Films on the slate:

• Tonight & Every Night (1945)
  Full of dance; full of Rita Hayworth. Features the great Marc Platt and Cole himself dances. He jitterbugs!
• On the Riviera (1951)
  Wonderful dance numbers, Gwen Verdon sparkles, and “Happy Ending” is a masterpiece.
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1952)
  Jack Cole catapults Marilyn Monroe into the stratosphere with “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” — and Jane Russell’s no slouch either.
• Les Girls (1957)
  Cole contributes dance sequences of Cukor-esque sophistication — and he choreographs for Gene Kelly.

Cole is #1 with a bullet around arts·meme. We call him Balanchine Junior.

It will be a great joy to co-host with Robert Osborne. I interviewed Robert last December when I was a journalist bobbling in the Caribbean on TCM Cruise.

For four years I have researched and written about Jack Cole. He changed my life as a dance critic and now I get to honor him. I’m thrilled!

I fly to Atlanta to tape the programs at the end of June.

Please stay tuned for further announcements  … and don’t touch that dial!

Like this? Read more:

• arts·meme’s thread of Jack Cole coverage here
• Jack Cole & Marilyn Monroe in the Los Angeles Times
• Jack Cole at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in The Huffington Post

• In silhouette, on the platform, is Jack Cole, who staged the number.  Performing a dance-y horse race with Jack is his muse and partner, Gwen Verdon. This we learn from the horse’s mouth … er… from Academy of Dance on Film founder Larry Billman. Gwen’s wearing a wig, or, as Larry suggests, a sheath of fabric to lend her hair a pony look.  

• What about the color of that Travilla gown on Grable, costumers? And how do you like the way she jumps right on it, choreographers? You do that, too!

• The jive talk-back,  Jack Cole. High hand claps, Jack Cole. Color scheme, Jack Cole. Adult humor, Jack Cole. We love this sequence!

Like this? Read more:

• Cole made “No Talent Joe” for Betty in the same film, “Meet Me After the Show.”  Genius!
• Betty Grable sizzles in Jack Cole’s “How Come You Do Me Like You Do?”

An out-of-shape, lazy-bum drunkard of a character whom we watch deteriorate over an hour of film time just decides to dance. Because, as “So You Think You Can Dance,” instructs us, even in its title, just about anyone can be a dancer.

May I offer an alternative? The sequence below, choreographed by the great Jack Cole — he dances in it as well — closes Twentieth Century Fox’s “On the Riviera” (1951). Every element of  “Happy Ending” rings true. Not a single step is wrong or jarring; on the contrary, all is balanced and golden and smart and right. It’s pure evidence of Cole’s magical ability to organize bodies in space, his stellar chains of movement invention, and his skill at highlighting a soloist with supporting dancers.

“Happy Ending” is a “how to” primer in choreography, dear dance makers. So study it well.

Significant here — with apologies for the muddying down of “On the Riviera””s spectacular Fox technicolor palette:

• Jack Cole dances. His magnificent spreading port-de-bras graces the number’s final frames. He had a huge wing span.
• Gwen Verdon beyond perfection at the center of the three women and then comes her masterful solo on the platform. Nothing Bob Fosse ever put on Gwen Verdon, in my humble opinion, compares to what Jack Cole did for her habitually. In my book Fosse scores in far second-place behind Jack Cole.
• In the foreground, and partnering Gwen, the wonderful George Martin, who died not one year ago, and whom we met at Jacob’s Pillow in the summer of 2010 along with his wife Ethel, also a killer Jack Cole dancer. These people practiced an art form that is now lost.
• Don’t get me started on those great costumes. The hats!

Like this? Read more:

• Jack Cole rocks Rita Hayworth’s world
• Ow! Betty Grable sizzles in Jack Cole choreography
• Mitzi Gaynor fabulous in Jack Cole’s “I Don’t Care”
• Jane Russell remembers gentleman Jack Cole
• Marilyn dances

Choreographers, pay attention @ 1:43. Ladies and gentlemen, that is how to make an entrance — sliding in on your knees!

Jack Cole from 2:32 to 3:06 is as good as it gets. Top drawer. Monster technique.

Notice how Cole never fully stands up? He’s kind of crouching (in dance terms he is moving in plié, with bent knees). And he’s doing it more consistently than anyone else on the stage. Observations:

• It’s very difficult to dance like that. 
• Cole also hunches his upper back — consistently. The guy was amazing at hitting shapes, and holding them. Jack Cole could certainly dance with his back fully erect; this is a choreographic choice.
• The low-to-the-ground work reflects Cole’s modern dance roots. It also reflects the jitterbug moves Cole picked up from dancing with ladies like Marie Bryant at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. And by the way, Jack Cole was roundly beat up, at least once, for dancing in public with brown-skinned women.

Tonight and Every Night is a very fun, watchable movie; a backstage drama, it’s full of dance. The marvelous Marc Platt, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo guy, has a speaking role in it, and he dances as well. 

What a coincidence, Jerome Robbins’s sailor ballet “Fancy Free,” which led to On the Town (1949) and made possible all kinds of Americanisms in classical ballet, dates from 1944. Who copied whom?  

Like this? Read more:

• Marie Bryant put a bun in Betty Grable’s oven
• Rita Hayworth’s gown by John Singer Sargent
• Jack Cole invites you to a ball
• Jerome Robbins, ballet drill sargent

The silken jazz dancer, Marie Bryant (1919-1978), seen here jiving with the great Harold Nicholas, was, for a time, rehearsal assistant to Jack Cole. That’s interesting. Cole’s performance group was all white. It wouldn’t be otherwise. But he clearly relied on Bryant for special tasks. Asked what she did for Jack Cole, Bryant replied,  “I teach Betty Grable to shake her buns.”

I have long wondered what transformed Grable from a schmaltzy-waltzer into the bootie-shaking hottie of “No Talent Joe.” I naturally credited Cole. Now I think differently. Enter Marie Bryant.

_{Thank you, Wandering & Pondering for posting on Marie Bryant.}

“The designer Jean Louis, supposedly inspired by John Singer Sargent‘s famous portrait of the décolleté Madame X, created for Miss Hayworth a fetishistic black satin strapless gown, with elbow-length gloves, and the dance director Jack Cole devised the strip-tease routine in which she flung those gloves to her audience.

The director, Vidor, expected the filming of “Put the Blame on Mame” would be difficult, but he was pleasantly surprised the moment Miss Hayworth appeared. “She sauntered on the stage holding her head high, in that magnificent way she does,” he said, “stepping long like a sleek young tiger cut, and the whistles that sounded who have shamed a canary’s convention. She enjoyed very second of it. Then she did that elaborate difficult ‘Mame’ number in two takes.”"

Blurb taken from: City of Nets, A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s, by Otto Friedrich

Enjoy!

Not primarily an MGM man (Kismet” twice: 1944, 1955, Les Girls 1957, Designing Woman 1957; still he was affiliated more with Columbia and Fox), Cole prevailed nonetheless in influencing the production’s design. The  evidence is the glowing pink light bathing the scene at 2:55. That’s Jack Cole. The guy saw dance in colors. He would ramp up that pink 100 degrees on his next assignment.

Dance detectives will note that Cole marched, er, waltzed across town, from Culver City to Pico Blvd, and created “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” at Fox in 1953. Smart dance maker, he built upon components (waltzing, tour jeté-ing women) from “The Merry Widow,” contemporizing them and adding Marilyn Monroe’s combustible va-va voom. Result: this time, it all clicked, he created a timeless masterpiece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_aqOTVKebY

_{Thank you Larry Billman, for the MGM-ania.}

Like this? Read more:

• Balanchine invites you to a ball
• The latest from Leo the Lion
• Jack & Marilyn. No not Jack Kennedy, Jack Cole.
• Our entire Jack Cole thread here.
• Jack Cole Made Marilyn Move (Los Angeles Times)

Destinations: Key West and Cozumel.

Getting our letters of transit in order is a huge challenge — but unlike Claude Rains, we do not have the proprietor of Rick’s Café Americain pointing a gun at our belly.

Among the other correspondents on board the S.S. TCM (otherwise known as the Celebrity Millennium), film bio-guru, Scott Eyman and his Palm Beach Post colleague, Lynn Kalber.

TCM has programmed great on-board screenings, including a special theme, a focus on “Hitchcock Blondes,” with special appearances by Eva Marie Saint for “North by Northwest” and Tippi Hedren for “The Birds.”

Ernest Borgnine will be present for discussion after screening “The Poseidon Adventure.”

Beyond the actors, film director Norman Jewison will visit with us concurrent to a double-bill of The Thomas Crown Affair and In the Heat of the Night. That’s my personal favorite. Here is the events schedule, including screenings.

♣      ♣     ♣

I’m very pleased, for Jack Cole‘s sake, that the roster also includes two films associated with the great film choreographer. 

• Moon Over Miami,– Cole’s first Hollywood gig. (The Jack Cole Dancers appearance hit the cutting room floor, but the gig put Cole in front of a movie camera for the first time.)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks’s comic masterpiece, which would be nine million percent less fabulous sans Jack Cole’s brilliant choreography for Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.

And, guess what dance people? The TCM program for the event mentions Jack Cole in both the film descriptions!!!

TCM hosts, Robert Osborne, just surfacing after a long work hiatus, and Ben Mankiewicz, will also be also on board.

Wish us happy sailing~!

_{Thank you, Casablanca expert Michael Schlesinger.}

The seamstresses — part of Ye Olde Hollywoode.

_{Quel photo! Thank you, curcumperficio.net}

[click on image for better view]

The Nixon Theatre was the top game in town — the place where circa 1971 I saw naked people writhe on stage in “Hair.” Not surprisingly, the hard working Jack Cole once pounded its floorboards, playing a Hungarian gypsy in “Venus in Silk” in 1935.

I’m guessing that this operetta, a precursor to American musical theater, was a schmaltzy little nostalgia for the good ‘ole Austro-Hungarian empire …

There’s Jack, as Raki the gypsy, listed at the bottom of the roster. Well cast. To put it mildly, Cole, who picked up the habit from his time with Ruth St. Denis, was an early dance “internationalist.”

The name of Cole’s nightclub partner, Alice Dudley, whom he met in the Humphrey-Weidman troupe, appears right above his. Dancers? Are you getting this? Jack Cole and Alice Dudley danced in 1) modern dance, 2) night club and on 3) Broadway stage. There were no categories… they did it all!

The Internet auctioneer calls “Venus” a “rare flop” reflecting that the show opened in Pittsburgh on  October 1, 1935 as an out-of-town tryout and closed the following week in Washington, D.C., failing to arrive on Broadway.

The operetta had only had its debut in Zurich in 1932 — tough times in Europe for itsJewish composer Robert Stoltz. A timeline of Stoltz’s amazing career here. I remember my Hungarian boyfriend complaining about the  heavy diet of saccharine operettas he grew up on in Budapest. This must be the stuff he dreaded.

I do love how “Venus in Silk” is called, on the program, a “gay musical.” I bet it was.

Like this? Read more:

• Nijinsky danced in Pittsburgh
• Say a dance prayer for Gene Kelly in Pittsburgh
• Choreographer Kyle Abraham remembers Pittsburgh radio station (Los Angeles Times)