire retired from movies after making 1946’s Blue Skies. He unretired as his fan support talked him back into making more movies….he returned in 1948 to replace an injured Gene Kelly in Easter Parade.
8. Fred Astaire insisted on a stationary camera rather than a moving camera to film dance numbers..it was a rule he stuck to over the years…always saying…..”Either I dance or the camera dances”.
9. Two famous roles Fred Astaire turned down…..the lead role in Yankee Doodle Dandy and the part of Bert on Mary Poppins.
10. Check out Fred Astaire‘ career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
AFI’s Top 25 Screen Legend Actors….with links to my movie pages on the Screen Legend
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Well I have to admit I have not seen many of his movies either, but I remember my grandparents always talking about Fred and Ginger and seeing them dancing in the kitchen of all places. Interesting hub with lots of great details.
Hey YankeesRule thanks for checking out my Astaire hub…glad that my page brought back some nice memories…and thanks for sharing those memories…sounds like they were a cute couple.
Bruce, your moviescore is fine except for the fact The Band Wagon isn’t even in the top 10. It’s generally considered one of the greatest musicals of all time, some people rate it 2nd after Singin in the Rain (in the MGM catalogue). Well worth a look btw and it’s in glorious technicolor! 🙂
STEVE- Okay, but I have noted that dancers get arthritis earlier than non-dancers and I am still surprised he was able to dance at 69. Re: further info on The Band Wagon for Cogerson . While singing in the Rain is considered the best movie ever made about how movies are made, the Band Wagon is considered the best movie ever made about back stage theatre productions.
I have noticed an annoying new google feature. Everything I look up on Google is now highlighted in blue for me with a link to websites on the topic if I click on it. It won’t show up for other people, but as I am looking at titles/ names on this page I’ve searched they are highlighted in blue – and it’s not my page. If it were my own page I’d understand…
Flora, I’m not sure what you mean about google being blue, all the google titles are in blue here in the UK.
Btw Cogerson might be happy to know if I search Cary GRant in google.co.uk his Cary Grant page is on the very first page! woot!
That’s awesome!
Re: my last comment: I do not mean the word Google. In the comments section on this hub as I am looking at it, Dick Van Dyke is highlighted in blue, and the word Damsel in Distress in the movie score list is highlighted in blue. I can click on the names and it will bring me to a list of websites about them. I think it is because I recently looked them up. It’s odd, that is all.
Cogerson, I can’t remember if you told us…I am guessing with the Oscar nomination The Towering Inferno is the only film you have seen, but had you already seen it before you went on your Oscar watching adventure?
Hey Flora…I will add Swing Time to my list…just got back from my library with DVD copies of Top Hat and Carefree…I imagine in 24 hours I will be up to 3 and closing the gap…lol. As for Finian’s Rainbow…Copolla used a moving camera in that movie..thus breaking his stationary camera rule that he had kept since 1934.
Hey Steve thanks for sharing that information about my Cary Grant page….that page has exploded the last few days it has almost 900 hits in the last 4 days….and I am still trying to figure out where the traffic is coming from. But it makes me happy to know that my page is near the top of the google searches overseas…makes all this work seem worthwhile.
Hey Steve….I agree I always thought Bert and Mary were more than friends ..but I think Astaire would have been pretty sweet in the role as well….so Dick Van Dyke’s Britsh accent was not a good accent? The things you learn on your pages.
Cogerson – at least Dyke’s cockney accent was consistent, but not an accent that actually exists..anywhere in London.
Hey Flora…I got the first e-mail but not the second one….I tried to combine my page writing hobby with my movie watching hobby today all the while making sure my number one job of keeping my little girls alive…. did not really work out well, although the kids had a blast tearing up the house…lol..as the page took almost 8 hours to write…and then I made a ton of mistakes….I did however get to listen to the Psycho commentary….I am glad to see that my Movie Score system has done a decent job…normally I have a pretty good idea which movies make no sense when looking at the scores…but not on this hub….as I had no idea.
Hey Flora…I never even thought about Dick Van Dyke’s accent until Steve mentioned how much his fellow countrymen make fun of the accent…which I find amazing how people view movies differently.
I think all of his hubbers make mistakes and do not catch them….sometimes I can not believe the mistakes I made…I can live with the spelling mistakes…I think the biggest mistake I have made and it stayed out there in hubland was on the movie From the Terrace …I did a hub on Myrna Loy and I put the wrong box office information down….when I did my Paul Newman hub months later I realized I had underestimated the box office by over 100 million dollars….and the movie went from the bottom of her rankings all the way to #15.
I am sure by the end of the month, I will be able to have a conversation about Fred Astaire movies and be able to mention scenes that I enjoyed as well….as soon as my rugrats go to sleep…my wife and I are going to watch Top Hat.
Hey Steve…well good to see you also agree with most of the Movie Score totals. As for The Band Wagon….it’s box office did not help the cause….it finished 5th according to critics/audiences…but I double checked the box office gross…and yep no mistake was made there….lots of other mistakes in this hub but not there. But you have sold me on the merits of the film and I will track it down.
No criticism, Bruce. And I don’t call two errors lots of mistakes. You know what I did on my Thin Man movie page? I think Mom was the only one who read it before I changed it – I wrote down Maureen O’Hara as the actress playing Miss Wynatt. Um…no. As far as I can remember, she never even worked with Powell or Loy ever. I always write Maureen O’Hara automatically when I mean Maureen O Sullivan. sigh. It also took me awhile to avoid getting the names Margaret Sullivan (married once to Henry Fonda) and Maureen O’Sullivan mixed up as I am far more familiar with Margaret. I have a ton of chores I haven’t done because of my rehearsals. I should be doing them now, and what am I doing instead? Not shutting up about Fred Astaire, that’s what. so…
Swing Time and Top Hat are tied as my favourite Astaire/Rogers film and that is why I can’t even tell you a favourite for those. I know Band Wagon should be my favourite non-Rogers musical he made because of its reputation and I love it, but what about Royal Wedding where he danced on a ceiling with no green screen like today? What about the dance with the shoes in Easter Parade? What about every musical he ever made?
Oh I love Easter Parade too Flora, classic movie. Fred and Judy in A Couple of Swells is fab. I always seem to watch Easter Parade at easter for some reason (Flora rolls her eyes). 🙂
Cogerson is in for a treat discovering these old Astaire classics.
Hey Flora with you and Steve saying The Band Wagon is a classic I will have to check it out. I actually just checked my library website and requested that they send Band Wagon to the closest library to my house so it should be here in 2 or 3 days…have I mentioned that I have the best library ever.
I am not seeing the blue highlight you mentioned….but it sounds like it could be helpful.
As for The Towering Inferno…I have been a huge Steve McQueen fan so I have seen Inferno many many times over the years…probably not as many as Steve….but many times.
I’ve noticed some awesomely charming quotes from some of Fred’s Movies:
Quote Fro Top Hat:
Dale Tremont: “What is this strange power you have over horses?”
Jerry Travers: [thinks] “Horsepower?”
I’ve seen his movies throughout my childhood with the impression “so that’s how you get a girl,I’m in trouble”.
Headliner In The Entertainment Section Of The “New Yorker” For Sure Cogerson!;)
Hey Mentalist acer…thanks for the quotes from Top Hat…I will be watching that movie in the next day or two…and I will be on the lookout for that quote. I have always been aware of Fred Astaire but it was not until I started researching this hub did I really become aware of his impressive career….thanks for stopping by and for the compliment.
Cogerson, Flora is waving a red flag methinks, check your mail pronto. I think I can guess what it is. 🙂
So, the great Fred Astaire, the king of the movie dancers, or was that Gene Kelly? They are both fantastic in their own way. Was it Kelly who once said Fred is the Cary Grant of dancing and he was the Brando of dance. 🙂
I’ve seen 25 of the 37 films you’ve listed on the chart, not bad I suppose. All ten from the box office chart and all ten from critics chart. Nice.
My favourite musical of his is The Band Wagon, great film watched it many times. Of his RKO classics it probably has to be Top Hat. Non musicals, The Towering Inferno is one of my 100 favourite films.
Didn’t know he turned down the role in Mary Poppins, I’m glad he was too old by then and I liked Dick Van Dyke in the film even if his cock-er-ney accent is cringeworthy and has been mocked here in the UK for decades.
Another fine useful interesting hub Bruce, now looking forward to a movie page on that other dancing great who likes to sing in the rain with a smile on his face. 🙂
Steve – it’s funny, because Finian’s Rainbow was made *after* mary Poppins. granted, he was playing the father of the female lead, but there he was dancing at 69 years old…
Cogerson…I think you should check out SWING TIME before any other Astaire/Rogers movies :0
Flora I’m not saying Fred was too old to dance in Mary Poppins but in the film there is a friendship between Bert and Mary, borderline romantic which gives the impression they may have been more than just friends in the past or is that just the romantic in me? 🙂
While Fred would have seemed more like a father figure to Julie Andrews who was still in her 20’s at the time.
Btw I thought you were flagging Bruce over a different error. I sent him mail too.
Steve – I sent him two messages. One after another. He’s only read the first one SO FAR…
Re: Movie Score ranking – while I am surprised that a non-musical is number one, I’m not surprised that The Towering Inferno is rated high. It is one of the few disaster movies that weren’t done to death in sequels etc. When there is real fire, there is real danger. (Check out The Last Voyage starring Robert stack. That really was the last voyage of that ship and everything was done in one take…)
Beyond that, I think the movie scores are accurate as to long lasting classics that people still watch often. The lower films are not the first ones people mention when they talk about favourites.
Hey Steve….Flora takes the crown again….but it was close….27 to 25…both of your totals put me to shame…my one and only Astaire movie I have seen is The Towering Inferno. Gene Kelly gave Astaire lots of great compliments over the years. Which Gene Kelly will be getting a hub soon.
So you would recommend The Band Wagon? I am sure this hub will motivate me to watch more of his movies..the last time I wrote a hub with so little personal movie watching experience was Barbara Stanwyck….which at the time my movie tally was 2…it now stands at 8…so I am sure Fred’s numbers will go up soon.
So I will ask the same question of you that I asked Flora…how do my Movie Score numbers look to you? As always your contributions are greatly appreciated.
Top ten:
I have seen all ten of his top ten box office hits.
I have seen all ten of his top ten critics list.
I have seen all top ten of his movie score list.
I have seen some movies he hosted that are not included on your list – all three That’s Entertainment! movies that look back at the best of MGM movies.
Overall Of the movies you listed:
I have seen 29 of them. That is 78%.
The highest rated film I have NOT seen is #21, the only Astaire/Rogers film I have not seen.
The lowest rated film that I HAVE seen is #34 – Second Chorus.
The earliest made film I’ve seen is his very first movie,Flying Down to Rio.
The youngest film I’ve seen is The Towering Inferno.
As I expected, the films of his I haven’t seen are harder to find/later in his career. However, there was more than one musical that I am missing. I have not seen Damsel in Distress either. I wasn’t aware of that title and looked it up.
Regarding the films made during the studio system (that officially ended in 1965, though the first studio – Astaire’s first studio RKO actually folded in the 1940s and they were taken over by MGM but the last studio to hold iron clad contracts stopped in 1965
Movies made before 1965:
There are 31 titles here that were made before 1965. I have seen 27 of them. That is 87% of the bulk of his career.
Movies at the top of my to see list that are not musicals:
The Notorious Landlady (mystery)
Ghost story (since it was his last)
I cannot possibly list my top ten favourites of Fred Astaire. I can’t even tell you my favourite Astaire/Ginger Rodgers film. I can tell you my favourite of his non-musicals I have seen so far is On The Beach. But that is as far as I can go.
Hey Flora…thanks for the heads up as I have corrected the error. As predicted I am last in the tally count…Flora 29 Steve 25 me 1….but I am about to go to my awesome library and check out Carefree and On The Beach.
So using your vast Astaire movie knowledge…how does my Movie Score system do in picking out the best of his movies?. Towering Inferno is ranked #1 because it was a blockbuster and his only Oscar nomination….but I can easily see that it should not be on the top of the list but numbers and award recognition they tower(get the pun?) over the competition. I am sure the four movies you have not mentioned are not worth seeing…The Purple Taxi and took almost three years to be seen in North America.
As for your missing Rogers/Astaire movie…it is the only one that they spend huge chunks of the movie apart doing their own storylines which is not what their fans wanted to see…..A Damsel in Distress was his first and only solo movie without Ginger during that first timeframe of his career. As always thanks for the comments