Ruth Leon recommends… Tommy Rall & Bob Fosse
Ruth Leon recommendsAnother from my Greatest Dances on Film -My Sister Eileen
This is from the 1955 movie of My Sister Eileen. The dancers are Tommy Rall and, believe it or not, Bob Fosse, then known as Robert Fosse. The film starred Betty Garrett and Janet Leigh and a very young Jack Lemmon.
Classically-trained dancers. Nothing beats it!!
I think it’s worth noting that Fosse provided the choreography for the entire film, one of only four films for which he created dances in the 1950s. Notice there are only three cuts in the entire dance sequence, with its most virtuosic steps from a single long take. And you know from the opening moments that it’s Fosse: those hats!
As for “a very young Jack Lemmon”, he was 30 when the film was shot in 1955. Does this mean that 65 is the new 40? (Just asking for a friend.)
Nice film clip. Thanks
Fosse I know, Tommy Rall was a revelation, and a very fine dancer.
Bob Fosse–a good dancer in movies in the early 1950s but later a much better choreographer.
Tommy Rall was an extraordinary and versatile dancer and singer and was very highly praised by Gene Kelly and Donald O’Conner, among others. He was outstanding in ballet, tap, and the very athletic American movie dance style of the time.
Rall’s ballet training was with Bronislava Najinska (Najinsky’s sister), among others. He caught the attention of Jerome Robbins at what became the American Ballet Theater. Robbins placed him in Fancy Free on Broadway when Rall was just 16 years old. He danced in various other stage and movie musicals until they went out of fashion in the early 1960s. He did a funny balletic cameo in the movie Funny Girl in the Swan Lake parody scene with Barbra Streisand.
Rall also had a fine operatic tenor voice and performed with the NY City Opera and Opera Company of Boston in the 1960s. He died at age 90 in 2020.
well …. wow, but let the record show that the music is by Sidney Cutner