Fred Astaire^†

His mother packed him and his sister Adele off to vaudeville before Fred could form opinions about it. The act worked. They hit Broadway in the 1920s, and Lady, Be Good! in 1924 made them a sensation - Adele got most of the credit. When she retired in 1932 to marry a British nobleman, Fred was left to carry the act solo. His Hollywood screen test reportedly came back with a note: "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." He got the contract anyway. Flying Down to Rio (1933) put him onscreen with Ginger Rogers for the first time, and nine more films followed. The Rogers partnership made him one of the most recognizable faces in 1930s Hollywood.

AFI ranked him the fifth-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema. Gene Kelly put it simpler: "The history of dance on film begins with Astaire." His actual contribution - insisting that dance sequences be filmed in single continuous takes without cutaways - became the invisible standard by which every film musical is now judged. His influence is everywhere and credited to nobody. He kept working past 70 and earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for The Towering Inferno (1974), proving he could act without dancing. He had no interest in being a museum piece.

Born Frederick Austerlitz, the son of an Austrian immigrant who'd settled in Omaha. He was 75 years into his career when he married Robyn Smith in 1980 - she was a professional jockey, 45 years his junior, and they'd met through his horse racing habit. His first wife Phyllis had died in 1954. The second marriage outlasted him. His perfectionism was genuine: he choreographed every sequence himself, shot every number in long master takes rather than edited cuts, and rehearsed until the takes were exact. Most dancers studying his work point to discipline over talent as the source.

He checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on June 12, 1987, under the pseudonym "Fred Giles" after developing pneumonia. He died ten days later, with his wife Robyn at his side. President Reagan issued a formal White House statement. He was buried on June 25 at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California, next to his first wife Phyllis, his mother Ann, and his sister Adele.