Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers and dance teachers who appeared on Broadway and in silent films in the early 20th century.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,028 |
22 Facts About Irene Castle
3.
Irene Castle continued to perform solo in Broadway, vaudeville and motion picture productions over the next decade.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,030 |
4.
Irene Castle remarried three times, had children and became an animal-rights activist.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,031 |
5.
Irene Castle was born on 7 April 1893 in New Rochelle, New York, the daughter of a physician.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,032 |
6.
Irene Castle studied dancing and performed in several amateur theatricals before meeting Vernon Castle at the New Rochelle Rowing Club in 1910.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,033 |
7.
Irene Castle is credited with introducing American women in 1913 or 1914 to the bob – the short, boyish hairstyle favored by flappers in the 1920s.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,034 |
8.
The elegant, yet simple, flowing gowns Irene Castle wore on stage and screen were regularly featured in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and other fashion magazines.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,035 |
9.
Irene Castle was posted to Canada to train new pilots, promoted to captain, and then transferred with the rest of his unit to the US for winter training at Camp Taliaferro.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,036 |
10.
Irene Castle later sued successfully, but by then the production company was bankrupt.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,037 |
11.
Irene Castle's plane stalled, and he was unable to recover control before the plane hit the ground.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,038 |
13.
Irene Castle starred solo in about a dozen silent films between 1917 and 1924, including Patria, and appeared in several more stage productions before retiring from show business.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,040 |
14.
Irene Castle married two more times; the same year, she married Frederic McLaughlin, and two years after he died in 1944, she married George Enzinger, an advertising executive from Chicago.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,041 |
15.
Irene Castle had two children with McLaughlin, Barbara McLaughlin Kreutz, who was Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Bryn Mawr College, and William Foote McLaughlin.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,042 |
16.
In 1939, the Castles' life was turned into a movie, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, produced by RKO and starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,043 |
17.
Irene Castle served as a technical advisor on the film, but clashed with Rogers, who refused to wear Castle's trademark short bob or darken her hair.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,044 |
18.
Irene Castle objected to Rogers' inauthentic wardrobe demands, although a number of Castle's original Lucile gowns were copied for the movie.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,045 |
19.
Irene Castle protested the hiring of white actor Walter Brennan to play their faithful friend and manservant Walter, who was black.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,046 |
20.
Rest of her life, Irene Castle was a staunch animal-rights activist, ultimately founding the Illinois animal shelter "Orphans of the Storm", which is still active.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,047 |
22.
Irene Castle was interred with Vernon at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.
| FactSnippet No. 2,176,049 |