Moira Shearer

   Moira Shearer’s career in cinema was closely related to that of Michael Powell. A majority of the films she made were directed by him and he knew well how to showcase her many talents. One of these was her natural colouring, her pale skin, her auburn hair and her dark grey-blue eyes. It was a combination, as one commentator wrote, that meant she was “made for Technicolor”.

   Not that her colouring had not been featured by photographers before she began her film career. Baron and Cecil Beaton had shot her in colour as early as 1945 and, prior to that, she had often, much to her annoyance, been noted for the colour her hair. Even when she was dancing with the International Ballet in 1941 she did all she could to conceal her hair so, as she later recalled, that the audience wouldn’t single her out on the basis of her colouring.

   Powell set out to exploit Shearer’s beauty in The Red Shoes (1948), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and in Peeping Tom in 1955. Annotated stills from these films and two others, where Powell was not the director, are shown below.

“I thought once that there would be no room in my life for anything but dancing”.

In the 1948 film, The Red Shoes, directed by Powell, Moira Shearer plays the part of Victoria (Vicky) Page, an aspiring ballerina. Anton Walbrook plays Boris Lermontov, the director of a ballet company which is appearing in Monte Carlo.

   Vicky learns that Lermontov plans to fire her fiancé, Julian, who is the music director. She learns that Lermontov is leaving  Monte Carlo the next morning on the 8.15 train and goes to the station to confront him. She arrives early and waits for him on the platform. When he arrives, he sees her, approaches her and says sarcastically, “Has the famous Miss Page come to see me off?” She ignores the question and replies, “I’d like to talk to you”. They board the train together. In his compartment she asks him why he is firing Julian. Reluctantly he gives a vague reason that does not satisfy Vicky.

   Her response is to state, “I  thought once, Mr Lermontov, that there would be no room in my life for anything but dancing”. She goes on to say that “if Julian goes, I shall go too”.

   Lermontov warns her that working for another company would not be the same as dancing in his. She replies, “I never pretended to myself that it would”. Lermontov continues, “I could make you one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known” and he asks her, “do you believe that?” She replies, “yes, I do”. Lermontov then asks, “and all that means nothing to you?”

   She sets her jaw, glares at him and angrily replies “you know exactly what it means to me!” Their conversation is cut short by the guard’s whistle sounding. Vicky offers her hand to Lermontov by way of a goodbye, but he refuses it. Instead, he brusquely opens the door plainly indicating that she should leave. As she exits the carriage she scowls at him and we are left with an image of Lermontov alone with his thoughts.

“It’s fate you know”.

In this 1955 film, The Man who loved Redheads, directed by Harold French, Moira Shearer plays four roles. In the opening episode she portrays a teenager names Sylvia. She and a young Lord Binfield (played by Jeremy Spenser) are engaged in a game of hide and seek at his birthday party. Sylvia hides in a walk-in linen closet where Binfield discovers her. They instantly fall in love, Sylvia earnestly explains to him, “it’s fate you know…. It’s what they call an affinity”. One critic judged that this was Shearer’s most convincing role in the entire film. They were certainly her best and most endearing lines. Other critics praised her dancing of the Charleston and in Sleeping Beauty but stopped short of praising her acting.

   Also released in 1955 was Powell’s controversial film Peeping Tom. Shearer played the bit part of a would-be actress, Vivian. She was not originally cast for the film but, at the last moment and as a favour to Powell she took over from an actress who dropped out. The part was hastily rewritten to showcase Shearer’s beauty and dancing ability. She was also prevailed upon to do a little “acting”.

The illustrated scene is one in which Vivian hides from the studio security guard while she waits for the cinematographer, Mark, played by Carl-Heinz Boehm. He has offered her an informal screen test in a vacant studio.

   In an interview later in life Shearer indicated that, as she been brought in at the last moment, she had only a vague idea of the plot. When she eventually saw the finished film at its premiere she realised she had been the victim of what she called Powell’s “sadistic streak”.

   In the 1960 film Black Tights Moira Shearer dances as Roxane in Roland Petit’s ballet Cyrano. Petit dances the title role and George Reich is Roxane’s love, Christian. As Shearer hadn’t danced in 6 years she said it was a struggle to regain her strength and technique. She also later complained in an interview with the dance historian, Dale Harris, that the ballet, in which she, Petit and Reich dance a pas de trois, was “cut to shreds” in the editing room.

Shearer as Roxane in one of the several gowns she wears in the film. The photographer is unknown but is possibly Walter Limot.

The memorial service for Margot Fonteyn at Westminster in June 1991. Moira Shearer who was then 65 years old attended with her eldest daughter Ailsa. Fonteyn had been Ailsa’s godmother. Shearer’s hair might have lost some of its brilliance but she seems to have maintained her ballerina’s body and poise.