Except for the BIG stars, most actors and actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Era have faded from sight. A few are remembered because they were fortunate enough to appear in films which have become classics.
Others may be remembered because they played opposite BIG stars. The three women we highlight today DANCED with one of the screen’s biggest stars, Fred Astaire. But you still might not know them.
Yet these actresses gained a bit of movie immortality because -they had the good fortune to be cast opposite Astaire.
Joan Crawford was Fred’s first dancing partner. That was at MGM. Then he went over to RKO, was teamed with Ginger Rogers and the rest, as the cliche goes, was history. After one pairing with Joan Fontaine (not a great dancer) at RKO Fred left the studio to freelance.
Partners came and went from then on. Paulette Goddard. Eleanor Powell. Two films with Rita Hayworth.
Then Paramount teamed Astaire with Bing Crosby, and since the men were the stars of 1942’s Holiday Inn, the studio could cast females who weren’t necessarily name above the title types. Thus Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale got their chances to dance with the master. That’s Marjorie above, Virginia below.
Reynolds, a brunette who’d gone blonde, was in our opinion just serviceable in her part, but Dale was as good as any of Astaire’s previous partners. However, after this film both actress-dancers returned to B films and faded from public view — although Reynolds had a brief comeback on TV as the wife on the popular Fifties situation comedy, The Life of Riley, starring William Bendix as the bumbling Chester A. Riley.
Lucille Bremer (below) was an accomplished dancer under contract to MGM. She was a former Radio City Hall Rockette who had been on Broadway, and after signing with the studio was given a big push. She was Judy Garland’s older sister in Meet Me in St. Louis, then given a starring part opposite Astaire in Yolanda and the Thief, released in 1945.
She danced with him again in two sequences for The Ziegfeld Follies (1946). But then, after Till the Clouds Roll By, she seemed to fall out of favor with Mayer and producer Arthur Freed.
Rumor had it that she was Freed’s mistress. In any event it was deemed that she hadn’t scored with the public. Her career languished. Whether it was the studio’s, or Bremer’s decision, her contract wasn’t renewed. She starred in a few non dancing roles, then retired.
One indie film in which she appears is a favorite of Joe’s. It’s Ruthless, (1948), produced and released by Eagle Lion, and features all those “stars” that had been cultivated at other studios —Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn, Sydney Greenstreet, Martha Vickers and Bremer. Raymond Burr is in it too, but he didn’t receive name above the title billing as did the others. See it, it’s fun.
While you’re at it, why not check out the same year’s Behind Locked Doors, another interesting noir title starring Bremer as the daughter of a mysterious judge who disappears.
Fred Astaire kept retiring, coming out of retirement and dancing with new, younger partners. Vera-Ellen, Jane Powell, Leslie Caron, Audrey Hepburn, Cyd Charisse.
No matter how big, or small their careers might be the women who danced with Fred Astaire on screen are in a class by themselves.
Well, Joe’s favorite RUTHLESS is freely available on YouTube for those interested…
It’s a bigger budgeted picture than director Czech born Edgar G. Ulmer was used to, as his earlier ultra low budget film DETOUR went on to become a cult classic.
And yes, RUTHLESS has quite a collection of character actors and minor leads, maybe they had nothing else to do or were loaned out to an inferior studio (Eagle-Lion would later become the re-born United Artists) as a punishment from their home studio. Either way, one such actor the young Robert J. Anderson, who you as a CLASSIC CHAT follower will recall as playing the young James Stewart in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. In RUTHLESS he’s the young Zachary Scott.
Later on, Anderson became a well respected unit manager in HOLLYWOOD, who I first met on TV’s Columbo.
Lucille Bremer… Highly suspected mistress of MGM producer Arthur Freed, very well known for his casting couch, and could easily ruin a girl’s career who didn’t put out, didn’t ruin Bremer as she quickly retired to marrying a well heeled husband.
It’s funny, the whole essence of CLASSIC MOVIE CHAT is talking about OLD movies and OLD stars, OLD character actors… Even talking about any OLD movie, and by OLD… I mean anything before the 1980’s. Anything before massive special effects, plastic acting, non-stop sex and profanity and in-your-face propaganda.
The OLD saying Everything OLD is new again… When applied to HOLLYWOOD though, simply means they have nothing new to offer. They may recycle the style -but NEVER the substance of the OLD movies, and even the OLD TV shows we love and grew up with.