Lyrics by
Lorenz
Hart
Music by Richard Rodgers
Produced by Warner Bros./First National
Directed by Ray Enright
Starring: Eddie Albert, Vera Zorina,
Frank McHugh and Donald O'Connor
Screenplay by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay
Photography by James Wong Howe and Sol Polito
Choreography by George Balachine
Costumes by Orry-Kelly
Plot
Junior Donal, an ex-vaudevillian now teaching music at Knickerbocker University,
a WPA exention in New York, enlists to help of patroness Peggy Portefield
to persuade Sergei Alexandrovich, the director of the Russian Ballet, to
stage a friend's jazzy "Slaugher on Tenth Avenue" ballet. While he may dream
of sharing the pleasure of a small hotel with girlfriend Frankie Frayne,
Junior becomes involved with the company's prima ballerina, Vera Barnova,
and even takes over the male lead in "Slaugher". This so enrages Vera'a
lover and regular dancing partner that he hires two thugs to kill Junior
while he is performing on stage. To avoid being a target Junior keeps dancing
even after the ballet is over, then - once the gunmen have been arrested
- falls exhausted to the floor.
Overview
Reviews
|
On Your Toes should, on paper, have been a blockbuster of a musical. It
was based on a successful George Abbott stage play. had a Rodgers and Hart
score, the great Balanchine was its choreographer, James Wong Howe and Sol
Polito photographed it and Orry-Kelly designed the clothes. In the event,
however, an awful screenplay by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay sabotaged
the venture, and for a film that could so easily have danced its way to
glory, it was, apart from the noteworthy "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" sequence,
exceptionally dull.
from The Hollywood Musical by Clive Hirschhorn
Overview
Discography
|
On Your Toes original Broadway Revival 1954