Adele Astaire

b. Adele Marie Austerlitz, 10 September 1897, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, d. 25 January 1981, Tucson, Arizona, USA. Astaire's father, who went to America from Austria, met and married a woman whose parents were from Alsace. Adele was their first child and they also had a son. The children were very young when their mother took them east to begin a career in vaudeville. They quickly found work, making their debut in 1905 in Keyport, New Jersey. They changed their unwieldy family name to Astaire (they had an uncle named L'Astaire), and thereafter were billed as ‘Fred and Adele Astaire...