Seven Things to Know About Vera-Ellen

1. Vera-Ellen attended the Hessler Studio of Dancing in Cincinnati, Ohio. Other famous alumni include Doris Day and Tyrone Power. Harry Hessler and his wife operated the dancing school until sometime in the 1940s. The historic building is a residential home today.

2. Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney, who famously played sisters in White Christmas, both grew up near Cincinnati. Vera-Ellen was raised in the Cincinnati suburb of Norwood, Ohio (making her a “Norwooder” as the locals say). Rosemary was from Maysville, Kentucky, located about an hour southeast of Cincy.

3. As a teenager in the 1930s, she won as one of the weekly performers on the national radio program Major Bowes Amateur Hour. She subsequently toured New York theaters, dancing for $50 a week. (Major Bowes Amateur Hour eventually moved to television and evolved into the classic Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour.)

On the set of White Christmas.

4. She made her Broadway debut in 1939 with a small part in the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical Very Warm for May (which starred June Allyson). After Vera-Ellen appeared in three more Broadway musicals, including By Jupiter with Ray Bolger, Samuel Goldwyn signed her to a contract with MGM.

5. Although Vera-Ellen only made 14 films, she was paired with all the famous Hollywood dancers of her day: Fred Astaire (Three Little Words; The Belle of New York); Gene Kelly (On the Town); Donald O’Connor (Call Me Madam); and Danny Kaye (White Christmas and others). Her singing voice was usually dubbed (including her numbers in White Christmas).

6. She retired from performing at age 38 after appearing on television in The Dinah Shore Show in 1959. While married to her second husband, millionaire Victor Rothschild, Vera-Ellen gave birth to her only child in 1963. Sadly, daughter Victoria Ellen died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

7. After her divorce from Rothschild in 1966, Vera-Ellen kept a very low public profile. She allegedly gave a couple of interviews, one in the late 1970s and one shortly before her death. Vera-Ellen Westmeier Rohe died at age 60 in 1981 from ovarian cancer. Reference her famous name, she explained in an interview: “When Mother was expecting me, she had a dream that she would have a baby girl named Vera-Ellen. She even saw the hyphen in her dream. And so, though Daddy didn’t like it, that became my name.”

This Week's Poll: What's Your Favorite Dance Number About Love?

This week's poll may be a challenge.  This is the season of love, and I thought it might be fun to choose your favorite dance number about love.  Here are your choices:

"Let's Face the Music and Dance" -- Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (from Follow the Fleet)

"Slaughter on 10th Avenue" -- Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen (from Words and Music)

"Dancing in the Dark" -- Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse (from The Bandwagon)

"An American in Paris Ballet" -- Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron

"Cheek to Cheek" -- Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (from Top Hat)

I realize that "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" doesn't exactly sound like a love dance, but if you have seen it, you know that it is.  I'll be very interested to see which of these fabulous numbers is the favorite.

12 Days of Christmas: Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye Team Up for a "White Christmas"

There was a time when I grumbled because White Christmas was shown every Yuletide season while Holiday Inn (1942) only made sporadic appearances. Most critics consider the latter film, in which the song “White Christmas” was introduced, to be the superior musical. It was only after my wife and I acquired both films on video that I recognized the virtues of White Christmas. It’s a near-perfect blend of music and comedy, with the cast and crew at, or near, the peak of their careers. With apologies to the amazing Fred Astaire, White Christmas holds up much better than Holiday Inn, thanks largely to one of Danny Kaye’s most delightful performances.

He plays Private Phil Davis, who saves the life of popular crooner Captain Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) during World War II. After the war, Phil and Bob team up to form a hugely-successful duo that plays nightclubs, has its own radio show, and eventually produces Broadway musicals. Concerned that Bob will never settle down, Phil tries to play matchmaker. He finds a promising love interest for Bob in Betty Haynes (Rosemary Clooney), half of a singing sister act (the other half being the spunky Vera-Ellen as Judy).

Phil and Bob follow the Haynes Sisters to Vermont, where the girls are scheduled to perform at a holiday resort. In their surprise, they learn that the inn is run by Tom Waverly (Dean Jagger), a retired general who commanded their unit during the war. The inn is doing very poorly financially, so Phil and Bob decide to put on a big show to drum up business.

It’s a thin premise for a two-hour musical, but it works amazingly well. The dance numbers are staged energetically, with the highlight being Danny and Vera-Ellen dancing outside a nightclub to the melodic “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing.” A lively performer with sex appeal, Vera-Ellen makes an ideal partner for the graceful, athletic Kaye. The two appeared together in two previous Kaye comedies (The Kid From Brooklyn and Wonder Man), though Virginia Mayo played the lead opposite Danny in both films.

Crosby and Clooney generate a more subdued, but no less effective, chemistry. Their duet “Count Your Blessings” was the big hit song from the film.

The most effective pairing in the film, though, is the one between Crosby and Kaye. They’re a sensational team, whether doing musical numbers or comedy (their version of “Sisters”, done originally as a joke on the set, is hysterically funny). Their relationship reminds me of Crosby and Bob Hope in the Road movies—which makes sense, considering that writers Norman Panama and Melvin Frank also penned the wacky Road to Utopia (as well as The Court Jester, Danny’s best film). Incredibly, Kaye was not the first choice to play Phil Davis. He took over at the last minute when Donald O’Connor dropped out of the film.

The postscript to White Christmas is a bittersweet one. Vera-Ellen made only one more movie and retired from acting at the age of 36. Rosemary Clooney never had another good film role. Director Michael Curtiz, who helmed such classics as The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca, suffered a declining career. Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye would also make fewer films, but each had one more memorable role to go: Bing in The Country Girl (which earned Grace Kelly an Oscar) and Danny in his finest role in The Court Jester.

My wife and I were lucky enough see the theatrical re-release of White Christmas in the 1980s. It looked splendid on the big screen in VistaVision (it was the first film produced in that widescreen process). In 2004, White Christmas was adapted as a stage musical and had a limited run on Broadway.