Dançarina Russa

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.

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.

Absolutely terrible film version of the hit 1936 Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and George Abbott.

Ray Bolger originated the role of Junior, but here we have Eddie Albert as a last-minute replacement for James Cagney who bailed from the project after Warners specifically bought it for him. Albert was on the lot, having made a small splash the year before in BROTHER RAT. Since Albert couldn't dance, a double had to be used and the character's dancing was scaled back.

Also taking a hit, most of the songs are not performed and end up as background music. So "Small Hotel," It's Got to Be Love," "The Heart Is Quicker Than the Eye," and "Quiet Night" are basically eliminated from the film, leaving the character of Peggy Porterfield (Gloria Dickson) with nothing to do. The female character of Frankie Frayne is eliminated altogether. Even the title song only shows up as background.

The other giant hit this version takes is that both the "Princess Zenobia" ballet and the "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" number are scaled way back partly because Albert couldn't dance. This also takes the oomph out of Vera Zorina's starring performance. The music portions are cut back, but the hokey comedy and lengthy Vaudeville intro were retained.

Another huge minus is the terrible direction by Ray Enright, who apparently had never seen a good movie musical. There are endless cuts during the dance numbers and zoom-ins to close-ups and cutaways to peripheral characters. And it's painfully obvious that the close-ups of dancing feet are not of Eddie Albert.

Supporting cast tries hard, but most of the Russian humor falls flat. While Leonid Kinskey is fine as Ivan, Alan Hale is an odd choice for Sergei. We also get Frank McHugh as the stage manager, James Gleason and Queenie Smith as Albert's parents, Berton Churchill as the hotel manager, and Erik Rhodes bizarrely cast as the leading ballet dancer. Notable also is Donald O'Connor as the young Junior in the Vaudeville segments.

The musical has been revived twice on Broadway (I saw a production in London starring Doreen Wells in 1985), but this is the only film version, which is a real pity because the music is wondrous, and it would have been nice to see Zorina in a full-fledged version of "Slaughter on 10th Avenue."

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!