Written Response History of Broadway

Copyright © 2010

The 1940s saw a revolution in choreography for the Broadway stage. Visionaries such as Balanchine, Jack Cole and Agnes DeMille infused Broadway dancing with a combination of dance training and artistic vision that had not been seen before. These choreographers—and those that would soon follow—had a goal of transporting the audience rather than merely entertaining them. The 1940s and 50s were aptly titled “The Golden Age of Broadway.”

Of the choreographers from the world of concert dance, Agnes de Mille would make the most dramatic mark on the future of Broadway dance. But de Mille’s successes were preceded by the powerful and devastating impact of World War II.

Though Americans tried to stay out of the foreign war that began in 1939, the Japanese Army brought the war to their back door with the December 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor. United States soil had been violated, and Americans wanted revenge. Over 2,400 men were killed and four naval battleships were sunk in the attack.

President Roosevelt had almost full national support for his decision to join the war. Once Congress approved the declaration of war, American military branches combined forces with their British, French and Russian allies to fight two common enemies: Japan and Nazi Germany. The era of World War II saw unprecedented war tactics, war crimes and death tolls. Television, radio and newspapers fed war stories daily to the American public, bringing the realities of the war up their sidewalks and into their homes.

The era also represented huge social and financial changes across the globe. These changes were evident in America, where the Depression had taken a huge toll on America’s economy and morale.

World War II ended the Great Depression and returned prosperity to the United States. In March 1940, seven months after Britain and France declared war on Germany, over eight million Americans were still out of work, but by 1944 most of the jobless of 1940 were working again, bringing unemployment to an all-time low of about 800,000. The wartime demand for every employable American created seventeen million new jobs in the military or in manufacturing. (Jones, 2003, p. 123)

Millions of women worked in the U.S., either in jobs vacated by fighting troops or in defense industries. In addition, over 100,000 women served in the armed forces (Jones, 2003).

Hollywood, Tin Pan Alley [the music production center of the country] and Broadway all responded to the one subject that was on the mind of every American: war.

Though the war inescapably affected Broadway musicals, it did not appear directly on the stage. Instead, Broadway reflected America’s thoughts and responses to the war. Author Raymond Knapp examined the Broadway musical in terms of its role in establishing national identity. He had this to say about shows during World War II:

During this period, several important musicals provided reassuring accounts of who “we” are (that is, who Americans are, the presumed “we” of the principal audience for these musicals), and how we have--deservedly, of course--emerged as a secure nation and a model for how a better world might function. (2005, p. 119)

Musicals also served to define who we are not, helping to distance America from enemies whose relationship to our roots we preferred not to claim during the war. Mythologies forwarded by musicals provided reassurance. Just as the stereotypes displayed in minstrelsy served to reassure whites about blacks, musicals during this period affirmed a national identity of America as a mighty, protective, proud nation. On Broadway, soldiers were portrayed as handsome, confident, and invincible. Rousing, marching melodies erased all thoughts of bullets and blood. In This is the Army (1941)--the sequel to Yip! Yip! Yaphank (1918)--three hundred enlisted men performed skits, songs and dances (Maslon, 2004).

American identity has at its core the ideal of inclusiveness (Knapp, 2005). Though we may see individual evidence to the contrary, as a nation, America strongly identifies with its melting pot [every citizen is treated the same] and salad bowl [every diverse American contributes individually to the whole] ideals. Both of these ideals are based on inclusiveness that implicitly criticizes European nationalist beliefs that embrace—or used to embrace—pure strains of citizenry.

American musicals, especially during and after World War II, presented these inclusive ideals. According to Knapp, American musicals during this period endeavored to show that diverse groups of people could get along. Knapp examined three Broadway musicals that he believes demonstrated the myth of American inclusiveness: Oklahoma! (1943), Guys and Dolls (1950), and The Music Man (1951). Says Knapp:

In each case, the issues raised and resolved have a similar profile, as each show presents a community threatened by something either within or outside the group, which grows wiser and more secure through pursuing an initially resisted approach to community-formation that is more inclusive than exclusive...Marriage [is]…placed squarely at the center of the conflict and its resolution. And the settings are in some ways more alike than different, for all three shows are peopled by very white, very mainstream Euro-Americans, whose musical idiom projects a particularly “American” innocence; jazz styles and related musical inflections are thus downplayed, conservatively present but not obtrusive.

That race is scarcely an issue in these musicals...speaks to a smugness endemic to mythologies created, as these seem to have been, to reassure a nation of its own essential goodness. (Knapp, 2005, p. 122)

How true! Oklahoma! reconciles the territorial bickering of the cattlemen and farmhands that work the same ranch. It ends with the Farmer’s niece and head cowman’s betrothal. In Guys and Dolls, Save-a-Soul mission leader, Sarah Brown, converts a beguiled gambler named Sky Masterson, at the same time that he helps her to literally and figuratively let her hair down. In The Music Man, the same thing happens with a con man who changes his ways while bringing fun and optimism to an uptight town in Indiana. All three presented white America and the struggles and sunny resolutions of “diverse” people trying to get along. [I'll mention, here, that multicultural casting on Broadway has been in effect for many years. Although it was certainly not present at the debut of these musicals, it is currently not uncommon to see a rainbow of residents in Gary, Indiana. More about multiculturalism on Broadway in a later unit.]

Combining these attempts at moral lessons in peacemaking with the new narrative dances gave musicals the opportunity to teach audiences lessons beyond “love conquers all.” But the Broadway dances of Weidman, Humphrey, Balanchine and Dunham, although narrative, did little to further the plot. It wasn’t until Agnes de Mille came on the scene that dance took its place as an essential contributor to the musical storyline.

Agnes de Mille [last name spelled with a lower case "d"] was born into a highly cultured theatre family, which included her uncle, film director Cecil B. De Mille [capital "D"]. She grew up on Hollywood sets, read literature and played piano. When she was thirteen, de Mille saw Anna Pavlova perform and decided she wanted to be a concert dancer. De Mille spoke of her father's reaction: “My father, like all educated men, considered dancing at best exhibitionistic acrobatics, and certainly a field that offered neither intellectual nor spiritual challenge” (de Mille, 1987, pp. 59-60). Devoted to her father and his opinion, de Mille spent her lifetime trying to overcome her father’s prejudice. Fortunately, young Agnes’ sister Margaret was diagnosed with fallen arches, and the orthopedist prescribed ballet class. Both girls were enrolled at the Theodore Kosloff School of Imperial Russian Ballet.

De Mille struggled at the school. Her mother limited her lessons to two a week, while other dancers danced for hours daily.

Agnes was quickly stung by Kosloff’s initial assessment of her suitability as a dancer. He told her that her knees were weak, her spine was curved, she was a bit heavy for her age, and she was rather old to begin training…[But] the shortcomings of Agnes’s physical makeup were more than compensated by an incredible endurance…Agnes insisted on practicing at home…All her life, Agnes had believed she was destined for greatness. (Hasday, 2004, pp. 48-51)

With her body--unsuitable for a traditional ballet career--and her family’s assumption that she would continue her education, de Mille followed an unusual path for a professional dancer: she went to college. Though she danced and choreographed, de Mille graduated cum laude from UCLA with a degree in English.

In 1927, she moved with her mother and sister to New York City, where she again began ballet classes and produced her own series of dance concerts featuring herself as the star. “From her earliest solo recital pieces… her choreography was narrative, theatrical, and humanistic.… her legitimate theater debut … was a 1929 revival of The Black Crook staged in Hoboken, New Jersey. Her first Broadway choreography assignment was the 1932 revue Flying Colors, but she was fired during out-of-town previews and replaced by Albertina Rasch” (Grant, 2004, p. 261). Throughout her career, de Mille was hired to choreograph for Broadway shows and Hollywood films but her refusal to adjust her artistic and aesthetic vision often resulted in her being fired. De Mille’s theatrical authenticity often collided with the director’s desire for commercial success, and the strong willed de Mille was not one to compromise.

De Mille had a rocky personal life. Love didn’t come as soon as she had hoped. Her senior year in college, she fell for a student whose feelings didn’t go beyond platonic friendship. The day after she graduated, she learned that her parent’s marriage was over (Easton, 2000).

In 1932, she moved to London where she studied under Marie Rambert and alongside future choreographic luminary Antony Tudor. Tudor had a lasting impact on de Mille.

In 1939, both de Mille and Tudor—on de Mille’s recommendation— became choreographers for the newly founded Ballet Theatre (later named American Ballet Theatre) back in New York City. De Mille’s “ballet Three Virgins and a Devil for ABT in 1941 was a great success” (Grant, 2004, p. 262).

A change of fortune came rather suddenly for de Mille. Asked to choreograph a new, American piece for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, de Mille reworked a concert dance piece into a full-length work called Rodeo. She incorporated simple American flavor into this iconic piece. The ballet’s theme, about an independent cowgirl and her desire to be both wrangler and receiver of male attention, reflected de Mille’s struggles with her own authority in dance and love. Rodeo premiered “at the Metropolitan Opera House (de Mille herself danced in both Three Virgins and Rodeo) to twenty-one curtain calls. Among those in the audience were Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. A few days later they hired her to create the dances for Oklahoma!” (Grant, 2004, p. 262).

[Note: The exclamation point is a part of the title, not my excitement about the musical, though it is a great show!]

Oklahoma! thrust de Mille into the Broadway spotlight. The show has been universally recognized as the musical that revolutionized Broadway dance, bringing the final creative element into the first wholly integrated show. For centuries, ballet dancers had told stories through movement. Without words, dancers communicated love, despair, heavenly ideals and hellish deeds. “All the great ballet companies prior to Balanchine’s own established the fusion of dance and drama in performance as a major artistic priority. Oklahoma! brought that fusion to the popular stage” (Kislan, p. 77).

Although de Mille has been widely credited with integrating dance into Oklahoma!, author Mark Grant asserts that it was director Rouben Mamoulian who finally realized the emotional potential of dance on the Broadway stage and Mamoulian who was responsible for the show’s full integration. “It was Mamoulian, shattering Broadway precedent, who directed the songs in Oklahoma! and Carousel, not the choreographer. His proportionate share in creating the stylistic revolution of the integrated musical… remains strangely unappreciated…In Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma!, and Carousel, Mamoulian took the downstage footlights out of the musical comedy song, integrating its performance within the total canvas of narrative” (Grant, 2004, p. 242). Proclaimed Mamoulian:

Teamwork is impossible in directing a play...In 1942, the Theatre Guild had a play script, "Green Grow the Lilacs," which they wanted to transform into a musical comedy. They offered me a contract just to direct. I refused. From the Rochester days, I’d dreamed of an integrated production—music, dancing, dialogue, action and singing—a truly American theatre… In "Green Grow the Lilacs," I saw my opportunity. I persuaded the Guild to let me do the job my way. To my usual one-paragraph contract, another was added: I would "direct the whole production in all its elements." (cited in Grant, 2004, p. 239)

Regardless of where the impetus for full integration began, the de Mille/Mamoulian relationship should have been a match made in heaven. De Mille was committed to authentic expression through dance to forward character, and Mamoulian was committed to fully integrated creative elements. But there were power struggles from the start. In his autobiography, Richard Rodgers—who wrote the music for Oklahoma!—said:

Initially, both Rouben Mamoulian and Agnes de Mille were determined to maintain their authority within their respective domains. One of their battles was over three girls whom Agnes brought in—Tammy Lynn, Joan McCracken and Diane Adams—who were all brilliant dancers and strikingly attractive. For some reason Rouben strongly objected to their being in the show. Agnes got her way, but Rouben retaliated by preempting the stage of our rehearsal theater for the book rehearsals and forcing Agnes to use whatever other space she could find. (Rodgers & Rodgers, 1995, p. 223)

In one of her books of memoirs, Dance to the Piper, de Mille spoke of Mamoulian and the ways in which she dealt with the stress of working with him on Oklahoma!:

Our director, Rouben Mamoulian, provided daily challenge. He was used to complete, unquestioned authority and total obedience. As a choreographer in a ballet company, I was used to the same. But here I was no longer Madame the choreographer. I was the dance director in the basement, and although I began work with a respect for him that amounted to hero worship, we immediately ran head on in jurisdictional disputes. I think I can confidently say I would have gone down under the conflicting opinions if [composer] Richard Rodgers had not lent me his incomparable knowledge and authority as running interference. Due to his jealous care, my work came shining through for whatever it was worth.

But we all got increasingly nervous. I lost my temper at every thwarting. And when [producer] Terry Helburn started interrupting rehearsals to show unfinished work to prospective backers in her frantic efforts to raise money, I blew the fuse I had. Hurling my pocketbook at her head, I shouted and denounced and was dragged off screaming…and held under a faucet of cold water until I quieted down.

Once, when my ballet was unnecessarily interrupted, not by Miss Helburn this time, during a run-through, I gave a scream of anguish and hurled myself on [lyricist] Oscar Hammerstein’s bosom. He was taken quite unaware and looked down startled at the hysteria on his waistcoat, but it was the comment from the rear rows that really surprised him. “Agnes,” said Mother peremptorily, “control yourself.” (1952, pp. 324-5)

Struggles continued throughout the rehearsal process, but the result of the combative Mamoulian/de Mille collaboration was an integrated musical, the likes of which Broadway audiences had never seen.

With the intellectual de Mille came an innovative approach to choreography. Extensive research into the setting, story and period of the musical, with its attached social mores, movement qualities and emotions provided a palette from which the choreographer painted every stroke of the dance. No longer were the same steps rearranged to suitable music. De Mille developed an original movement “vocabulary” to match the setting and story of the musical. Ballet-trained dancers playing cowboy characters moved in a way that evoked a feel of open prairies and horseback riding. She also used open positions and open spacing between dancers to increase the feel of the great outdoors (Kislan, 1987). By using dancers and choreography to define the setting as well as the story, de Mille pulled audiences into the scene, allowing them to empathize deeply with the feelings of the characters.

De Mille’s dream ballet “Laurey Makes Up Her Mind” added emotional depth to a character that would have otherwise seemed a typically sweet musical comedy heroine. The dream ballet also solved the problem of finding a singer/actress who could dance. Elite dancers were used to fully express the warring emotions and nightmare quality of Laurey’s subconscious thoughts. Using separate people for scenes and dream dances also enhanced the separation between the character that everyone sees and the secret thoughts and feelings—the “me no one knows”—that the character keeps inside. De Mille transformed...

...musical comedy…from mere entertainment to a genre of drama… Dream ballets [were]…disconnected from the through line, or connected only through humorous fantasies. Now they spoke the dark Freudian terrors of sunny worlds. (De Mille… had gone through psychoanalysis.) Suddenly musical comedy characters weren’t cutouts: they had ids, egos, and super egos. Gone forever were the pastoral sylphs of The Black Crook, the Ziegfeld Follies, and Albertina Rasch. De Mille discovered that psychologized ballet in dramatic musicals could function like Shakespearean soliloquy, illuminating not just the action but the consciousness of the characters. (Grant, 2004, pp. 262-3)

In the following video, Agnes de Mille talks about Oklahoma! and the dances she created for the show. Included are excerpts from the dream ballet, performed by the American Dance Machine. [The American Dance Machine was a jazz dance company founded by Lee Theodore “created to build a living archive of American dance" (Gruen, 1978). Company members learned original choreography for Broadway dance numbers from the choreographers or from 1st generation dancers who had learned the dances from the original choreographers.]

Video: Agnes de Mille discusses Oklahoma!

(2013)

De Mille’s success with Oklahoma! ...

...secure[d] for the choreographer the status of coequal to playwright, composer, and lyricist in the making of a musical show. It also began a trend that would litter the show dance landscape of the 1940s with integrated ballets. Within eight years of the advent of George Balanchine and On Your Toes, ten of the dance makers for those shows listed themselves as choreographers, while only two held on to the growingly obsolete title of dance director. Of the seventy-two musicals produced during the next three and a half years, forty-six included ballet, and twenty-one offered dream ballets, often with "staggering ineptitude" (Kislan, 1987, p. 75)

Whether or not Kislan’s claim of the new equal status of the choreographer in the creative team was, in fact, true after Oklahoma!, it certainly was not the case at the beginning of the production. Agnes de Mille was paid $1500 for the entire job and $50 week for the run of the show in New York City. Her contract included no royalties and nothing for subsequent productions. In contrast, Mamoulian was offered “$3,500 payable in installments of $500…and 1 percent of the gross, plus travel expenses in New York City; there were also clauses covering revivals under a different director (one-half of one percent of gross) and by different companies” (Carter, 2007, p. 43).

The lives of Broadway dancers changed drastically.

Dance directors worked for audience approval; choreographers work for audience enlightenment. The new aspirations of show choreography brought with them additional responsibilities for its dancers…Agnes de Mille set her dancers the task of projecting characters, not themselves…The new show dancing demanded that the choreographer provide the dancers with as much direction borne out of script analysis and character motivation as do stage directors rehearsing actors. (Kislan, 1987, p. 78)

De Mille’s dancers were characters in the show, advancing the plot and deepening the emotional connection of the story to the audience. The action and emotional journey of the musical was continued and deepened through the language of dance, giving audiences a physical, empathetic experience of the storyline. “Dancers under de Mille’s supervision attest to her uncanny ability to sense a dramatic nature in their performance personalities, to draw out those expressive qualities, and then to integrate them into choreographic sequences through trial-and-error…” (Long, 2001, p. 83). This method was highly effective for the original production, but incoming dancers found it difficult to live up to the original cast members’ characterizations, since the parts had been created with and for those original dancers.

In addition to new dimensions expressed through dance, Oklahoma! had many social implications. As de Mille mentioned in the video, the show’s opening during the middle of World War II meant that audience members arrived for the show with deep, personal emotions regarding their national identity. Oklahoma! was a slice of musical apple pie. According to Knapp, the main storyline—Oklahoma’s getting ready to join the Union—offered a guide to Americans, a visual portrayal of America’s growth and its rise to a world power.

Even if Oklahoma! had not launched an important chapter in the history of the American musical, it would have been historically important for the role it played in providing America with a strongly embodied sense of the central national myth. We might call this particular strand of American mythology its “frontier brinkmanship”: its ability to manage the threshold of its domain, to extend its purview carefully, wisely, and inclusively, and thereby negotiate the transition from wilderness to civilization, from lawless to law-abiding, from frontier to community, from territory to state, from fledgling nation to world power…

In Oklahoma!--with its vital images of people cheerfully and energetically “making do,” overcoming conflicts and adversity, forging and enduring larger community, and offering homespun folk-wisdom in common, direct, everyday language--America saw itself in a microcosm and acquired a vision of what it could offer the rest of the world” (Knapp, 2005, p. 123-4).

Knapp also points out the blind irony of Oklahoma! Set in 1906, the show celebrates the joining of Oklahoma as the 46th state in the union, while conveniently erasing the expropriation of property from of the Native Americans who lived there. Oklahoma! with its white-washed state history emerged even as our country deplored similar racial cleansing in Europe. Oklahoma! endeavored to demonstrate the importance of “diverse” groups’ working together to achieve a goal—unionization—while conveniently forgetting the actual history of its own union.

To compound the irony…we may note that Lynn Riggs, the author of Green Grow the Lilacs, the play on which Oklahoma! was based, was himself part Cherokee…Yet, despite the fact that in Riggs’s play (which takes place, specifically, in Indian territory, not Oklahoma territory), many of the characters claim Indian heritage and defiantly assert their separateness from the United States, this dimension has been completely effaced in Oklahoma!, where there is not a single Indian to be seen, and where joining the union is joyfully anticipated by all” (Knapp, 2005, p. 125).

Knapp saw the "Box Social" in Act II as an illuminating guide to peacemaking:

In this extended number, social dance…serves as a rather obvious metaphor for social order, and its disruption through uncontrolled conflict (itself choreographed, of course) gives both social order and what threatens it a vividly embodied presence that could happen only through the medium of dance. (Knapp, 2005, p. 129)

This clip is from the 1955 movie. De Mille is credited with “dances staged by” though it is clear that her work extends far beyond that role. Apparently, movies had not yet caught on to the new title. Also noteworthy in the credits for imdb.com (the internet movie database): choreographers/dance directors are always listed under “Other Crew” waaaaaaaay at the bottom of the credits. What’s up with that?!

Take particular note of the role played by the women in this dance. How is movement used to express the emotions of the song? What are the movements of the women meant to do?

Video: The Farmer and The Cowman

“When Oklahoma! became a hit of staggering dimensions, and she bounded into choreographing One Touch of Venus (1943) and Bloomer Girl (1944), de Mille was suddenly the most powerful woman on Broadway” (Grant, 2004, p. 263). Balanchine was apparently jealous of her success and told his ex-wife Vera Zorina not to audition for the title role in One Touch of Venus because de Mille was choreographing it” (Grant, 2004, p. 263).

For One Touch of Venus, de Mille choreographed another dream ballet called “Forty Minutes for Lunch.” It stole the show.

De Mille’s commitment to dance integration, truth in the message of the storyline and her deep understanding of dance’s potential to contribute to that message, often put her at odds with producers and other creative staff members. Dance historian Richard Kislan said de Mille was asked to choreograph a ballet for the 1944 musical Bloomer Girl. The ballet was meant to transition the audience from the start of the Civil War to the ending of the show. As The New Yorker reported the story:

Miss de Mille, whose husband was just then involved in the liberation of the Continent, thought she knew exactly what was indicated. She went home to her apartment, stayed there four days, and emerged with a complete ballet, one of the three she did for the show. It opened with some girls saying goodbye to their men, who were going off to war. Then the body of a dead soldier was brought onstage, and after a ballet sequence, the widow of the soldier was left standing alone beside the body. Ms. de Mille was pleased with her effort (“a rushing, running thing, with a steady beat that sounded like the wind,” she has since called it), but when…she showed it to E. Y. Harburg, who staged the show and wrote the lyrics for it, he shook his head and told her it was too stark for a musical. “I’m not going to do an Oklahoma! barn dance about a war, if that’s what you have in mind,” Miss de Mille said sharply. Harburg said that, no, he didn’t want that, either, and proceeded in a soothing voice to suggest some changes, the foremost being the elimination of the dead soldier. Harburg’s proposal called for the ringing of victory bells and was, in Miss de Mille’s words, “all very Fourth of July—war was over, nobody died, and peace was declared in ten minutes.” She refused to accept it, and for a while it looked as if a stalemate might result…Finally, Miss de Mille, after composing four versions in four weeks, was persuaded that the soldier’s body wasn’t an essential part of a somber scene, Harburg agreed that the Fourth of July touches should be toned down, and the compromise ballet struck several of the critics as the best part of Bloomer Girl. (Kislan, p. 81-2)

Why did de Mille battle? Why was she consistently driven to fight for her artistic vision? Said de Mille:

What every choreographer looks for is an opportunity to do what he wants without grave interference and curtailment. In our theater, it’s not possible, if you are just a choreographer. You run afoul of the director and the author and the composer, except in unusual circumstances—such as Oklahoma! where all of us seemed to breathe with the same pair of lungs. (Cited in Kislan, 1987, p. 82)

Rodgers and Hammerstein assembled the creative team of Oklahoma! for their new musical, Carousel.

Carousel was based on a play called Liliom written by Ferenc Molnár.

Molnár had opened his play with a carnival scene, without dialogue but with a crowd rhubarbing; Rodgers and Hammerstein [who wrote the music and lyrics for Carousel] decided to forgo a conventional overture and adapt Molnár’s opening into an extended pantomime set to music…Mamoulian created a masterpiece, the seven-minute “Carousel Waltz” prologue…

Mamoulian built up massive pictorial compositions bit by bit from the psychological truth of each individual in the stage tableau. One of Carousel’s original cast members, Jan Clayton, recalled, “His direction is a very personal thing because to him each member of the cast is an individual performer. He handles large groups magnificently because he acknowledges no ‘chorus’ per se. The each performer, whose name he knows early on, is directed specifically to have a personality and purpose on his own.” (cited in Grant, 2004, p. 240)

Mamoulian’s approach to teaching the chorus very much paralleled de Mille’s belief in the importance of individual characters for her dancers, whatever their role in the show

The two production numbers, “It Was a Real Nice Clambake” and “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over,” were happy dances that celebrated youth and spring.

The “June” dance was light and airy; little touches, as subtle as the sound of the girls hitting their wrists together, conveyed the sense that the girls were intoxicated with the thick, rich aura of spring. Agnes told the dancers to think about feeling “ripe—ready for love, life, fruition, as though you are smelling wet earth, wet grass, the sun on wet leaves, after rain. The palms of your hands are very sensitive…Your fingers tremble, hands and feet seem to be shaking off the droplets of rain. Everything presses upward, toward the sun. There is an impulse like a sharp breath, and then you just dissolve into numinous air.”

“Blow High, Blow Low” was eight minutes of walking, skipping, sidesteps, runs, lifts…The dance … includes the lightning-swift steps of an eighteenth-century jig.

The ballet that ended the show was one of Agnes’s finest theatrical achievements. It was Hammerstein’s idea to show, in ballet and pantomime, the first fifteen years of Louise’s life. The girl, who lived on the wrong side of the tracks and was the daughter of a thief, was another lonely outsider with whom Agnes could identify. The role required acting as well as dancing. Agnes created it for Bambi Linn, who excelled at both. (Easton, 2000, p. 243)

Linn at 16 years old had danced in the ensemble of Oklahoma! and played a child in the dream ballet. The original Louise ballet lasted an hour and fifteen minutes and began with a birthing scene. It was cut down in out of town tryouts, then it was cut again before reaching Broadway. When the show opened, the forty-minute “Louise Ballet” began with Billy watching from heaven as his teenage daughter is..

…playing on the beach but rejected by others of her age for being a thief’s child. A wandering carnival troupe dances on, attempts to get her to join them, and leaves. One of the young roustabouts remains behind and tries to seduce her; as they dance together he awakens in her the passion of first love, but then suddenly leaves. The next passage in the ballet recapitulates the first. A group of girls dressed for a party pass by, and once again Louise attempts to join them but is rejected. As the ballet ends, she is alone on the beach. (Long, 2001, pp. 43-4)

Bambi Linn became a star. De Mille spoke of Linn’s success:

At the conclusion of the Carousel ballet, the actors four times tried to resume dialogue before they were permitted to be heard, and when minutes later Bambi, having changed costume, made her next appearance, she was greeted with such a roar that she had to step forward and bow…The sound [of applause] on Broadway is sharp, instantaneous and important. Behind this clapping is the noise of thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, of telegraph wires humming, radio stations broadcasting, recording machines turning over, agents telephoning, reporters typing. The roar from a Broadway audience opens every door in the theater world. Immediately. That night Bambi woke up to find herself famous. (Cited in Long, 2001, p. 44)

A fanciful musical was set in both Scotland and New York City. De Mille immersed herself in Scottish culture and studied Scottish Highland dance before choreographing the show, and she tied for the first ever Tony award for Best Choreographer with Michael Kidd for Finian’s Rainbow [in the next section.]

The Tony Awards were created by the American Theatre Wing to honor exceptional talent in the Broadway industry. The first ceremony in 1947 awarded honors in seven categories. Since that time, new categories as well as sub-categories have been added. Plays, musicals and revivals are—for the most part—considered separately.

Cast members and creative staff individuals are nominated by a Nominating Committee of approximately 30 theatre professionals. Voting members from just about every professional theatre organization in New York vote by secret ballot. Votes are counted up by a select group of people at an accounting firm, and winners are announced on the night of the Tonys.

Allegro (1947): De Mille began as the director/choreographer of the show, but was demoted to just choreographer. The show required a tremendous amount of staging. There were almost 100 dancers, singers, and soloists. De Mille kept the chorus of singers on stage for the entire show.

Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1949): The show included dances that were “reminiscent of the Charleston era” (Long, 2001, p. 51), but, according to songwriter Jules Styne, they were not right for the show. [Jack Cole choreographed the well-known film with Marilyn Monroe.]

Paint Your Wagon (1951): The show took de Mille back to a genre of musical in which she thrived – Americana. Her dances were a highlight of the show.

In addition to being a talented choreographer, de Mille was a prolific author. She wrote several successful books of her memoirs including Dance to the Piper (1951) and Reprieve: A Memoir (1981) as well as several books about various subjects in dance.

De Mille’s meteoric successes were equally matched with failures. Her later efforts at choreographing and directing didn’t come close to running as long as the musicals listed above.

Her last attempt to choreograph for Broadway illustrates the impact of world events on musicals. The 1969 musical, Come Summer, was mismatched with the times. American troops were in Vietnam and the old-fashioned feel of Come Summer did not entice potential ticket buyers, who felt restless and filled with passion over contemporary concerns.

De Mille was never completely satisfied. She said:

The work wasn’t good enough. All changed, all passed. There was no way of ensuring lasting beauty…I spoke to Martha Graham on the pavement outside of Schrafft’s restaurant. She bowed her head and looked burningly into my face. She spoke from a life’s effort. I went home and wrote down what she said:

“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have a peculiar and unusual gift and you have so far used about one third of your talent.”

“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

“No artist is pleased.”

“But then there is no satisfaction?”

“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. And at times I think I could kick you until you can’t stand.” (1952, p. 335)

De Mille suffered a stroke in 1975, but continued to choreograph ballets, and she reworked her dances from musicals into evenings of concert dance. She died in 1993 at the age of 88 (Grant, 2004).

Agnes de Mille (1905-93) was in fact the single most important transitional figure in Broadway dance history…The integrated musical only really happened when de Mille’s use of ballet transformed the art. For the first time, movement assumed parity with book, music, and lyrics as a carrier of the dramatic through-line of a show…She refashioned ballet for Broadway into an eclectic theatrical language, narrative-driven and character-interpreting, that combined elements of classical ballet, interpretive modern dance, and occasional hoofing…Because of de Mille, the typical Broadway hoofer changed from tapper to dancer trained in all forms; those who could only tap dance were in effect thrown out of employment. She taught an “Acting for Dancers” class, and it was no doubt partly her influence that led many dancers in the 1940s to take acting classes, unheard of in the Ned Wayburn-George White chorus line era. The influence of de Mille’s Broadway ballets was so potent that it stimulated the conception and writing of more dramatically ambitious musicals, not just the dancing of them. (Grant, 2004, p. 259)

De Mille was also responsible for the permanent addition of dance music arrangers to the creative team (Grant, 2004). With dance an integral element of the musical, choreographers had the clout to ask for music that supported the dancing rather than adjusting their dances to fit the composed music.

Though they quickly defected from Broadway to Hollywood, Fayard and Harold Nicholas must be mentioned in any serious talk of Broadway dance. First documented as performing in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, the brothers’ acrobatic athleticism, syncopated tap dancing, and classy performance style challenged the finest of the hoofers who followed in their footsteps. The brothers also danced in the musical Babes in Arms (1937), choreographed by George Balanchine. The lack of spectacle in the show may have been the reason that this musical enjoyed only a modest success. A Variety review of the show read: “No nudity, no show girls, no plush or gold plate may mean no sale" (cited in Hyland 1998 p. 110).

Here is a sample of their dancing from the film, Stormy Weather. [Also seen at the beginning of the clip is bandleader Cab Calloway]:

[P.S. If you turn it off before the end, you’ll have missed some of the most amazing dancing of all time!]

Video: The Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather

(2015)

Postwar America began to see more tours of Broadway productions. This practice gave shows a wider audience and producers more return on their ever-increasing investments. Motion pictures were still competing for audience attention, but a not-so-new invention was ready to take America by storm.

Although versions of television existed for years prior to World War II, the prototypes were of fairly poor quality and were not widely available. When World War II broke out, RCA—who had been developing television for public use—switched its focus to defense contracts. When the war ended, RCA resumed its experimentation with television.

Interestingly, it was song and dance variety shows that were aired in the dawning of the television era. (Can anyone say “Vaudeville”?) Short news shows were also popular. Ed Sullivan, who often featured Broadway performers on his show, would become one of the best known TV personalities in American history.

Musicals were also broadcast on TV. “Early television often turned to Broadway when it sought high-powered musical talent. ‘Spectaculars’ were all the rage, with as many stars and under-rehearsed production numbers as the networks could muster. 1950 brought a short-lived NBC series called Musical Comedy Time, presenting hour-long versions of famous musicals” (Kenrick, 1996-2003, "Musicals on Television").

The revue continued successfully into the Great Depression, but those that survived had a greater discipline or a stronger theme to unite all the various acts…After the advent of the narrative musical, so beautifully rendered by Oklahoma! in 1943, it was harder to engage audience interest in a disconnected show. Television put the final nail in the coffin of the revue in 1948 by offering topical material, comedy, and dancing with a speed and economy that the Broadway stage could no longer match. (Educational Broadcasting System, 2004, p. 2)

Musicals continued to reflect the waves of change in American society. Finian’s Rainbow (1947) foreshadowed the civil rights movement. The show was quite progressive for its time. “The musical posted the first fully integrated chorus (white and black singers and dancers in the same ensemble) in Broadway history” (Hischak, 2008, p. 243). It also had a “humorous subplot about a bigoted southern senator who accidentally turns black when he mangles one of his magic wishes” (Woll, 1989, p. 200).

New opportunities opened for black performers in the 1940s. Chorus dancers and singers, formerly restricted to working in all-black musicals began to be integrated into “white” musicals (Woll, 1989). In addition, black performers were given starring and supporting roles. Historically, black performers had appeared in “white” shows, but their acts were largely segregated from the white performers. [Remember Bert Williams in Ziegfeld’s Follies?]

By the late 1940s, integrated casts and chorus lines evoked hardly any surprise from critics or audiences.… By the early 1950s, Langston Hughes, who had written the longest-running play by a black author to that date [ Mulatto (1935)], began to celebrate the new look of the “black” theater in the pages of The New York Age:

"The results were seen in the mixed dancing chorus of On the Town, the colored and white ensembles of Finian’s Rainbow and My Darlin’ Aida, and the complete integration of singers, dancers, and actors and interracially written and interracially produced Beggars Holiday…In Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, the gypsy boy was played by Katherine Dunham dancer, Leo Coleman, who made love to a white girl." (Woll, 1989, pp. 210-11)

Show integration, however, had its downside. The spirit of integration was so strong that it shut out the need for black musicals, and the era of plenty for black stories and black creative contributions to the Broadway stage was stilled (Woll, 1989).

The identity of female characters also evolved. Musicals and plays began to feature female characters who were bolder and more sexually forward than in shows of the past. This new sexual confidence reflected the times. During World War II, women were working while the men were at war, and there were many more women in America than men. This situation forced women to be more blatant in their bid for male attention.