| My other favorite female dancer, Vera-Ellen | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 03:05 pm EST 01/15/25 | |
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| Besides Gwen Verdon whom I wrote about below in a birthday thread, my other favorite and choice for best all-around female dancer is the wonderful Vera-Ellen. Starting as a very young Rockette and later in several Broadway shows, she was discovered by Hollywood while appearing in “A Connecticut Yankee” and put under contract by Samuel Goldwyn where her dancing in films caused a sensation. The top male dancers wanted her to dance with, and she’s among the very few to do 2 films with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly and also be a wonderful partner to Donald O’Connor. Her two dancing duets with Donald O’Connor in the film “Call Me Madam” are up to the standards of a top Astaire-Rogers pairing. Probably her most still-viewed film “White Christmas” paired her with Danny Kaye when O’Connor wasn’t available due to sickness; for dances which Kaye couldn’t keep up with Vera-Ellen, she was paired with dancer John Brascia who danced admirably with her. While Vera sang on Broadway and there are recordings on the “A Connecticut Yankee” production she did and on later tv appearances, her natural voice was more of an unsophisticated Ado Annie-type voice which Hollywood deemed not to match up to her more angelic persona, so her singing was always dubbed in Hollywood. I love many of the other female dancers from this film period, but Vera-Ellen according to Fred Astaire could do it all, anything you threw at her. Eleanor Powell (tops in tap and acrobatic dancing), Cyd Charisse (ballet and jazz dancing), Ginger Rogers (wonderful partnering in ballroom dancing), Ann Miller (tap), Leslie Caron (ballet), Rita Hayworth (ballet and jazz), Jane Powell (mostly thought of as a singer, she was quite fine in jazz and tap), etc. were among the tops in the field. Vera-Ellen could do all those styles of dancing plus various exotic/ethnic dances on occasion as well as tap on pointe (!) and execute the fastest nerve taps (incredibly hard to do) while smiling as if they were nothing to her, like she did in her incredible debut in “Wonder Man”. Her main dancing part starts around 3:10, but you’d miss some of the set-up, the introduction of the Goldwyn Girls in beautiful Technicolor and a bit of her dancing if you started then. Among other things to notice, as she is tossed to the ground and recovers up, it’s absolutely seamless as though she hadn’t touched the floor at 5:48. She really deserves to be remembered, as her dances are still breathtaking. |
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| Link | Vera-Ellen's incredible dancing debut in "Wonder Man" |
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