A MODERN TORTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 37, 13 February 1937, Page 5 (Supplement)

A MODERN TORTURE.

Tap-dancing In Hollywood.

BLEEDING FEET AND LACERATED NERVES.

TITO \driie «e glistened starchily on ?red Astaire's lean neck, no tail- *- coat flared out as he danced. No ewirl of chiffon billowed around Ginger Sogers. She -wore creased slacks with a hole torn in one knee, her eilk waist sagged. Her hair fell over her face as if someone had draped a floor-mop over her skull. They stood on small wooden platforms. Before them, on the floor, grinning acidly, sat Hermes Pan, their dance director. A black slouch hat shaded mocking eyes, his necktie was slung around his waist as a belt. "What are they calling this next picture?" Astaire demanded, truculently. "Stepping Toes/' Pan replied.

"Hah!" exploded Miss Rogers. It was an explosion made up of dynamite that was half nerves, a quarter weariness and a quarter rehearsal-temperament. "But" there isn't going to be any picture . . ." Pan began. Astaire and Rogers crucified him with a look. "Xot unless you get to work and learn some routines."-' He had paid little attention to Astaire, the etar. As one dancer to another, he assumed Astaire knew his business and needed no coaching. Astaire paid even less attention to Pan. No one ever pays much attention to assistant directors except those under them. The major number in their first picture, "Hying Down to Rio," was the "Carioca." It required a background of dancing negroes. Pan, who learned to dance in Tennessee, largely negro fashion, knew exactly what to do, and

was doing it. Astaire strolled in. Presently a rest came. Astaire walked over to Pan.

"Where did you learn that technique !" he asked. "Tennessee," Pan replied. "Negro folk stuff." "Could I do it?" "Sure," said Pan. "You do everything else." Astaire liked the youngster's blunt answers. He realised the need of a critic who would talk back to a star. He needed a tutor to point out the errors he could not see for himself. He always created his own routines, but couldn't detect flaws until he saw himself do it on the screen—and then it was - too late.' Pan became first Astaire's critic. He did a "ood job. He barked at the star, corrected him bitterly, took no slack talk. For that matter, he got little of it. He became dance director for- the studio. When that came he got a private office and an idea. Much of that idea lias resulted in the success of the RogersAstaire films., He worked out a sequence of plans for the preparation of these pictures which would fit any of them, would start easily and gradually work up into the actual shooting of the picture itself.

When the first scenario of a new Rogers-Astaire item is complete, Pan sits down with the two, and together they read the script. It gives them a feel for what the picture is going to be. They get an understanding of the type of characters. Before either player gets too involved with thinking of character performance, the two are whisked to a music room and they hear the score. Pan watches both of them.

"He thinks we've been knitting a sweater for six weeks," Miss Rogers said icily, "No, but you haven't got anything yet," Pan replied. "Let's get going." The Greek, Hermes Pan. Tor another hour they drummed. Off in a corner a tinny piano gave them the rhythm. On the floor, Pan sat. In the middle of a rhythm Rogers stopped, stepped down, put her left foot up on a chair, took off her shoe and glared at the director. Her foot was bleeding. Pan, no fool, said nothing. From the platform, Astaire grinned. "I'll be with you in a second," he said. "My blisters will burst any minute now." Pan called off rehearsal for the day. The youngster who takes Rogers and Astaire in hand for six to eight weeks before each picture left Nashville, Tennessee, when he was 14, a gangling, only slightly bewildered young Greek who wanted to dance —for people and not for money. His father was Greek Consul in Nashville. The family name was Pan—plus 11 more letters ending in "opolis." When he arrived in New York, the boy dropped all but the first three, letters of his name and began looking for work. He got it. In a chorus of a musical comedy. Before he was 20 he was assistant dance director for several musical productions on Broadway; when he was 22 he was summoned to Hollywood. A year later, during the filming of Astaire's first picture, "Flying Down to Rio," he was assistant dance director. That meant he had to drill and cajole 40 chorus girls, 39 of whom would gladly have slit his throat after the first ten days. Nerves at Breaking-Point.

When the first playing of the score is finished the stars go home. Next day Astaire and Pan meet on the bare sta"e and fool around all afternoon, getting nowhere. They don't even try to get anywhere. "We just fool around, just fool around for hours," said Pan. Out of the fooling around a few steps begin to assert themselves. On the basis of these, Pan and Astaire work together for a week, without routine, without definite aim. They hope for luck and trial and error to bring them something new. Usually it does. By the second week Miss Rogers is called. She watches them for a week. At the end of the second week the stars have the basic routines worked out. . Then follow two weeks of polishing. Three, if necessary. Nerves begin to get taut in the thifd week, temperaments bubble and boil. Pan tightens his necktie belt and says nothing. The temperaments boil away. After this preliminary work come six weeks of hard, unrelenting practise, day and night, until feet bleed, tempers flare. Sometimes there are tears. After eight weeks the picture begins. Even then mistakes are made, the scene is stopped and started all over again.

There have been seemingly smooth, effortless dancing scenes in EogersAstaire pictures which were shot 40 times before the perfect one came. That means doing the eanie thing over and over to the same music in the same setting to the same sleepy electricians and wearied director from fl o'clock in the morning until nearly midnight. The record was set in "Stepping Toes." Who Would Be a Film Star? The last number in the picture was "shot" 47 times before it was done right. The 47th shot was done with the feet of both dancers- bleeding, their nerves snapping. Rogers had destroyed three gowns, the skirt of the fourth and last was torn. Happily the tear didn't show. Astaire had wrecked six boiled evening shirts, reduced nine white ties to limp rags. When the picture is released, no audience will detect the torn feet, lacerated nerves, shattered poiso and ravaged dress. Rogers will be smiling, gay. Astaire will be nimble, gallant. Xo audience nt all will seo Pan, but he was standing about five feet away during all that "shooting," jnst outside the range of the camera.

The day's toll to him was one black felt kit, ten nibbled finger-nails. The nibbling went right down to where it hurts.

With them, ns a cause for the craze for tap-dancing, is Eleanor Powell, longlegged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer tapping star; at Warner Brothers studio, Ruby Keeler; at Paramount, Eleanore Whitney. But the mull who knows more than all of them put together is the dancing negro, a man old enoiigh to have worn out before they started. He is Bill Robinson, wide-grinned, gleaming GO-year-old black, who is willing to bet money ho can run backward faster than any man can run forward, eats two quarts of vanilla ice-cream a day, has a gold-plated revolver given to him by the Police Department of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Ho goes to all the dancing pictures. "Ah learn things," he says simply.