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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

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.

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!

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