Vinton Freedley A. Aarons with whom he formed a long term producing partnership. Their first major hit was "Lady Be Good!" (1924) with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and featuring Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire. Over the next ten years the pair produced some of the most important works in the Broadway musical canon, featuring some of the most famous songs ever to emerge from the tin pan alley era, part of what is commonly referred to as "The Great American Songbook." The shows that followed included "Tip-Toes" (1925), "Oh, Kay!" (1926), and "Funny Face" (1927), again starring the
Fred Astaire Wagon" (1931), winning popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic. By then, Astaire's tap dancing was recognized as among the best, as Robert Benchley wrote in 1930, "I don't think that I will plunge the nation into war by stating that Fred is the greatest tap-dancer in the world." After the close of "Funny Face", the Astaires went to Hollywood for a screen test (now lost) at Paramount Pictures, but Paramount deemed them unsuitable for films. They split in 1932 when Adele married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, second son of the 9th Duke