New Britain Herald Newspaper, March 23, 1926, Page 19

the SHOWGIRL who is ONLY BEAUTIFUL/ - Tall, Languid, “Still-Life” Types Once Favored Give Way to Youth, Grace and Personality, Says Director, as Public Today Demands Girls Who Can Dance and Provide Lively Entertainment By Isabel Stephen PITY the poor “beautiful but dumb” showgirl—she’s been shoved into the background, No longer does she roll up to re- hearsal in her gorgeous motor, swathed in Russian sables and sparkling like a Jeweler's shop window, Nowadays her poor feet are hollowing out grooves on Broadway as she follows behind her homelier sisters on that heartbreaking trail which winds around the theatrical agency offices. She belongs to the old Broadway of Romance and Tradition. Sammy Lee, the dance director, who sprang to fame on the shoulders of the homely glrl, is held partly responsibla for the eclipse of the stage beauty. Why did he do {t? Isn’t a thing of beauty a joy forever just as much now as it was in former times before prohibitiort put out in our s_\’n(’np;mnn, Toes of the Nations RENCH girls simply cannot catch on to our rhythm. They cannot compare with American girls. SPANISH girls have a peculiar inborn ability for dancing and very casily catch on to our rhythm. RUSSTAN girls are ambitious and work very hard. ENGLISH girls lack the necessary personality for American dancing. They develop a perfect technique, but it is much more mechanical than our dancing. AMERICAN girls have the necessary grace and verve. There is an irresistible appeal to the youthful spirit that comes The modern showgirl raust, above all else, be possessed of grace, charm and ability to dance, plus years of kard practice and training the damper on the Gay White Way? The question was put up to him squarely one afternoon when he was putting a chorus for a new show through {ts paces. The show had opened, but there were a few kicks which were not quite up to the mark, and his eagle eye had found flaws which had not been noted even by the reviewers. “If I can get a beautjful girl who can really dance well,” he ¥nid slowly, “I'll naturally give her the preference over another girl who is mot so beautiful. But no girl these days gets by merely on her beauty. She’s got to have pep and personality. Audiences don't want—and won't have—motionless pictures any more. “REALLY beautiful girls often ap- pear to disadvantage on the stage; their delicate features are not appreci- ated, and even appear flat in the glare of the footlights, “The reason I turned to the plainer irls for my chorus frankly was because wanted to do something unusual when I was given my first chance to ‘put on’' the dance numbers of a big show. “Dancing should be an expression of joy, a laughing, rollicking, carefres thing which exudes happiness and youth and freshness and irrepressible vigor. Of course, I am talking about dancing in the chorus. “That's what people go to a musical comedy or review to witness. They don't want to see motionless pictures. The faster a show is, the more popular and longer its run. “Audiences are far more sophisticated these days. The languid beauties who used to come on, clad in magnificent raiment, and haughtily saunter across the stage, with faces as devoid of ex- pression as cigar-store Indians, would freeze the best of performances today. “Youthfulness is the keynote of the twentieth ce . Pep and vivacity are what an audience seeks now. In the audiences there are just as many beauti- ful girls as there ever were in the old reviews, for women are dressing much more gayly and they are taking just as much thought about their appearances as the profezsional beauties of the last century. “When a man wanted to dance in the cabarets or the gay restaurants in former days, he never dreamed of taking his own women folks with him; they simply didn't belong there. In order to have com ons for these places, he had to seck out the chorus beauties. “The management came to me when I was puiting on ; m Girl,’ and after one rehearsing, sa . “‘Why don’t you get beautiful girls? Your chorus can dance and they are good- looking, but nohody would turn and look after them in the street! So-and-so and such-and-such are at libs why don't you engage them?’ “The man mentioned one famous pro- fessional beauty and several others whose photographs served to make up beautiful magazine “If you know girls who can d as well as the ones I have picked q I'n 1 to have them; but Mdon't want any still life in my production. Maybe I'm wrong—but I don't think so. Just wait until the opening, “Still the man wa is a tremendous amount of money tied up in a pro t sort, and I appreciated jety. Bu courage of my conviction in my own way, and w gpened everybody ‘beautiful’ choru “Look over his head in of coryphees wh panting after number, “whic the most beautif A cute little brur with doll-like features, who would 1 attention blonde of the Greuse wde with covers any very beautiful There the v energeti look will e front anywhere; pointed out. “As a picker for you wouldn't have selected are back line Sammy Iee, who has trained thousands of showgirls, puts pep and per- sonality as the greatest assets In their street clothes they are lovely creatures, and seen close up like this you can take in all the details, “They won't remain in the back line it they keep on as they are going—but it isn't their beauty that's going to place them in the front Tow; it's their pep and ambition that's going to bring them for ward. They all have beautiful forms— and faces don't matter so much. Make- up will emphasize the small features of the little brunette, who would look flat- faced behind the glare of the footlights, and it will add the necessary color to the delicate blond beauties.” “Just how do you choose your ch girls? Who are they and where do they come from? THF, reply came wi it & moment's hesitation. “I give preference t girls who are less than 19. Youth is the one’great requisite in the chorus. The way I figure it is, that if a girl is an bitious she will Lave raised herself out of the chorus by the time she is in hef™ early twenties; and I want only girls who are ambitious. “In selecting girls the first thing T do s to have them walk across the floor to usic. This reveals whether the girl s a sense of harmony. She may he shy or nervous, she may even trip np in this walk, but I can tell at a glance whether she has this~sense. The show- girl of 1926 must be able to translate the joy of life into terms of dancing “Second, I note the girl's figure and her general gracefulness; whether she carries herself well, and how she wears her clothes. The clothes themselves don’t matter—by that I mean whether they are cotton or s or whether the girl is wearing a shabby coat or a few thousand dolla: s. But be a well-groomed look powder and rouge wo blemishes, The girl who has studied to make the most of herself has an advantage over the girl v has no clothes sense—who doesn’t know w is becoming—but any exp: rector can visualize just done to bring the applicant as near per- fection as possible, tle winter " worth of and have ienced mi can be “It is nothing unusual for from 500 to 1000 girls and women to ap once. [ ask all the girls wt experience in Broadway the last two years to sta The rest of the crowd I reques up. Then I give th Such girls as are 3 too ugly, or too awkward, or logking I pgss by; th 1 any metropélitan c! “I look over the girls claimed to have had experienc course, many of them tr; do a little more weeding select join the line-up ‘“What follows may seem a ridicu- lously simple test— but 76 per cent fall down on it: I have the pianist play a jazzy march and direct the applicants to walk around the stage in time to the music. I watch their feet—and their faces. I am not looking for stunning pulchritude—any face that is not positively ugly (and there are really very few of those) can easily be transformed by its expression. Animated feet and an animated expres- sion must synchronize in the chorus, and they must do it naturally, “Without the flattering furs, shady hats, chic costumes and all the doo-dads which have won for the American girl the title of the most beautiful in the world, you see a rather sorry change in the girl who is ‘made’ by her clothes. If we dressed each girl in exactly the costume which was most becoming to her, it wouldn't be so hard on her; then her gift would come in handy the chorus she must dress exactly in the same colors and on the same lines as several other girls. “In the whirl of the dance faces are not noticed, but forms are, and it s because the American girl whose peopla have been in this country for several generations has by far the best form that she is the one who predominates in all musical comedy shows.” “But what of the ‘chic’ and peppy personality of the Parisienne? Isn’t she a dangerous rival?” “The French girl doesn’t begin to com- pare with the American girl either in form or in dancing,” Lee replied firmly. “The percentage of French girls in large reviews i3 so small as to be almost negligible.” is this?" se they simply can't catch on rhythm,” the little dancing di- rector smiled a bit ruefully. have tried them out again and again, and I h almost invariably had to let them go in the end. The Spanish and the Russian girls are most su among the foreign-born; that is the Spanish dancing is so cf v and in- e, and the S e such a peculiar inborn abil cing that very easily ¢ e rhythm distingu American dancing. her hand, they are and work very, use dously am ard lish girls lack the nec for rica; a vy per- The t train. Vv are very ect technique, e mechanical than 1 dancers usu hey develop a per much 1 ner who speaks of the merican girl— vou that these in the v do you think because of jazz ain irresistible Some twelve or fifteen years ago about all that was required of a showgirl was to be easy on the optic nerve, but that day is past appeal to the American youthful spirit in this syncopation which {s unknown in FEurope. Paris and London have gone wild over jazz; yet they don't respond to it as we do, ¢\AJHEN I am teaching boys and girls to dance in my productions, the first thing I do is to overcome thelr self-consciousness, I tell them to imagine they are in the night clubs dancing for thelr own enjoyment, “‘Don't worry about the intricate steps,’ T tell them; ‘if you make hard work of it, you're going to be rotten. Relax, Harmonize with the rhythm of the music. Let yourself go; just sway and yield to the measures, and the hard ateps will come to you easily emsugh’ “An audience senses at once when the chorus is ‘laboring’ at their dancing. It enjoys a feature or so of hard, tech- nical dancing, but it would not only be bored to death by a whole evening of such workeit would react to the weari- ness of the boys and girls on the stage and would feel resi'sss and uneasy without knowing what wa: the matter with it, “Every large musical comedy engages three types of chorus girls: the ‘ponles,’ who are from four feet eleven to five feet two, the mediums, who are from five feet four to five feet seven, and the medium showgirl and showgirl, who are from five feet to over five feet seven, “The little ponies do the very hard dancing, the mediums are dancers of another type, and the medium showgirls do a little dancing and display gowns, while the showgirls usually move around only, and serve as ornaments, “Showgirls still command the highest salaries, although there are exceptional chorus girls who get equally large amounts, The difference between the showgirl of today and the traditional showgirl who was ‘beautiful but dumb’ is that she must be beautiful and bril- liant—and she must have personality! It is much more difficult to ‘get over the footlights’ when you have only a thinking part than if you are in motion all the time—yet, the stiff, unthinking, odalisque type of beauty sticks out like a sore thumb when she appears in the midst of a bevy of sparkling, scintil- lating sprites.” o LEE was asked what advice he would give to parents wio approved of a stage career for their daughters, “First of all, they should teach them that sheer hard work is necessary for success, If I had a daughter whom I intended for musical comedy, I would have her start in when she was 10 years old. A couple of years’ ballet dancing might be given her in order to instill grace and poise; but that would be all. Ballet dancing is wonderfully good for limbering up the muscles so that the body becomes supple and the upper and lower limbs move rhythmically with the least possible effort, “However, I wouldn't send a child to the ballet school before she reaches the age of 10; the tender bones and muscles are not strong enough until then. Of course, if a ballet career {s planned, children start in much earlier, “One thing which it would ba well to keep in mind, however, {s that the star ballet dancers in the world can be counted on the fingers of one hand: there is only one Genee and one Pavlowa, In come is always a ility, but in order to X’!‘A(‘h'(hlf the girl m be a specialist in al comedy dancing, No ballet star d hold the interest of an audience through the whole of such a show. “Robust health is necessary for sue- The girl who dissipates may hold her good looks for a little while, but she very soon loses her pep and—her position. If she is suffering from the hangover of an all-night par v, she can't put herself over on a critical audience. “There is a lot of glamour about back stage, all right—but there's more hard work. If employers hops or offices tried to make girls work one-quarter is hard as we make chorus girls work, their places of business would be empty. “Beauty alone gets by in lots of places—but it no longer gets by on the stage. People 1t to be amused, exhilarated, thrilled; they want to hear music and see peppy dancing. vthing and everybody contributing o this get applause—the rest is dead- wood and so is chopped out.” So—exit the “beautiful but dumb” onal showgirl of yesteryear! Copuright By Publie Ledoer Company coss trad [ 12" “EE™ =l