Barrie Chase: a beautiful doll who danced for Jack Cole

Dance · Film
She’s a dancer’s dancer, a real stunner. The ballet-trained Barrie Chase was the leggiest creature since Cyd Charisse to hit the Hollywood gypsy-dance circuit when she got a gig as a chorus dancer in Vincent Minnelli‘s KISMET (1955). The choreographer? The great Jack Cole whom The Museum of Modern Art is honoring in All That ...

Jack Cole’s pinnacle, “Ladies in Waiting” 3

Dance · Film
Mitzi Gaynor, at right above, in a sotto voce-hiss to Kay Kendall in Jack Cole‘s brilliant “Ladies in Waiting” dance sequence from LES GIRLS (MGM, 1957), delivers bad news. Their friend, Angele (Taina Elg) will soon be exposed to her fiancé and his proper family as a tawdry chorus girl. The number, full of drama ...

Thank you, Gene Allen

Dance · Film · Visual arts
Saddened to learn today that the great Hollywood art director Gene Allen, the man who converted director George Cukor’s vision to rich mise-en-scene, died October 7 of natural causes in Newport Beach. Allen, who lived a long life, perished at 97. Yes, Gene Allen, the much hallowed Academy Award-winning art director of MY FAIR LADY ...

Barrie Chase rocks the Hermes sandal 4

Dance · Fashion
An interview with the statuesque and still beautiful Barrie Chase spurred a conversation on Facebook about the hip-looking Grecian-style sandals the cool sixties dancer wears in these photos. Chase has not only gorgeous long limbs, but beautiful ballet-trained feet. First to comment was longtime ballet master and presenter Don Hewitt, “I have called them Hermes ...

We love the women of TCM Classic Film Festival 2013

Film
This was our fourth year attending the marvelously programmed, super well-organized TCM classic film festival right in the center of our city. The Festival opened with a bang — a screening of Barbra Streisand’s powerhouse film debut in FUNNY GIRL (1968). It continued through the weekend, highlighting many admirable women of the classic Hollywood community. ...

Barrie Chase to reminisce about her favorite dance partner 1

Dance
We would never miss the upcoming event at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences this Thursday evening when the elegant, long-legged beauty, Barrie Chase, appears in person for a fun screening and panel discussion.  Clips from four of the Emmy-Award winning television specials Chase made with Fred Astaire in the late 1950s and early ...

Fred & Barrie for the Fourth 2

Dance · Fashion
The meeting of two slenderellas …. in her red jumpsuit, Barrie Chase looks like a Fourth of July firecracker!