Jack Cole ‘discovered’ Steve Reeves
As you see from the above “information sheet” for “Theatre World” magazine, Steve Reeves, the astonishingly buff muscle guy in his first creative foray worked for the choreographer Jack Cole in Kismet on Broadway. Reeves played the “Wazir” [chief of police]’s guard. Reeves (not to be confused with George Reeves, television’s “Superman”) was big on ...
‘Give in!’ Buy Gwen Verdon portrait at Bonhams auction
little man little lola wants you. 12.5 x 17.75 in. As “Lola” in Damn Yankees, Gwen Verdon brought down the house with her powerhouse performance and her inimitable version of “Whatever Lola Wants,” performing the role over 1,000 times. She began both a working and personal relationship with choreographer Bob Fosse as a result of ...
Hollywood 1952: Jack Cole’s ethnic dance includes voodoo & waltz
In the summer and fall of 1951, the dance maker Jack Cole undertook two major new choreographies, one each at the two leading film studios of the era. He staged and danced the lead role in a voodoo ceremonial-rite for Lydia Bailey, at Twentieth Century Fox, and choreographed a sumptuous ‘grand valse’ for The Merry Widow ...
Ballet & blistering jazz-dance collide in Paris
Sep
3
2020
Youtube, you’ve done it again! And again and again. That’s how many times I have watched this wonderful newsreel clip, clearly an excerpt from a longer British Pathe story concerning … la danse. It takes place in Paris, which is always an excellent start. The cameraman seems be following a haughty prima ballerina, Ludmilla Tcherina, ...
Show some respect! for Martha Graham … and Jack Cole 5
Jun
27
2020
I was intrigued to learn, while doing research, that Jack Cole, a great dance pedagogue, instructed his pupils as follows: “Jack asked us to stand when he entered the dance studio, like Martha Graham‘s students,” one of Cole’s late-life students at UCLA told me in an interview. Cole was long an admirer of Graham with ...
‘Instead of dance, it’s choreography,’ gripes choreographer Robert Alton 1
danny kaye, ‘choreography’ number from white christmas (1954) Danny Kaye, in the screenshot above, performs a send-up of Jack Cole‘s Hindu-Jazz in Robert Alton‘s “Choreography” number in WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954). The number is primarily a spoof on Martha Graham, and I imagine Kaye inserting this little fillip just for fun. Kaye worked extensively with Jack ...
Review: Blue13 Dance Company hits home run at The Wallis 2
Blue13 Dance Company “Diya aurToofan” photo credit: Kevin Parry for The Wallis Last night’s boffo showcase by the 15-year-old Blue13 Dance Company brought great pleasure, including a former secret now in plain sight thanks to presentation by The Wallis: the presence of a real choreographer in our midst. Achinta McDaniel, American-born of Indian descent, along ...
Before ‘Redhead’: ‘Gentlemen Chase Redheads’
gwen verdon, richard kiley, stars of ‘redhead‘ She starred, in a peak moment of her Broadway fame, in the Tony Award-winning musical, Redhead, which opened at the 46th Street Theater on February 5, 1959. Her director/choreographer was Mr. Fosse. courtesy of verdon-fosse legacy The show, a murder mystery in the vein of KNIVES OUT but ...
Merle Oberon’s terpsichorean trepidation 4
For those who recently watched THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1934) on Turner Classic Movies, a special Jack Cole connection has come to mind from 86 years ago. Our story involves the film’s glamorous stars, Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon. The duo, co-stars of “Pimpernel” were on a touring junket tied to the movie’s release on December ...
Thank you, Robert Evans, for ‘Serpico’ scene at Lewisohn Stadium
In this snippet from Serpico (1973), fellow cops Tony Roberts and Al Pacino haggle in the eerie ghost town of a grand structure where so much New York art and culture — famously, summer concerts by the New York Philharmonic — met an avid audience. It’s the 8,000-seat-capacity Lewisohn Stadium on the campus of City ...