Choreography

RECOGNIZABLE CHOREOGRAPHERS

Although many early films featured dance, the sequences were generally preexisting acts or social dances. Choreographers or dance directors were not credited, but as narrative film developed in the silent era, choreographers began to fulfill two functions. Films with plots that centered on goings-on backstage, especially those filmed in the New York studios, often showed celebrities and rehearsals led by Broadway choreographers. Cosmopolitan's The Great White Way (1924) showed a Ziegfeld Follies rehearsal with the real dance director Ned Wayburn (1874–1942) setting choreography on Anita Stewart (1895–1961) as Mabel. In Hollywood, directors hired Los Angeles–area concert dance troupes or schools to provide atmosphere. Occasionally they were identified and even publicized for their contributions to the film. The always media-savvy Ruth St. Denis (1878–1968) and Ted Shawn (1891–1972) led their Denishawn dancers on the steps of Babylon in D. W. Griffith's (1875–1948) 1916 masterpiece Intolerance . The concert dancer Marion Morgan provided appropriate period dances for the multiple flashbacks in Man-Woman-Marriage (1921), and Ernest Belcher (1882–1973), whose Los Angeles studio rivaled Denishawn in popularity, provided dancers for backstage sequences in many films, among them Heroes of the Street (1922). Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) worked with the former Ballets Russes dancer Theodore Kosloff (1882–1956) in most of his 1920s films, culminating most memorably in the Ballet Mechanique on the dirigible sequence in Madame Satan (1930).

When the studios committed to sound technology after 1927 and began to churn out revues to exploit the new technology, they brought Broadway, Prolog, and vaudeville choreographers west for consultancies or employment. The many women choreographers in these fields were given few feature-length assignments and soon returned to Broadway, although Fanchon, a choreographer and musical sequence director, remained in Los Angeles to take over the West Coast Prolog circuit and worked on more than a dozen films. Albertina Rasch (1895–1967) (who was married to the composer Dmitri Tiomkin [1894–1979]) commuted between Broadway and MGM. She provided period dance for the sound film Devil-May-Care (1929), starring Ramon Novarro (1899–1968), and Marie Antoinette (1938), starring Norma Shearer (1902–1983), and collaborated with the director Ernst Lubitsch (1892–1947) on the 1934 version of The Merry Widow . One of the most memorable moments from this highly successful version of the operetta is the spiral of waltzing couples as the camera slowly zooms outward. Film stars who were former members of the Albertina Rasch Dancers promoted her for projects in the 1930s, among them Eleanor Powell (1912–1982), for Broadway Melody of 1936 and Rosalie (1937), and Jeanette MacDonald (1903–1965), who requested her for MGM's popular operetta series, including The Girl of the Golden West (1938).

The so-called Broadway Big Four—Dave Gould (1899–1969), Seymour Felix (1892–1961), Sammy Lee (1890–1968), and Busby Berkeley (1895–1976)—all found studio niches. Gould won the first Oscar ^® for dance for his contributions to Flying Down to Rio (1933), the film that first paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (1911–1995). Felix had a long career at Twentieth Century Fox, specializing in period backstage musicals, including the biographies of The Dolly Sisters (1945), Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949), about the song-writer Fred Fisher (1875–1942), and Golden Girl (1951), about the mid-nineteenth-century actress Lotta Crabtree (1847–1924). Lee spent most of his career at United Artists, staging dances in melodramas and westerns, and he also worked on Abbott and Costello (Bud Abbott [1895–1974] and Lou Costello [1906–1959]) comedies for Universal. Berkeley's films for Warner Bros. earned him the most lasting acclaim. His grasp of art direction and the possibilities of the camera allowed him to develop a style so suited to black-and-white that it epitomized Art Deco. His production numbers open up from their ostensible stage settings, adding depth and mass movement to the core dances.

Each studio had staff dance directors, mostly performer-choreographers from Broadway or popular entertainment. Gould's assistant, Hermes Pan (1909–1990), throughout his long career worked with Fred Astaire, primarily as the credited choreographer. He developed both the celebrated duets with Ginger Rogers and the repertory of solos. Nick Castle specialized in modern dress musicals, primarily for Twentieth Century Fox, among them vehicles for Sonja Henie (1912–1969). He was also known for comedies, among them Abbott and Costello films for Universal and, later, Jerry Lewis(b. 1926) comedies for Paramount. Castle shared credits

for many films, such as Fox's Shirley Temple (b. 1928) musicals, with Geneva Sawyer, who reached Hollywood after being the dance director for the Cotton Club, the famed Harlem nightclub.

In the history of film, choreographers from ballet or modern dance have been offered only occasional work. The most successful transition from ballet (without the intermediate step of a career on Broadway) was made by Eugene Loring (1914–1982), best known for the Ballet Caravan company's Billy the Kid . His film work includes spectacular numbers for Cyd Charisse in the musical Silk Stockings (1957) and the biopic Deep in My Heart (1954), about the American composer Sigmund Romberg (1887–1951), most notably her sultry "One Alone" duet with James Mitchell (b. 1920). The Dr. Seuss fantasy The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953) brilliantly represents his creativity and ability to fit movement to visual style, especially in the dungeon ballet for the jailed musicians of banned instruments.

Fame (1980) focused on adolescent dancers at New York City's High School for the Performing Arts. Louis Falco (1942–1993), a modern dancer, choreographed classes, performances, and the film's spectacular "improvised" numbers. The modern dance choreographer Twyla Tharp (b. 1941) adapted her stylized movements to different periods for collaborations with director Milos Forman (b. 1932) on Hair (1979), Ragtime (1981), and Amadeus (1984). Lester Wilson (1942–1993), whose dance career encompasses modern dance and Broadway, found success as a choreographer for films focusing on contemporary social dance, from disco for Saturday Night Fever (1977) to hip-hop for Beat Street (1984). He has also worked on comedies, among them the Hot Shots! parody series (1991, 1993).

George Balanchine (1904–1983), the Russian-born choreographer who brought ballet to the United States, was also known in the 1930s for his Broadway work. He created ballets for Vera Zorina (1917–2003) that were interpolated into The Goldwyn Follies (1938), On Your Toes (1939), and I Was an Adventuress (1940). His most successful work for film, the gangster ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue , had been created for the stage version of On Your Toes (by Rodgers and Hart), and then expanded for the screen. The World War II Paramount all-star 1942 revue Star Spangled Rhythm featured a Zorina ballet by Balanchine set to "That Old Black Magic" and a specialty dance by the African American choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham for her troupe and a zoot-suited Eddie Anderson (1905–1977).

For Jerome Robbins (1918–1998), a Broadway choreographer who then became a ballet choreographer for Balanchine's New York City Ballet, the transition to film was more difficult. The "Little House of Uncle Thomas" sequence in The King and I (1956) is stage-bound and distant, as if it were filmed from the audience's perspective. He brought camera movement to the gang warfare in West Side Story (1961) with the long opening sequence of alternating skirmishes between the Jets and Sharks, the dance at the gym, and the rumble. But the dream ballets from the stage musical were eliminated.

Bob Fosse (1927–1987), who had danced in film for Jack Cole (1911–1974), opened up stage choreography well in The Pajama Game (1957) and Damn Yankees! (1958), especially in the "Once a Year Day" picnic and "Shoeless Joe" baseball practice sequences. The classic dance with hats, "Steam Heat" from Pajama Game , was presented in a show-within-a-show setting—in this case, a union rally—and was replicated from the stage. His most acclaimed film was the 1972 Cabaret (which he had not staged or directed on Broadway), which epitomizes the slow, sexual, and confrontational dance style of his later work.

Most of the remaining musicals filmed after the 1960s were restaged for vast choruses by Onna White (1922–2005) ( The Music Man , 1962; Oliver! , 1968; Mame , 1974) or the team of Mark Breaux and Dee Dee Wood ( The Sound of Music , 1965). The latter team also choreographed many new projects aimed at family audiences, among them the hugely popular Disney films Mary Poppins (1964) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

A slew of pop-music musicals were produced in the disco era, following the popularity of Saturday Night Fever . The best of these were Grease (1978) and Grease 2 (1982), both staged by Patricia Birch, which updated the early 1960s dances without losing the period flavor. Birch also contributed social dances to the Teatro Campesino's study of Los Angeles race riots, Zoot Suit (1981), and to many comedies, such as Big (1988) and

The First Wives Club (1996). Fosse's Broadway musical Chicago finally reached the screen in 2002, directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall (b. 1960).