Vera-Ellen

Without a doubt she is best-remembered as the dancing sensation of 1954's most popular film, White Christmas, and should one forget that, it will be on again next December and all the Decembers afterwards to remind you.  Watching this woman dance, most especially in this film, thrills me.

First and foremost this was a Bing Crosby movie made at his home studio, Paramount.  It was, if you will, a reimagined Holiday Inn, his 1942 film also featuring the song White Christmas.  The new film would essentially be about a boy act and a girl act who join forces to put on a show at an inn, spruced up from its own turn as the inn of Holiday Inn.

Other than Crosby it was thought Fred Astaire would be the partner.  He also was in Holiday Inn.  When he couldn't make it, the part went to energetic hoofer Donald O'Connor who was a whirling dervish in Call Me Madam the year before.  Opposite him in that film was the lovely lady of our focus here, Vera-Ellen.  People went gaga over them and here was a chance to pair them again. So Vera was signed. Great idea.  But then O'Connor dropped out and everyone scrambled for another singing, dancing male who would take second-billing to Crosby.  Welcome Danny Kaye.  He would partner with Vera.  He had before.

The girl act needed to be two fetching blondes who would play sisters.  The first time we see them, in fact, they are singing a song called just that... Sisters.  It would have been ideal if both ladies could sing and dance but that was not to be.  Vera could handle the dancing but she didn't sing and Rosemary Clooney, who begged Paramount to include her because she wanted to work with Crosby, was a magnificent singer who didn't dance.

Vera has three main dance routines in White Christmas... the cool and limpid The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing with Kaye, the big minstrel production number Mandy with John Brascia and the exciting fast-paced Abraham also with Brascia.  Her two dances with him I watch over and over again when I pull the DVD off my shelves.  He would likely have never been hired had Kaye been able to perform the steps necessary in Mandy and Abraham but he wasn't that good of a dancer.

Electrifying with John Brascia on Mandy

Hollywood considered her the best female dancer of her generation.  Her obsessive professionalism was legendary and few worked harder on a routine.  Watch her two dances with Brascia and take note that not only were each of her steps perfect but the transitions from step to step were flawless.  Observing their steps, watching each moment of every movement, seeing how they are so there for one another sometimes feels like watching pros at a dance class rather than a big, glossy production number in the brand new VistaVision.  They were simply a stunning dance team.  Oh, how I would have enjoyed seeing more of their work somewhere but there was no more.  I really would have liked to have seen what they'd have done with a waltz.  

Ever present in Vera-Ellen's life, schmooshed in there with the dancing and its considerable movement, was her rather frail health.  She was frail and oh so shy as a young, only child born to a piano turner and his wife in a Cincinnati suburb in 1921.  How unusual that one in frail health would choose dancing and then that her shy self would want to make that dancing so public.

By age nine, she was very ill with several ailments and it was decided to put her in dance classes to improve her physical and emotional states.  Folks who knew her said her talents were obvious from the beginning.  She herself would say I don't remember if I liked dancing because I was good at it or I was good at it because I liked it.  

In her teen years she won a Major Bowes Amateur Hour (a talent contest) and soon found work in a couple of nightclub acts and worked with two bands.  Along the way she became a Rockette but two weeks later was canned for having a little bit too much individuality.  She made her Broadway debut in Very Warm for May at age 18 in 1939 and then in 1940 in Higher and Higher.  Another newcomer, June Allyson, was in both shows and the two became friendly.

In 1941 she married a fellow Broadway dancer, Robert Hightower.  The marriage lasted for most of the five years they had on paper but she never wanted to talk about him although she would sometimes say that he was nice but that it just didn't work out.  I think that adding it all up means G-A-Y and I've just turned down the volume on my gaydar.  Vera was always lovingly gay-friendly and in the early fifties on the arm of many a gay actor, frequently Rock Hudson.  She never promoted a romance scenario but there were those movie magazines about Her Impending Marriage to Rock Hudson or Vera and Rock Caught Out Dancing Again or Rock and Vera Enjoy Sailing. 

Pinball with Rock Hudson

She danced in Panama Hattie (1940) starring Merman and was in

By Jupiter (1942) with Ray Bolger and then appeared in a revival of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1943).

When she started to become more and more popular, her mother, who took a keen interest in her career, suggested that her daughter, who looked much younger than she was, shave five years off her age to promote the young dancing whiz idea.

Producer and studio owner Samuel Goldwyn spotted her in Yankee  and apparently knew she was right for his studio.  Pretty, blonde and leggy and some talent were items that were checked off his list and just as important was that one had to fit in with the family... his stable of stars and crew.  Ol' Sam didn't like his more important stars to act all high and mighty.  This is family... fit it.  

Vera didn't feel she would have a problem exactly... she would fit in in terms of temperament and getting along, but she was proudly a dancer and that's what she wanted to do.  In some ways, I sense, she never came fully to terms with Hollywood, in general, or the acting profession.  

The studio had put out some important work and would continue to do so.  Its small roster of contracted stars was generally impressive.  But Sam wanted his own superstar, someone all the studios would envy... so with that in mind they hired Danny Kaye.  No, really,  Honest to God he did.  He hired Danny Kaye.

They put him in a series of comedies, usually with Virginia Mayo, which folks saw while choking with laughter.  Danny Kaye.  I am one, perhaps in the minority, who understands completely why the great star's movies fairly quickly were nowhere to be found, chiefly because they weren't being made.  Once someone asked me why I thought she wasn't a bigger star and I couldn't hold back saying because she made three movies with Danny Kaye.  I'm sure I'd been drinking.

Anyway, there she was with Kaye, Mayo and Steve Cochran (ok, you wanna see a different attitude, just see what I've written before on him) in not one but two silly things... Wonder Man (1945) and The Kid from Brooklyn (1946).  Vera pretty much just danced, Cochran, of course, the mug, Kaye the nitwit and Mayo the sexy, leading lady.

Life Magazine took notice

People seemed to fall in love with both of these lovely, blonde dancing sensations.  Good as Mayo was at dancing, Vera was better.  Mayo's singing voice, like Vera's, was also dubbed.   One final thing they agreed on... Kaye wasn't their favorite leading man.  The women became good friends for life.

Goldwyn didn't pursue Vera as much as he did Mayo so she landed at 20th Century Fox for a pair.  In Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), another of those trios-on-a-husband-hunt lightweight fares, she had surprisingly little to do considering she was one of the title stars.  June Haver, Vivian Blaine and George Montgomery locked up most of the screen time.

Fox was still trying to make a movie star out of popular singer Dick Haymes in Carnival in Costa Rica (1947).  The cornball story of parents plotting an arranged marriage at fiesta time (yeah, on Fox's backlot) takes a backseat to Haymes' golden pipes and Vera's energetic dancing.

She and her old Broadway pal Allyson were in Words and Music (1948), one of those all-star extravaganzas that all studios did well but MGM did better.  Allyson, by this point, was already a big star while Vera was not.  It was her first opportunity to dance with Gene Kelly.  Their Slaughter on 5th Avenue number was a complete joy.

Love Happy (1949) is more famous for being the Marx Brothers last movie and an early Marilyn Monroe appearance than it is for being a Vera-Ellen film.  She plays a Broadway hopeful who gets tangled up with the zany brothers who are, in turn, accidentally involved in diamond smuggling.  Nothing worth your time.

On the Town (1949) playing Miss Turnstyles and paired again with Kelly.  It concerns three sailors (Kelly, Sinatra and Jules Munshin) on leave in New York and the three women (Vera, Ann Miller and Betty Garrett) they encounter along the way.  It is considered to be the first Hollywood musical to be filmed on location which no doubt helped it become a rousing success.

Apparently Fred Astaire had been paying some attention to Vera and asked for her as his next leading lady at MGM.  He and others in the movie world noticed there didn't seem to be any style of dancing she couldn't perform... tap, toe, adagio, acrobatic, jazz, modern dance, comic and more.  She was as good as a solo dancer as she was with partners.  The film was Three Little Words (1950).

It is the story of a real-life song-writing team, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.  Highly fictionalized and highly entertaining, it probably contains Red Skelton's best performance.  He is partnered with gorgeous Arlene Dahl while Vera is with Astaire.  He and Vera have a lively comic dance with Mr. and Mrs. Hoofer at Home, one of the most unusual dances you could possibly see.  A pair of highlights don't feature any of the four.  Gloria DeHaven sings a mean Who's Sorry Now? and famously there's Debbie Reynolds in her film debut performing I Want to Be Loved By You (poo poo pi doo). 

Vera and David Niven clicked in Happy Go Lovely (1951), a musical-comedy about the romance between a chorus girl and a millionaire.  Some people carped it was a cute comedy marred by too much dancing.  I'm not so sure there is such a thing as too much dancing.

Her second film with Astaire was The Belle of New York (1952) where, again, there was much dancing but in this case it was a nice break from a rather silly story.  She and Astaire were a great team as I see it but Vera's two films with him were among Astaire's lesser efforts.

One of Vera's most famous roles was as the princess in Call Me Madam (1953) opposite Donald O'Connor.  Their Something to Dance About number was one was her all-time favorites.  I also thought he was her best famous dance partner... I suppose passing over Kelly and Astaire is questionable but there you are.  With all said, the movie belongs to Ethel Merman who rules in her best movie role.

Big Leaguer (1953) is the only one of Vera's 14 films in which she didn't dance.  The comedy drama stars Edward G. Robinson who runs a Florida training camp for the New York Giants.  His niece comes for a visit and engages in a romance with one of the players, much to her uncle's consternation.  It wasn't bad (Robinson is terrific) but had it been better, Vera's career might have taken on an entirely new (and needed) hue. 

Around the time of the release of White Christmas, Vera married again, this time to Victor Rothschild of the wealthy banking family.  Legally the union lasted 12 years but it was over long before that.

Unfortunately for her and some other musical talents, when musicals became less popular (actually almost non-existent) in the late fifties, she was left with little to do.  Mayo, Cyd Charisse and Leslie Caron went on to display dramatic talents and appear in comedies.  Vera's dramatic and comedy skills were largely untested and she thought so, too.  She didn't have to prove herself as a dancer but for anything else, that life-long shyness came crawling back.

One thing she tried that was new and apparently rewarding was a Vegas dance act in 1955.  She made one last film, another musical, Let's Be Happy (1957) with singer Tony Martin.  Its success was sparse.  It was the only movie she ever made outside of the States... in this case Scotland.  It wasn't as bad as some said but fans commented that she didn't look well or happy.  How interesting that happiness always seemed to avoid her and yet in a brief career, she made three films with happy in the title.

Personal issues, including her poor health, also took a toll.  Due to her compulsive eating regimen throughout the fifties, it was determined that she had suffered from anorexia (not yet called that) throughout at least the fifties.  Her weight had been something that was discussed when White Christmas was released... people mentioned her stick legs and wondered why her costumes all covered her neck.  It's assumed the aging process from anorexia had begun in her neck.

Anorexia has a way of aging people and the woman who once altered her age because she looked so much younger was now looking far older than her years.  Let's face it, in Hollywood this was not a good thing for women so this got added to her other woes.

Ultimately her arthritis became fairly troublesome and despite a few TV appearances, her performing career was over.  To try and work through the arthritis in any way she could, she took dance lessons.

In 1963 she lost her three-month old daughter to SIDS.  This was a final blow to her and she went into seclusion.

It was nearly 20 years before I would hear of her again and that was the report of her death.  Sadly, she passed away from ovarian cancer in Los Angeles in 1981.  My favorite female dancing star was 60 years old.

Her many dance routines are thankfully available on YouTube.

Next posting:

A guilty pleasure