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Today's selection--from This Was Hollywood by Carla Valderrama. Arguably the greatest of Hollywood’s leading female dancers was Eleanor Powell:
“On November 21, 1934, Ellie celebrated her twenty-second birthday on a train to Hollywood to do a specialty dance in George White's 1935 Scandals. She was wary about the ‘wicked place’ she had heard such awful things about, and her experience there confirmed her fears. She was the only sober member of the cast. Everyone else was constantly drinking, and a lead actor was once ‘so stoned’ he ate the artificial food in a scene. When production wrapped, she headed back to New York, promising herself she'd never go back to Hollywood. But MGM head Louis B. Mayer was impressed by her number in the film and wanted Ellie for a specialty number in the musical extravaganza Broadway Melody of 1936. Ellie told her agent she would do it if they gave her a thousand dollars and an actual role in the film, expecting MGM to tell her to take a hike. They didn't.
“Instead, on her first day at the studio, Mayer was so impressed by her dancing that he decided to test her for the lead role. Terrified, she tried to talk him out of it, but Mayer told her he ran the studio and if he wanted her to make a test, she was making a test. She got the part, and the studio set about getting her ready for her close-up.
“MGM had her teeth capped and her freckles faded with a series of ultraviolet light procedures. Her hair was given a permanent wave and a lightening rinse. Her eyebrows were plucked, and the ends were shaved so they could be penciled into perfection. She was given daily diction lessons and taught how to handle her hands properly on the screen. The dancing for the film was nearly as grueling as her makeover: By the end of filming she had lost four toenails on her right foot. It was all worth it when the film premiered.
“‘Chiefly the cinema news this morning concerns Miss Eleanor Powell, a rangy and likeable girl with the most eloquent feet in show business,’ the New York Times raved. ‘If she is not quite the distaff Fred Astaire, she is certainly the foremost candidate for that exalted throne .... Miss Powell's dazzling pedal arpeggios convert the sober art of tap-dancing into a giddy delight.’ Screenland magazine said ‘not since Fred Astaire's film debut has a movie audience been so electrified.’ Variety wrote, ‘[I]t's inevitable that she be termed a femme Astaire, for she's possessed of the same nimble tread, finished precision and general adeptness in her stepology.’
“Mayer signed Ellie to a seven-year contract and gifted her a portrait of himself, inscribed, ‘You are my lucky star!’ MGM built her a special rehearsal hall with two dressing rooms attached, each with its own bath. They also built bleachers on her sets to accommodate the spectators like Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable, who always dropped by to watch her dance.
“Ellie choreographed her own numbers, making her the only female choreographer at MGM. She challenged herself with difficult routines, dancing with a dog she trained herself, tapping with a horse, dancing off a diving board and leaping across a pool, and dancing in the rain (long before Gene Kelly). And she never shied away from outrageous stunts like twirling her way down a sixty-foot-high fire pole and dancing across sixteen-foot-high drums—with plenty of splits, flips, and spins along the way.
“But what audiences really wanted was to see her dance with Fred Astaire. She would soon get the chance, with Mayer deciding he wanted to pair her with Astaire in Broadway Melody of 1940. The only thing left was for Ellie and Fred to meet to make sure their height was a match. At their fateful meeting in Mervyn LeRoy's office, Ellie measured in at five feet, six and a half inches in her stocking feet. Fred, whose height (or lack thereof) was often a subject of debate, would find a way to make do.
“The two planned to co-choreograph their duet numbers for the film, but their styles were very different, and things started slow. Both were naturally shy and nervous to encroach on the other, and it was unclear who was going to take the lead. Ellie decided to make the first move.
“‘Mr. Astaire, I have a number and there's something wrong in the middle of it,’ she said. ‘If I did it for you, would you please help me with the center part of it?’ They began to test out moves for each other. After a few days, they had a breakthrough, and Fred ran over excitedly and lifted her, exclaiming, ‘Oh, Ellie!’ Embarrassed at his forwardness, he quickly put her down and said,
“‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Powell.’
“‘Please, we're just a couple of hoofers,’ Ellie told him. ‘Can't I call you Fred?’
“Fred smiled, and the ice was finally broken. Both were perfectionists and often worked straight from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. without noticing the time. Ellie later said that they rehearsed as though they were ‘creating a cure for cancer.’ Eventually, they had to set an alarm clock so the piano player could take a break. They spent two weeks just rehearsing their arm movements for their nine-minute-long routine to Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine, hailed by critics and still regarded as a dance classic.
“One day during production, the great conductor Arturo Toscanini came to see Ellie do what he called ‘the dance with the noise.’ A week later, she received a letter from him saying the three memories he would take with him when he left this world were the Grand Canyon, the sunset, and Eleanor Powell's dancing.
“The film debuted with the tagline ‘The World's Greatest Dancers In The World's Greatest Musical Show,’ and the critics agreed. ‘Fred Astaire ... is finally teamed with a dancing partner who is his match as a dancer,’ the New York Daily News declared. '’Their work together is so smooth and perfectly timed that watching them together ... is an esthetic treat of major proportions.’
“Fred had no illusions about who was the better dancer.
“‘She “put 'em down” like a man,’ he said, ‘no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.’ Years later, he would tell her son, ‘Your mother is a much better dancer than me!’
“As Ellie's career blossomed, so did her love life. Blanche had instilled a fear of premarital sex in her daughter, and Ellie remained a virgin until her wedding day, when she was nearly thirty-one years old. One day in May 1942, she met an up-and-coming actor named Glenn Ford. ‘I had only seen her in black-and-white movies, and in person I was struck by her coloring, her
chestnut hair, worn in soft waves to her shoulders, this glowing complexion, and beautiful cornflower blue eyes,’ Glenn recalled. ‘And when she smiled, I was just captivated.’
“After their first date, at Musso & Frank's on Hollywood Boulevard, they quickly became inseparable. And on Christmas Day, 1942, Glenn got down on one knee and asked for her hand. America was at war, and Glenn enlisted in the Marines. Ellie announced her retirement from show business.
“Ellie later explained that the main factor in her decision to retire was her marriage to a man just starting his career when she was at the top of hers. ‘He had such an inferiority complex, it was sheer hell,’ she said. Glenn would be told there was a wait at restaurants—until the host would see Ellie and say, ‘Ah! Miss Powell! But, of course, come right this way. We have your table.’ Glenn would ‘die a thousand deaths’ and refuse to eat at the restaurant again. '’We were running out of restaurants,’ Ellie said. ‘Something had to give, and it was my career.’”
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author: Carla Valderrama |
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title: This Was Hollywood: Forgotten Stars and Stories (Turner Classic Movies)
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publisher: Running Press Adult |
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page(s): 160-163 |
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