Jarvis Joseph Astaire, OBE (6 October 1923 – 21 August 2021) was a British sports executive, boxing promoter, and film producer.[1]
Astaire was born in London in October 1923. He was the leading boxing promoter in the United Kingdom from the 1950s to the 1980s.[citation needed] He co-promoted with Harry Levine and matchmaker Mickey Duff. Astaire produced Agatha.[2] He was Consultant to the Sport Division of First Artist Corp. plc from February 2009 on.[3]
For much of the early 1970s Astaire owned a controlling stake in Joint Promotions, the former cartel that was the UK's largest professional wrestling organisation from the early 1950s to the late 1980s and which held a monopoly on television coverage of wrestling on ITV for most of the that period. He would later play a key role in bringing the WWF's SummerSlam '92 event to Wembley Stadium before a crowd of around 80,000.[4]
Astaire died in August 2021, at the age of 97.[5][6]
His nephew is the writer, film producer, and media advisor Simon Astaire.[7][8]