20 Famous Siblings Who Changed History Together

Before achieving flight, Wilbur and Orville Wright were bicycle mechanics, running a bike repair shop in Dayton, Ohio. The first successful controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft took place on December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. By 1908 and 1909, demonstrations in Europe and America made both brothers famous as one team. Quite the career jump from fixing bicycles to building airplanes.

Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo Marx honed their routines in vaudeville (live variety shows featuring comedy, music, and other acts) and then went to Broadway in 1924 with I’ll Say She Is. They continued the same act, slightly modified, in Hollywood sound pictures such as Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. Zeppo quit after Duck Soup to become a talent agent, leaving the three brothers as the act everyone remembers.

In 1905, Fred Astaire and his older sister, Adele, began performing together in vaudeville. They rose to Broadway and London’s West End stardom during the 1920s, headlining Gershwin musicals such as Lady, Be Good! and Funny Face. Their peers frequently regarded Adele as the superior dancer, but she retired from the stage in 1932 when she married Lord Charles Cavendish, shortly before Fred’s Hollywood career began. For years, the future Hollywood legend was actually the less celebrated Astaire sibling.

The Warner brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack, began their career in 1903 as traveling exhibitors of motion pictures. 20 years later, they founded Warner Bros. Pictures. It was Sam Warner who pushed for the development of Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc system that enabled the production of The Jazz Singer. Sam died of brain abscesses in California on October 5, 1927. The film’s New York premiere came the very next day.

In 1907, Hungarian-born identical twins Roszika and Jancsi Dolly began dancing in vaudeville. They were soon hired for the famous Broadway revue Ziegfeld Follies (1911). As celebrated synchronized dancers of the 1910s and 1920s, their act played to packed houses in New York, Paris, and the casinos of Europe. Their actual life needed no Hollywood embellishment, as it already involved gambling for huge stakes and celebrity status.

Composer George Gershwin, along with his lyricist brother Ira, made their start with the 1924 hit Lady, Be Good! In 1931, the two produced Of Thee I Sing, a satire of American politics that became the first musical comedy to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1932. Although Ira was given the prize (along with the show’s writers), George wasn’t eligible because Pulitzer rules didn’t cover music, only text. A rather awkward technicality when your brother literally composed the music.

Before inventing the Cinématographe (a machine capable of shooting, printing, and projecting motion pictures) with his brother Louis, Auguste Lumière was running a photographic plate factory in Lyon, France. On December 28, 1895, the brothers held the first commercial public screening of projected film for a paying audience at the Grand Café in Paris. Despite popular legend, there is no documented evidence that the first audience panicked and fled upon seeing the train coming down the tracks on the big screen.

Before they were signed to Cadence Records in 1957, brothers Don and Phil Everly sang on family country radio programs. After “Bye Bye Love” reached number one on the country charts and number two on the pop charts, they released “Wake Up Little Susie.” Some critics claim that the brothers’ vocal harmonies and acoustic guitar playing have influenced other groups such as The Beatles and The Beach Boys.

Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore, siblings and children of stage stars Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew, were all stars in their own right, both on Broadway and in Hollywood, leading to them being known as the “Royal Family” of American stage and screen. Yet the three siblings acted together in only one movie, MGM’s Rasputin and the Empress, in 1932. Never again.

In 1812, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first collection of folktales, Children’s and Household Tales. They had no interest in creating these stories. Instead, they were academic linguists interested in collecting, editing, and preserving oral German folk tales. Among the stories they gathered were ones that would become Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel. Their joint work would go on to found modern folklore studies. So yes, the Brothers Grimm weren’t actually sitting around inventing increasingly terrible things to happen to children.

Harlem’s famous Cotton Club was where brothers Fayard and Harold Nicholas first performed, as children, in 1932. Their “flash dancing” combined ballet with tap and acrobatic leapfrog splits on Broadway and in movies. Even Fred Astaire said the Nicholas brothers’ “Jumpin’ Jive” number in the 1943 movie Stormy Weather was the best musical sequence ever put on film.

Martha, Connee, and Vet Boswell were three sisters from New Orleans who created intricate vocal jazz pieces that often featured rapid tempo changes and lots of scatting. Their 1930-36 hit records included “The Object of My Affection.” Connee, the lead singer, sat down for the entire performance. Some sources say she was disabled by childhood polio; others blame a coaster wagon accident. No one has ever proved which was true.

Brothers Al, Jimmy, and Harry Joachim, billed as the Ritz Brothers, developed an acrobatic slapstick routine, laced with over-the-top mugging (exaggerated facial expressions) and vocal mimicry. They made it to Hollywood in the mid-1930s, making films for 20th Century Fox, including On the Avenue and The Three Musketeers, before their manic physicality came to inspire future stars like Mel Brooks.

The original Lane Sisters, Lola, Rosemary, and Priscilla, began their careers as featured singers with bandleader Fred Waring before being chosen for roles in Four Daughters (1938). It became a box office success and led to three sequels. The fourth daughter, played by Gale Page, had no relation at all, while the eldest sister, Leota Lane, was never selected. So there were four real Lane sisters, but only three of them got to be Four Daughters.

Brothers John and Horace Dodge operated a Detroit machine shop that built engines and transmissions for the first Ford Model Ts. They formed the Dodge Brothers Motor Company in 1914. The brothers’ all-steel-body automobiles were the second-best-selling line in America, behind only Ford. John Dodge died in January 1920 of pneumonia; Horace died in December 1920 of influenza complications. Eight years later, Chrysler purchased the Dodge brand from bankers.

In 1912, director D.W. Griffith cast sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish in the same movie, An Unseen Enemy. Lillian went on to be the top dramatic actress of the silent era, while Dorothy became a comedienne; yet the two still starred in blockbuster movies together, including Hearts of the World and Orphans of the Storm.

Brothers from Ohio, John Jr., Herbert, Harry, and Donald Mills grew up mimicking brass instruments with their voices, accompanied by a single guitar. They made history in 1931 as the first African American vocal group to have a national network radio show on CBS. After John Jr. died in 1936, their father, John Sr., took over bass vocals and guitar. The family act quite literally called Dad in as a replacement. The Mills Brothers continued to score hits, including 1943’s “Paper Doll.”

Brothers Jimmy Dorsey (clarinet) and Tommy Dorsey (trombone), who formed the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in 1928, split up in 1935 after disagreements. In 1953, they got together again and co-led their band and co-hosted CBS’ Stage Show. On January 28, 1956, on that program, the Dorseys gave Elvis Presley his first television appearance. That’s one way to make a sibling reunion count!

Three sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, from a remote Yorkshire parsonage (a clergyman’s home), published a book of poems jointly in 1846 using the male pen names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell to avoid the discrimination of the time. In 1847 came Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey. In 1848, after rumors swirled that all three novels shared one author, Charlotte and Anne went to London to reveal their true identities.

Sisters LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty Andrews scored a national hit in 1937 with “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,” on which Patty sang lead. The Andrews Sisters’ close-harmony swing became a rallying point for American troops throughout the Second World War as they appeared on radio, in movies, and on stage. They sold over 75 million records in total. It remains one of the highest totals ever posted by a female vocal group.

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