Jack Cole’s pinnacle, “Ladies in Waiting” 3
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 ...
Historic Jack Cole film retrospective to MoMA
ALL THAT JACK (COLE) celebrating a great Hollywood choreographer 18-film retrospective/interviews/talks coming to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Jan 20 – Feb 4 2016 save the dates – film listings in december
Jack Cole’s precious “Ain’t Misbehavin'” from GENTLEMEN MARRY BRUNETTES (1955)
In which Cole first slows the Fats Waller song to a snail’s pace for Alan Young to sing, then ramps it up, to a jungle beat, spewing forth his love of African dance.
Bicoastal Jack Cole cross-fertilizes crazy hair Broadway-to-Hollywood
Actress Joan Diener, featured on Broadway in Kismet (1953 – 1955) shares a crazy-hair & headress look with Betty Grable, pictured below in “Down Boy” from Three for the Show (1955, Columbia Pictures). Jack Cole, who choreographed (first) Kismet then Three for the Show, took great care with the appearance of the women with whom ...
Thank you, Gene Allen
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 ...
Jack Cole choreography for GILDA set to sizzle on UCLA Film Archive big screen 1
Do you enjoy this classic image of Rita Hayworth as GILDA? It’s a capture from Hayworth’s iconic high-end striptease, “Put the Blame on Mame,” choreographed by Jack Cole, the brilliant dance maker who rocked Hayworth’s world at Columbia Pictures in the 1940s. Cole’s dance numbers (“Put the Blame on Mame,” “Amado Mio“), taken together, raise ...
What a week! Los Angeles blossoms in the fine arts
I’ve inhabited Los Angeles more or less, since 1989. The city’s rich art existence, long undetected, has kept me busy and happy here. There is little doubt, however, that something arts-phenomenal is happening right now in our city. It must be true; the New York Times is sputtering about it all the time. In fact, ...
Rita Hayworth to Jack Cole: You Excite Me
Clearly if Jack Cole excited Rita Hayworth, the feeling was mutual. The above beautiful, posed color still from Columbia Pictures’ marvelous wartime dance-filled musical, “Tonight and Every Night” (1945, chor: Jack Cole) captures “You Excite Me” — a wild rumba-rhythmed concoction Cole cooked for Hayworth. The photo features six of Rita’s dancing colleagues at Columbia ...
Meet Marilyn Meme•roe
From Wikipedia: Memetics is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. The choreographer Jack Cole, a creative genius, had the ability to perpetuate the meme ...
Writhing & wriggling Gwen Verdon elicits yawns in “David and Bathsheba”
In this wonderful clip from DAVID AND BATHSHEBA (1951), the great Gwen Verdon fails to arouse the attention of a couple of onlookers, despite choreographer Jack Cole throwing every slinky trick in the book at them. Watching Gorgeous Gwen, you’d think they’d at least sit up in their chairs! The 20th Century-Fox Biblical epic, directed ...