Every night after dinner, they would leave the marble-floored dining room dancing a comical tango that alerted the servants of the mansion in Beverly Hills. Fred Astaire, who was already in his 80s, was enchanted by his second wife, Robyn Smith, who was barely in her 40s. She called him "darling" and he called her "baby." The Hollywood gossip mill started buzzing because almost no one understood how after being widowed in 1954, the star remarried at the age of 81 on June 24, 1980, to a renowned 35-year-old equestrian.
In the early 70s, Robyn was not only considered the best jockey in the world, but also the first woman to achieve this. In fact, she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the summer of 1972. The magazine was surprised to find out that she was a woman with no past. There were no records. A mystery that remains unsolved. Who would have thought that Robyn, who four years earlier was without money, without contacts, and knocking on the doors of the Santa Anita Park stables in Arcadia (California), one of the most important racetracks in the United States, would end up on the cover of the famous publication.
She got her first opportunity thanks to Alfred G. Vanderbilt II, son of one of the first-class passengers who died on the Titanic. Coincidentally, the billionaire was a close friend of Fred Astaire, whom he introduced to Robyn on New Year's Day in 1973.
That first encounter between Fred and Robyn would forever change their lives. Although they stayed in touch, they didn't see each other again until four years later when the athlete filmed a Shasta soda commercial in Los Angeles. Against social conventions, she invited him to dinner. The actor loved the initiative. That night, there was a spark.
In late 1978, Robyn moved to Arcadia, just over 30 kilometers from where the actor lived. For a year and a half, they saw each other constantly, until they decided to formalize their relationship. They got married in a civil ceremony in the garden of the iconic dancer's mansion, where the only member of the Astaire family who attended was his son Fred Jr. His sister Adele - who formed a pair entertaining the Duke of Windsor or Noel Coward - and his daughter Ava declined the invitation as they were horrified by the wedding.
"I didn't know what to do with my life. I had always been very active," she said after the actor's death.
Over the next seven years, the couple rarely attended social events in Hollywood. They were quite reclusive. They played golf, went out to dinner some nights, or went to the movies in the morning to avoid crowds. The star didn't like to talk about the past, was very private, rarely gave interviews, and was against the American Film Institute's tributes. He died of pneumonia in Robyn's arms on June 24, 1987.
As the heir to Fred Astaire's image rights, she garnered many enemies in the film community due to her iron-fisted control that went beyond obsession. She fought against everyone. "I want to fulfill my husband's wishes," she said.
In 1992, she refused to provide several film clips for the tribute that the Kennedy Center was paying to Ginger Rogers, the unforgettable dance partner of Fred Astaire, as the center couldn't afford it. She was accused of delaying the production of That's Entertainment III due to her exorbitant financial demands and even in 2010, she sued her stepdaughter Ava for using her husband's name to promote the Fred and Adele Astaire Awards. However, she was criticized and booed when she allowed Fred's image to be digitally altered in Dirt Devil vacuum ads.
She was right when they tried to commercialize jewelry, colognes, and tuxedo lines and when she denied an entrepreneur who sent her a life-size image of the actor in a tailcoat with holes for cufflinks because it was meant to be a display to sell jewelry.
After becoming a widow, Robyn felt empty. "I didn't know what to do with my life. I had always been very active. I wasn't one to stay at home eating potato chips and watching soap operas," she confessed on one occasion.
Therefore, she started taking flying lessons. At the University of California, she passed to become a helicopter pilot, and at the FlightSafety aeronautical training center in Dothan, Alabama, she expanded her knowledge to handle small fixed-wing aircraft and bought a Glasair II with which she returned home. Shortly after, she obtained another certificate to pilot the commercial aircraft Douglas DC-3 and after obtaining specific qualifications, she controlled different types of Learjets, Challengers, and Citations. This allowed her to work as a pilot on private jets.