The Choreographer Who Set Marilyn in Motion

‘Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance’By Debra LevineUniversity Press of Kentucky, 384 pagesChoreographer Jack Cole may have been the only man on a movie set that Marilyn Monroe completely trusted. Most directors, and that is really what Cole was, knew nothing about how to enhance her performances. That included great figures like Howard Hawks, the ostensible director of “Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” who happily turned over the song and dance stuff to Cole.Hal Schaefer, a musical coach and close second to Cole among the men Monroe relied on, related how Cole worked with her: “He wanted to make a move, and she put her arm out. It kind of drifted. Jack says, ‘No, wait. Sharp, I want it sharp.’ She says, ‘But Jack, I’m supposed to be a sex queen.’ And he answers, ‘That’s not sexy. That’s like a limp fish. Put it there! Strong! That’s sexy! That’s life, that’s alive, that’s energy!’”She put it there like nobody’s business. Cole had that kind of instant, incisive authority that he brought with him to all his work. Monroe had been used to the languorous gesture that made her rather passive. He showed her how to take charge, and she never again performed a song and dance number without him.Cole worked on ground breaking Broadway musicals like “Man of La Mancha,” but also for Hollywood extravaganzas like “Kismet” — at one time assembling a dance company that Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures kept steadily employed for nearly four years. One of the revelations in Debra Levine’s biography is how Cohn —usually described as an ogre— got handled by Cole, even though the choreographer had his own bad boy reputation that included insulting Hollywood moguls.In Ms. Levine’s book, Cole is the greatest choreographer to work on Broadway, in Hollywood, and in a surprising number of night clubs, some of them mob run. Gangsters actually took to Cole’s dynamic work as he transformed the stage into kinetic shows that featured knee slides and other moves that make Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, for instance, seem as, well, limp by comparison.Cole was an innovator, drawing on Asian, African, and Caribbean dance forms. At his death, his library held volumes on choreography in many different languages. Yet he rarely won awards, and he is not nearly as well known as Jerome Robbins or Bob Fosse, both of whom acknowledged Cole as a master.So why was Cole so often overlooked? Ms. Levine is aggrieved on his behalf, but never quite explains why he got slighted. In part, he was not nearly as good a self-promoter as Fosse, a sore point with Cole who first taught Fosse’s partner, Gwen Verdon, how to dance. Cole alienated many people in show business, and put some of his best work in night clubs that critics ignored or did not take seriously.Cole had a violent, sadistic streak that alienated many he worked with, but he also attracted a tremendously loyal group of dancers who exhausted themselves to please him. A great dancer himself, he expected no less from his dance companies, sometimes physically abusing performers who just didn’t get what he wanted them to do. Was it timing that sometimes did him in? While doing some of his best work it was overshadowed at the time by the huge success of “West Side Story,” choreographed by Jerome Robbins. Not only critics but his fellow choreographers let him down, Levine suggests, by not giving him enough credit for influencing them.A combination of factors, then, seems to have hindered Cole, whose sense of superiority, perhaps, kept him from choreographing his own fame as Bob Fosse did so well in a film like 1979’s “All That Jazz.” Unlike Fosse, Cole was never given the opportunity to direct and instead was often called in for spot assignments — creating Monroe’s dances for “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Some Like It Hot,” and “Let’s Make Love.”Treat yourself to reading about Cole’s choreography for Rita Hayworth in “Gilda.” Ms. Levine expertly puts you there with the star as Cole takes her through the repertory of gestures for “Put the Blame on Mame,” the result of years of watching burlesque performers. Like Monroe, Hayworth gave herself up utterly to Cole’s choreography, which is exactly what Ms. Levine does in this exhilarating biography. Mr. Rollyson is the author of ‘Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress.’

The Choreographer Who Set Marilyn in Motion

The Choreographer Who Set Marilyn in Motion

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