Ritmos de 1940

ON YOUR TOES (1939) is MORE important than THE RED SHOES (1948) ON YOUR TOES (1939) starring Vera Zorina (1917 - 2003) and Eddie Albert (doing the Gene Kelly part in SLAUGHTER ON 10th AVENUE ballet) is the most important ballet movie ever made. More important than the excellent, more famous movie titled THE RED SHOES (1948) starring Moira Shearer.

Get it from RobertsVideos.Com in Canada.

It's more important, better than the very good, justifiably honored RED SHOES (1948) movie.

Nobody interested in ballet in the movies can ignore ON YOUR TOES (1939) or why it was "disappeared" in 1939, the most important year in Hollywood movie history! Zorina was a Berlin, Germany born ballet dancer (big problem in Hollywood in 1939), and was married to George Ballanchine until 1946 when he married Maria Tallchief.

She married Goddard Lieberson (head of Columbia Records), had two sons with him, stayed married until his death in 1977.

She went on to be the head of an important ballet company in Norway.

She died in 2003 at the age of 86 of "unknown causes." She was a brilliant stage actress who originated the stage role in the 1930's of I MARRIED AN ANGEL (Jeanette MacDonald was the star of the movie version).

Her guileless style of acting shows up brilliantly in ON YOUR TOES (1939).

See it, get it, pay for it (RobertsVideos.Com isn't cheap!).

Thank you!

----------

David Roger "Tex" Allen, retired SAG-AFTRA movie actor...too old to work, too young to die!

The main reason to see this movie is the performance of Richard Rogers's mini-ballet, "Slaughter on 10th Avenue." The melody will haunt you for days, and George Ballanchine choreographed the piece for the film's star, Norwegian ballerina Vera Zorina. Her costar Eddie Albert (remember Green Acres?) was supplied with a dancing double. --Musicals on the Silver Screen, American Library Association, 2013

While the disappointment is real that the superior SONG score for Rodgers and Hart's groundbreaking ballet musical has been relegated largely to the background for the film adaptation made just three years after its Broadway triumph, what remains is remarkably faithful (despite the numerous ham hands which tinkered in the book adaptation) and a joy thanks to the bountiful supply of studio character actors lavished on the project.

As most faithful Rodgers and Hart fans are aware, this musical was originally written for the movies, but the studios, in their wisdom, passed, and our heroes took their script to Broadway where it triumphed, introducing not only a fine song score, but two plot advancing ballets (the "Princess Zenobia" and the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue") which survived the show and entered the regular ballet repertoire as well as being preserved HERE in essentially their original Balanchine choreography (and even the original stage costumes!). This co-mingling of ballet and musical theatre would lead eventually to the Agnes DeMille "dream ballets" in OKLAHOMA! less than a decade later without the pretext of a ballet company to justify them.

For the Warner Brothers' film, Balanchine's soon-to-be wife, Vera Zorina was elevated to her first lead (she would repeat the assignment in the less successful 1954 Broadway revival which unwisely cut the early "Vaudeville" framing scene during the run!). While the 1954 cuts MAY have been in deference to getting to the perceived "name" lead sooner, it would be a mistake to think that any such tinkering was made in 1939 for that reason. ON YOUR TOES was always a theatrical oddity where the leading lady DANCED but did not sing!

This musical oddity was more than balanced by the casting of stalwart Rodgers and Hart song and dance man, Eddie Albert, in the movie lead as the vaudevillian-turned-ballet-composer. While not allowed to sing this time around (a later generation who knew him only from his TV shenanigans on GREEN ACRES would be astounded that he ever did!), he dances solidly and understands the material implicitly.

While the "Zenobia" ballet has been slightly shortened for the film, the central costume joke of the last minute replacement is still there. When the show was revived in 1985 to remarkable success, the piece was kept semi-politically correct by making the part - a Nubian slave - BLUE rather than black. In 1939, the benignly racist overtones of the joke were left intact - possibly even augmented, but the point is really not race but theatricality, and the ballet remains enjoyable for exactly the loving satire it is . . . and the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" ballet is stunning in all it's glory.

The musical may appeal more to those with a taste for 30's mysteries and high style than "modern" reality and grit, but if you have a fondness for Rodgers and Hart at their most deceptively adventurous, it remains a must see - and even a must-listen for those wonderful songs that survive in the background.

Vera Zorina, Eddie Albert, Alan Hale, Jr., Frank McHugh, Leonid Kinskey, Donald O'Connor, and James Gleason star in "On Your Toes," a 1939 film based on the Broadway show of the same name, which starred Ray Bolger and had music and lyrics by Rogers and Hart. If you think you hear "There's a Small Hotel" in the background throughout this film, you are - it was one of the songs in the musical that is not performed here. Since the star is Vera Zorina, the song omissions are presumably because she wasn't a singer. You'd think Hollywood just never dubbed anyone or just never assigned a song to a different character.

At any rate, if you forget the original show, what's left is actually entertaining, with Albert playing Phil Dolan, Jr., a young hoofer turned composer who writes "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue." The two dance sections, "Princess Zenobia" and "Slaughter" are the highlights of the film, with Slaughter very importantly shown with the original Balanchine choreography.

The other highlight for me was seeing a young Donald O'Connor, who plays the Phil as a young boy in vaudeville - he's delightful.

Some trivia: the head of the ballet company, played here by Alan Hale, Jr., was played on Broadway by Monty Wooley.

I was disappointed in not hearing any of the great songs, such as "There's a Small Hotel," sung in this movie, apparently revised to accommodate its star Vera Zorina, who is a ballerina. Despite the onscreen credit for lyrics, the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart are used as background music throughout, while two pieces suitable to ballet were used to display Zorina's ballet skills. The first, "Princess Zenobia" started as a straight ballet, but with Eddie Albert substituting for a missing performer, it turns into a burlesque of ballet, and is a hit. I was uncomfortable with the implication that straight ballet cannot be enjoyed (which is even stated in the script). The second piece, "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue," was extremely well done and worth seeing. But here also, the writers injected other material. The impresario, Alan Hale, planned on having Albert killed at the end of the ballet. We know it and Albert learns of it while still on stage and sees the killers too, all of which creates a small amount of suspense. The overall plot is a little dumb, as in most early musicals, but I did enjoy seeing a young, dancing Donald O'Connor (playing Albert as a boy) and some of the gags supplied by Frank McHugh and Leonid Kinskey.