The seamstresses — part of Ye Olde Hollywoode.

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

Click on the photo for a better view.

If you examine Cole’s head and shoulders, and Marilyn’s, you’ll see the difference between a trained dancer and not.

The photo shows Cole’s much vaunted skill to “become” the woman on whom he was choreographing. It’s fabulous how he juts out his hip; it’s a totally womanish movement created for a dancer with an infamous derriere. Cole otherwise didn’t use the hips in this soft manner, he preferred bump and grind … hard, percussive actions. Think Gwen Verdon.

One can guess that last minute run-throughs were necessary since, unlike her painstaking voluntary rehearsing for “‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,”  Monroe totally lapsed and flaked out on rehearsals for this film.

For three weeks, Cole waited for her day after day in a rented Carnegie Hall studio in New York getting more and more pissed off.

To the right, Marilyn rehearses with Cole’s teaching assistant, Verdon, behind her. That was in 1954, better days for the actress.

I just watched “Let’s Make Love,” a grippingly terrible movie; George Cukor really lost his touch on that one.

Only Yves Montand escapes the torpor in one piece. But, off the set, he had a blonde distraction . . .

_{top photo: john bryson}

The event will take place Saturday August 14, 4 pm. Read about it here.

The Cole commemoration fits surprisingly well with Jacob’s Pillow history. In his early career, the genre-busting dancer-choreographer had his first dance training with pioneering dance troupe, Denishawn.

After Denishawn’s demise circa 1931, Cole became a member of founder Ted Shawn’s men’s group. Shawn himself begat the Jacob’s Pillow festival, donating his farm in the Berkshire Mountains as a summer retreat for modern dancers. Great modern-dance choreographers, from Graham, Humphrey, and Limon up through Bill T. Jones, created and performed important works at Jacob’s Pillow.

In the photo above, you can see imposing physicality of the dancer Jack Cole. Note the sculptural detail as Cole reaches skyward and the two women claw toward the ground. Cole has a great eye for levels — using staircases or platforms as dancing props, or just using the body, he was a master of leaps and low-to-the-ground choreography.

In the shot at right (click for detail), Cole coaches Marilyn Monroe, not on her dancing, although he did that too. Here, in rehearsal with Yves Montand for “Let’s Make Love” (1960), he appears to be helping Marilyn with dialogue or singing.

In a 1969 interview, screenplay writer George Axelrod (“The Seven Year Itch,” “The Manchurian Candidate, “Bus Stop,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”) remembers his first view of Monroe:

When did you meet Marilyn?
When I first came out and started working with Billy [Wilder] in ’53. She was rehearsing a musical at 20th—I remember she was doing a dance routine with [the choreographer] Jack Cole on a hot, sweaty soundstage in grungy rehearsal clothes, all covered with sweat, and she was just edible—glorious.

_{photo credit:  Timeline Films}

• Jane Russell remembers Jack Cole
• Marilyn dances
• Jack Cole Made Marilyn Monroe to Move, Los Angeles Times
• Last summer we were at the American Dance Festival