Dançarina Russa

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!

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

Except for the wonderful musical arrangement of "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue", the choreography looks less than inspired as danced by VERA ZORINA and EDDIE ALBERT. Especially if one has seen Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen do the number in a fantastic musical highlight from WORDS AND MUSIC. And the less said about the weak comedy routines, the better.

The only compensations in this weak transfer from stage to screen (in which "There's A Small Hotel" has been relegated to background music), is the pleasant cast. Eddie Albert is his usual charming self, gifted at comedy and easily stealing most of the scenes with his nonchalant genius for comic roles. Vera Zorina demonstrates that she could act, when called upon, but her role is the stereotyped diva in distress that any capable actress could do with her eyes shut.

Alan Hale, Leonid Kinskey, Donald O'Connor (as a boy hoofer), and Frank McHugh do their standard professional jobs in assorted light comedy roles--but despite their flair, most of the one-liners fall flat.

Surely, this was a more exciting event on Broadway than it appears in its screen incarnation with Ray Bolger appearing opposite Vera Zorina. Too little time expended on a worthwhile script and too many songs missing from the original stage musical. The result is a routine backstage musical with only the "Slaughter" ballet to redeem it.

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.

On Your Toes was one of Richard Rodgers&Lorenz Hart's best Broadway musicals and a landmark show in that it was one of the first to integrate ballet into the plot. Georges Balanchine did the choreography for the production that ran 315 performances in the 1936- 1937 season and was responsible for making Ray Bolger a star and getting him to Hollywood through MGM.

So when they were buying Bolger why didn't Louis B. Mayer buy the show as well? Because of that and probably because Mayer was asking too much for Bolger for Jack Warner, Eddie Albert was put in the lead.

But if we couldn't get Bolger, Jack Warner had the best guy possible for the role of Philip Dolan, III. I can't believe James Cagney didn't lobby like a madman for this role with Warner. He'd have much preferred to do this instead of The Oklahoma Kid or The Roaring Twenties, classic Cagney parts that they are.

The big hit of On Your Toes was the instrumental ballet Slaughter On Tenth Avenue, the music was played everywhere in the late Thirties. It is the center piece of the film as well, it has to be because such Rodgers&Hart classics as There's A Small Hotel and Quiet Nights are only heard as background music. The only other song which was to demonstrate Albert as vaudeville hoofer was Oh You Beautiful Doll.

I think it's a miracle that On Your Toes came out as good as it did on screen with an emasculation of the Rodgers&Hart score and the fact that the best guy on the lot for the part was passed over if they couldn't get the guy who introduced it on stage. The Brothers Warner did field some of their best character actors with such people as Frank McHugh, Leonid Kinskey, Alan Hale, and Erik Rhodes in the cast. A film that has these four guys in it has something going for it.

Vera Zorina plays the prima ballerina who it turns out knew Albert as a lad back in vaudeville days. Her ballet numbers do remain intact and show why she was THE ballerina back in the day.

But what a classic this would have been if James Cagney had done the lead and more Rodgers&Hart had been retained.

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.