In early March 1973 Moira Shearer left the comfort of her home at The Old Manse in Makerstoun, Scotland and travelled to the US to begin a gruelling 6-week lecture tour. She was 47 years old, had been married for 23 years and had 4 children.
The theme of the lectures was “The History of Ballet”. By her own account this was a subject that had interested her since childhood. She was uniquely qualified to discuss it and the promoters of the tour agreed. She had already given similar lectures at several venues in England and Wales. She was booked to appear in between 20 and 30 locations that ranged from the East Coast, Louisville, Kentucky, the Midwest and the Far West. The tour began in Newark, New Jersey on March 12th and ended in San Rafael, California on April 20th.
The format of each appearance was generally the same. A member of the local organizing committee would introduce Shearer who would then talk, probably for around an hour. If time permitted there would be an opportunity for questions to Shearer from the audience and, perhaps, for meeting with her. Once the public had left local reporters were then allowed to interview her.
The newspaper accounts that have survived indicate that each of the reporters was more intent in exploring “human interest” than the history of ballet. This may have also represented the primary interest of much of the audience. Shearer seemed to be amenable to talking about herself.
The reporter for the Chicago Daily News, who attended her lecture in Evanston, Illinois on April 9th, gave the following account. It is probably a good synopsis of each of the appearances on the tour.
“The onetime ballerina is on her first full-scale lecture tour, speaking almost daily in towns and cities across the country for 6 weeks. Her appearance in Evanston on a recent rainy afternoon was her 4th lecture in the Chicago area in a two-week period.
The question inevitably as to why Moira Shearer is finally giving talks on ballet a full 19 years after she quit and more than a decade since she drew a paycheck for any kind of theatrical work.
The answer is simple. She was asked. 4 times in fact, by various lecture agencies.
‘It seemed sensible to do, something I like and do well and that contributes to the childrens’ school fees which are astronomical’, she said, while relaxing after the lecture and hand-shaking routine.
The 3 oldest children are girls, the 10-year-old is a boy. This bit of biographical information is almost always mentioned when Miss Shearer is introduced to her audiences and, if a question period follows her talk, almost always leads to the question of whether the girls plan to become ballerinas”.
Shearer’s response was that ‘It is ludicrous to think that kind of talent is hereditary’. In another interview she indicated that she would neither encourage nor discourage her children from taking up dancing. Her stance obviously reflects the fact that she was “forced” to study ballet by her mother and that it was not a path she would have chosen for herself.
Moira Shearer meets with members of the audience after her lecture in Evanston, Illinois early in April 1973. Photographer unknown. The photo was published in the Chicago Daily News on April 9th.
The reporter for the Minnesota Star-Tribune on March 29th, 1973, made reference to Shearer’s enduring “star quality”.
“I’ve always admired Moira Shearer for her looks (blue-green eyes, pale skin, red-gold hair and freckles) her talent (dancing and acting) and her name (Moira)”.
“As a dancer with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Miss Shearer said, she was “liberated” as a teenager. ‘All British women were mobilized during World War 2’, she said. ‘They did men’s jobs but didn’t lose their femininity. If I hadn’t danced – and we danced right through all of the bombing raids – I probably would have been in a factory or driving a truck’. The same reporter continued, “May I say that Miss Shearer could be an inspiration to housewives everywhere. Shearer added, ‘I was an only child and lonely….. having my own family was the best thing that ever happened’.
Shearer’s final lecture was at the Marin Veterans Memorial Building in San Rafael on April 20th. The reporter was Jean Lisetour of the Independent Journal. She headlined her account as, “Doesn’t like to talk shop”.
Notwithstanding the subject of the lecture, the history of ballet, and focusing on her own career Lisetour reported that Shearer “would rather talk about her family, politics – just about anything – more than ballet. ‘It is difficult to say you enjoy performing ballet. It is satisfying occasionally when you feel you have given a good performance, but that only happens about once every five years. Usually there is a flood of tears in the dressing room after a performance because of a mistake that the public does not even know you made …. I was not at all a dedicated dancer. I didn’t choose (ballet) myself, and it didn’t break my heart to stop dancing’”.
Shearer summed up the tour by saying that she had enjoyed it but was looking forward to getting back to The Old Manse and to her family.
Sources.
Chicago Daily News, April 9th, 1973
The Independent Journal, San Rafael, undated, but mid-April 1973.
(All credit for this post goes to Scott Bilotta, an American who researches the history of photography and collects materials related to this. In his collection he has an envelope containing three glass plate negatives that resulted from a photo shoot of Moira Shearer in New York in October 1949.)
On October 4th, 1949, Moira Shearer joined the rest of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company and flew from London to La Guardia airport in New York where the company opened its first tour of North America.
As a result of her appearance in the film, The Red Shoes, released in 1948, Shearer was well-known in the US and probably even better known than the company’s prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. Thus, Shearer drew a great deal of the attention of the New York press. The paparazzi were out in force at La Guardia on October 5th and, unsuccessfully, solicited some “cheesecake” shots of the female dancers.
On Sunday, October 31st, well into the company’s schedule at the Metropolitan Opera House, Shearer attended a photo shoot at the studios of the photographers, Harry Warnecke, and his assistant, Gus Schoenbaechler, who had been commissioned by the New York Daily Post to create a colour portrait of Shearer. It was to be used on the cover of an upcoming issue of the colour supplement that the newspaper put out each Sunday. Colour photographs were time-consuming and costly and, thus, still relatively rare in the press in 1949 and were usually confined to special issues.
Warnecke, using a widely available “tri-color” camera, shot a single image of Shearer that was exposed on a glass negative. From this image Warnecke then derived three colour-separated negatives that were later combined or, in Bilotta’s terms, “assembled” into a “positive” colour print. Bilotta’s collection consists of the three negatives but not the final print. Thus, he assembled the negatives in a modern Photoshop process.
If the Daily News had chosen to publish the image in 1949 Bilotta believes they would have used an assembly process such as “Carbro or perhaps Kodak Dye Transfer” that would have allowed for colour correction. The photographers noted on the sleeve that contained the negatives that Shearer had “light red hair, blue eyes, very fair complexion”. Presumably these notes would have been used as a guide to colour correction. It is not known if the Daily News used the image. However, it seems unlikely as, when the next Sunday supplement was published on November 6th, Sadler’s Wells had left town.
The original colour separation negatives.
Monochrome prints made by Scott Bilotta from the original negatives. These he then combined in a Photoshop process to create a monochrome version of the final image at right.
The completed colour portrait of Shearer printed by Scott Bilotta in a Photoshop process.
The Old Vic presented a lavish and highly criticized production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Edinburgh Festival in late August and early September 1954. Robert Helpmann, the former Sadler’s Wells dancer portrayed Oberon and Moira Shearer played Titania in her first major dramatic role. The play ran for 2 weeks between August 31st and September 11th at the Empire Theatre.
During this run, on September 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th, the Glyndebourne opera company presented the dance-drama, A Soldier’s Tale, by Igor Stravinsky. Helpmann played the devil and Shearer was the princess. As the play was staged at 11 am each day and at a different theatre, the King’s, conflicts with The Dream were avoided. However, for Shearer and Helpmann the schedule must have been challenging.
The cast for the Tale was completed by Terence Longdon as the soldier and Anthony Nicholls as the narrator. Longdon was also part of the cast for the Dream in which he played Lysander.
A small, elevated stage was erected on the larger stage at the King’s Theatre and most of the performance took place on it. To one side and at a lower level in an improvised “pit” sat the small “orchestra” which comprised a violin and six other instruments.
Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann and Terence Longdon on stage during a performance of A Soldier’s Tale at the Edinburgh Festival in September, 1954. Photographer unknown.
Most of the dialogue was provided by the narrator. The soldier and the devil were both speaking roles, but Shearer’s performance was limited to dance and mime. Helpmann created the choreography.
The play generated almost no contemporary critical review. The one, anonymous, review that has survived apparently found it difficult to say anything ill about it.
“Such a work calls for highly specialized performers who can act and dance, and here the cast could not have been bettered. Robert Helpmann, in various diabolic moods, gives an electrifying performance as the Devil, and Terence Longdon skilfully portrays the struggles of the pitiable soldier and his joy of winning the Princess. Moira Shearer is surely everyone’s dream of a fairytale Princess, and her exquisite performance is captivating”.
Moira Shearer as the Princess and Terence Longdon as the Soldier during a performance of A Soldier’s Tale in Edinburgh, September, 1954. Photographer unknown.
Sol Hurok, the American impresario who had underwritten the tour of the Dream in the US and Canada, seems to have agreed with the above assessment. The British trade Journal, The Stage, reported that he was considering presenting matinees of the Tale at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York during the upcoming tour of the Dream.
Up until 1948 Moira Shearer was virtually unknown outside the British ballet world. But on July 22nd of that year the film “The Red Shoes” premiered at the Gaumont Theatre in the Haymarket in London. The film went out to general release in the U.K. in early September and soon after Moira Shearer became a household name. Then, of course, the potential sponsors came a-courting.
Chief among these were the preeminent British shoe manufacturer, Clarks. However, other companies showing interest in her also included Pringle, the Scottish company that specialised in luxury clothing, Basildon Bond, that produced top-of-the-line stationary products and Leichner, a German cosmetics manufacturer.
While there are records of contacts by the public relations executives of Clarks and Pringle with Shearer it does not appear that either offered her fees for any sponsorship she provided. Instead, in the case of Clarks, the company donated to her boots and shoes. One of the ads for Clarks “Eskimo” bootees shows Shearer in 1950 being fitted outside her dressing room on the set for the Tales of Hoffmann. Other ads show her wearing Clarks dress shoes. A number of well-known British actresses like Margaret Lockwood appear to have had a similar relationship with Clarks.
The arrangement with Pringle is not recorded but was probably similar to that with Clarks.
In the case of Basildon Bond, it appears as though she agreed to their use of her handwriting in their advertisement. In the case of Leichner their ads featured photos of Shearer as she appeared in The Red Shoes but there is no suggestion that she endorsed their products.
When The Sadler’s Wells Ballet travelled to North America on their first tour in 1949 each of the leading ballerinas was provided with clothes, shoes and even nylons! The couturiers Mattli and Digby Morton designed and supplied cocktail dresses, coats and suits to Shearer. These were returned after the tour was complete. As the intent of the exercise was to promote British fashion houses, the dancers were, in effect, clothes’ horses.
An ad in the programme for a Sadler’s Wells Ballet performance in Ottawa in 1951 was placed by the London company, Freed’s, which was the main supplier of satin pointe shoes to Sadlers Wells. In another Freed’s ad, in a 1951 issue of the magazine, Dance and Dancers, Shearer shares the limelight with Margot Fonteyn, Beryl Grey, Pamela May and other dancers. Once again there is no record of any business agreement between the manufacturer and these dancers. However, in Shearer’s case, as she signed the photo dedicated to him, she apparently had developed a friendship with the owner, Frederick Freed.
The flurry of activity and sponsors’ interest in Shearer seem to have been limited to the years 1949 to 1951. After 1951 sponsorship ceased entirely. However, with the development in the British press in the 1960s and 70s of the “Sunday supplement”, like The Sunday Times Magazine, and of magazines aimed at the general public Moira Shearer was once again the subject of popular interest.
Below are some examples of Shearer’s sponsorship.
Clarks.
An ad in the trade journal, Ambassador, showing Moira Shearer being fitted for Clarks’ bootees outside her dressing room on the set of The Tales of Hoffmann in 1950. Both the fitter and the unknown photographer were probably employed by Clarks.
Shearer wearing Clarks’ Skyline dress shoes posing beside the Golden Arrow at Victoria station in London. The photo was published in the British highend magazine, Britannia and Eve in August 1950. Photographer unknown.
Pringle.
Shearer wearing a cashmere sweater for Pringle in 1951. The photo was published in the Pringle catalogue for that year. Watt (Border) University Archive. Photographer unknown.
Basildon Bond.
A sketch of Moira Shearer in an ad for the stationary manufacturer, Basildon Bond. The ad features her handwriting and an analysis of it. Dated 1951. Publication unknown.
Freed’s.
An ad for Freed’s pointe shoes in Dance and Dancers, 1951.
An ad in a programme for a performance in Ottawa in 1951. The photo is a publicity shot of her produced at the time of the release of The Red Shoes in 1948. Photographer unknown.
Sources
Ambassador, number 10, 1949. London Fashions for the English Ballet.
Sadler’s Wells Ballet, programme, Ottawa, January 22nd 1951
Moira Shearer declined to write her autobiography. Probably at her publisher’s suggestion, later in life, she began to write one but after a few weeks gave up. She decided that she had no desire to reminisce on paper.
Since then and since her death in 2006 there has been no attempt at a biography of her either. Thus for Shearer’s insights into her long life in dancing we must rely on a number of interviews that she gave in the 1970s and 80s. Of these, those conducted by the American dance historian, Dale Harris, in 1976 and 1978 and those by Barbara Newman, recorded in Edinburgh in October 1979, offer us the best evaluation of Shearer’s career in ballet. Harris’ interviews were recorded on audiotapes which are now kept in the archives of the New York City Library. The Newman interview was published in her book, “Striking a Balance” in 1982. The book focused on 23 dancers, male and female, who spanned the 20th Century and included Shearer’s close contemporary, Beryl Grey.
There follows a series of annotated excerpts concerning Shearer from Newman’s book.
As Newman explains in her introduction the focus of all the interviews in her book is on the ballet Giselle. She states that each segment was based on a “conversation” with the dancer. However, Newman’s questions are absent and they can only be implied by the dancer’s “answers”. Given that Shearer’s statements were made in conversation they are sometimes disjointed and require context and clarification. The attached annotations and small additions to the syntax attempt to achieve this.
Newman’s first question probably asked Shearer how she began her life in ballet. She answered, “In my case it was absolutely my mother’s idea and I really did dislike it to begin with”. Referring to her early training, Shearer continued, “as one hadn’t chosen it for oneself it was dismal to go through these tortures daily. Like anything you try and try to do, the tears pour and you feel you’re never getting it; even a perfectly simple thing seems terribly difficult at the beginning. And then you suddenly master that particular thing and that is such an encouragement that after about 6 to 8 months, despite myself I began to enjoy it, simply because I realized I was – in a tiny way only – succeeding. Then you go on to all the other great difficulties.
That was at Legat’s studio, and one thing I’m terribly grateful for is to have been taught in the Russian style rather than any other. He (Nicolai Legat) had been premier danseur at the Marinsky before the Revolution, but he was also a good teacher, which is very unusual. Usually, the better the dancer, slightly less good the teacher. What age he was I can’t be sure, but he seemed about a thousand and two to me, with a tremendous shining bald head. He was a heavenly old boy and I enjoyed his classes immensely. OK, you have to do exercise, inevitably eight of this, 16 of something else but everything even at the barre, was arranged so that it gave the impression of doing a little sequence of steps. Not quite a dance but it was rounded off; you had a little ending. It wasn’t just bald, eight of one step, puff and blow, turn around, and 8 with the other leg, which was very much the case with British style. I found those (British) classes an absolute torture because of it; there was no question of dancing all all, even when you came into the centre. (On the other hand) Legat caused one to dance, literally dance, in his classes, right from the very beginning, Of course, I took that just as the normal way anybody would teach, because I’d no point of comparison. But, later on, one really appreciated Legat to the full because I saw that nobody else did this at all”.
After Legat’s death in January 1938, his wife Nadine Nicolaeva took over running his school and Shearer remained a pupil there until the outbreak of World War 2 in September 1939. With the threat of bombing looming Mme. Legat moved the school from London to rural Kent. Shearer’s father, Harold King, decided to move the family to Scotland and his daughter’s lessons temporarily ended. In Scotland Shearer’s mother met with Fred Ashton who persuaded her to enrol her daughter in the Vic-Wells School that was directed by Ninette de Valois. During the “phoney war” of late 1939 and early 1940 the school remained open. Thus, in the late winter or early spring of 1940 the King family returned to live in London and Shearer resumed her lessons.
Shearer immediately noted the difference between the training methods she had grown used to at the Legat Studio and those used at the Vic-Wells. While she was a pupil there for only 6 weeks, she soon decided that life was not going to be the same. She recalled, “A series of people were teaching at the School. Ursula Moreton, who been in Diaghilev’s corps de ballet in the 1920s gave a lot of classes, including special Cecchetti classes to which I said no firmly. I’d watched one or two of them through the glass door and thought, ‘this is terrible. I don’t want to do those’. Whether this was correct Cecchetti or what it had become – as it’s passed down and down, endless changes creep in without people intending it – it was so totally mechanical. All that happened was from the waist to the tip of the foot, and nobody was bothering at all about what was happening from the waist to the top of the head, which, funnily enough, was the bit of the body that Legat was much more interested in. Of course, you have to have technique from the waist down as second nature, but then he really got to work. He (Legat) was terribly anxious that your back and the carriage of your head were exactly right, and your arms and epaulement. You were expected to be proficient enough in all the leg work that you could concentrate on really dancing. It’s the top half that gives you the style, that makes people really enjoy what you’re doing. Someone can do …. oh, those terrible old fouettés, for instance – and if you do a thing often enough, it’s going to look terrific. But there’s nothing beautiful about that; it is purely a stunt, a trick. Any dancer with the right build and enough technique can do it. But that’s not what dancing’s all about.
Sergeyev was also at the (Vic-Wells) school when I was there. He was an enchanting old man, he couldn’t have been nicer, but the classes he gave were terrible. I just don’t think he had the gift of teaching. He would do the worst things for one’s leg muscles. He would give a very slow developpé at the barre, and then cause you to hold it for a very, very slow count of eight or ten. Then he would go round with his stick, hitting under the leg, harder than the dear old duck realised, to keep it up. In the end, the leg would just crash down; people would say, ‘We can’t take this anymore’ and he wouldn’t really mind. But then you had to turn around and do it on the other side. And he always gave us 32 battements to the front, another 32 to the side, ‘round to the other side, back again the same thing. One knew as one was struggling to do it that this was harming one rather than helping. Oh, he was awfully sweet; he called us his zoo and gave us all zoological names because we reminded him of certain animals. We loved him, but as one went into his class, I just felt, ‘Here is going to be a totally wasted hour and a quarter’. It was terribly depressing.
Sergeyev conducting a lesson at the Sadler’s Wells School in London in May, 1942. His students include Moyra Fraser and Moira Shearer. From an article in Picture Post, August 1st, 1942.
But once into the company (out of the school) we didn’t have classes with him because Ninette de Valois herself used to take class. And that was quite horrific in some ways because she wasn’t a natural teacher either. Everything was very busy and had to be done at twice the speed of light. She was a very fast, neat dancer herself and excelled in little batterie steps, and people always do hone, quite unknowingly I think, to the way they dance themselves. It’s inevitable. So, her classes were pretty frenetic, one way or another, but not quite so damaging as old Sergeyev’s.
I seem to be one of the only ones of my age to see the de Basil and Rene Blum companies. I was taken to Covent Garden to see them when I was 8, and I remember the program exactly. It was Sylphides, Boutique Fantasque with Massine and Danilova, and Contes Russes. And when I went down (from Scotland to London) in 1936 to start training properly, when I was 10, I saw quite a lot. The old Alhambra in Leicester Square was still a theatre then; (Vera) Nemtchinova was dancing and Eglevsky, very young. I remember being very enamoured, crazy about Eglevsky. All the dancers from those companies came to Legat’s studio when they were in London and did classes with all of us. So as a small girl, one had the opportunity of watching these, to me, gods, which was a very great help for the future.
So, I had seen all the Russians before I saw the English ballet – I think 1939 was the first time (that I saw it). Isn’t it strange? And still it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Music was what I wanted to do”.
Shearer’s criticism of the teaching methods and attitudes at Sadler’s Wells continued, “one spent so much time on classwork and endless rehearsing by comparison to the 2 ½ hours actually performing in front of an audience. One knew this was something one had to do, but I always wished that I genuinely loved that side of it the way some people did. It was their total life, but I was very slightly irked by the preoccupation with technique. In any company I was ever with, nobody ever talked to you or in any way helped you toward a greater understanding of all the other aspects of the theatre that go into a ballet performance. That was totally missing. I can’t think of any dancers I’ve known who were tremendously interested in painting or music or the whole mis-en-scene. All the preoccupation was on technique and more technique, purely the technical dancing of it. Few of them knew anything about the history of ballet, which I find fascinating. Maybe they did – maybe they just didn’t talk about it. I didn’t either because there was nobody to talk to. But if you didn’t have an instinctive feeling and hadn’t done a certain amount of work yourself, you just went on the stage to dance those big classical roles technically, and that was all”.
When the “Blitz” on London began in September 1940, Shearer returned to Scotland with her mother, where she recalled, “I kicked my heels for a bit. Then luckily at the beginning of 1941, a dancer called Mona Inglesby, whom I’d met at Legat’s studio, was forming a company of her own, and she remembered me and asked me to join it. That was (the) International Ballet.
International Ballet was my first professional thing, and I enjoyed a lot of it very much though I felt terribly aware of the amount there was to learn…… You can train for however many years but you get into a company, you go out onto the stage, whether it’s in the back row of the corps de ballet or a small solo, and then you start learning about real dancing, about how to put it across and how to place it well and make it look effortless.
I was only with (the) International Ballet for one year, 1941 to ’42, and I learned from everybody. I learned quite a lot from Mona Inglesby herself, especially about how to place one’s dancing. You never felt she was just doing a diagonal line from A to B and then then running up to the back corner. She used the stage very well, which is very important, and no one had ever taught one anything about this. Perhaps many people don’t remember her, but she was a lovely, very fluid, classical dancer, with a great flow of movement. She was a genuine pleasure to watch. But she had totally wrong appearance for a dancer ….. I just thought it was so wretched; with the great facility that she had, she’d worked to get a really lovely technique, and it was never going to look as it should because of her physical makeup”.
Shearer’s last performance with the International Ballet was in Sheffield on February 28th, 1942. She danced in the nocturne in Les Sylphides and as a cloud in Endymion. The exact date when she joined Sadler’s Wells is not known but the company returned from a brief road tour to their base, the New Theatre in London’s West End, on March 16th. Shearer recalls, “I didn’t audition for the Sadler’s Wells. Ninette de Valois remembered me from those 6 weeks at the beginning of the war, and I think she had seen some performances of the International when we were in London at the Lyric. She got in touch with my mother, because I was still 15 years old, and said she would like me in the company. And literally in my first week, I danced the waltz in Sylphides. Then I did the leading part in Gods go a-begging straightaway and then Freddie Ashton was writing The Quest and I was in that too”.
Understandably after 35 years Shearer’s memory was not perfect. The first programme listing for her in Sylphides was May 6th, 1942; Margot Fonteyn, Beryl Grey and Celia Franca danced the leads on that date; Shearer’s first appearance in The Gods go a-begging was on November 24thof that year. The Quest didn’t premiere until April 6th, 1943. Shearer omits to note that Pride was the first part choreographed specifically for her. Dale Harris speculated that the creator and choreographer, Fred Ashton, chose Shearer for the part of Pride based on her looks.
Shearer continued, “I did dance also in the corps, for 4 years. That was very much de Valois’s policy, that young dancers would be given solo things from time to time; but they would be right back in the corps, sometimes in the next ballet.
As it happened, I did one act of Swan Lake, in about 1943 or ’44. Poor Pamela (May) who was beset for years with terrible cartilage problems in her knees, was coming back into the company an de Valois wanted to get her back into Swan Lake. But Pamela wasn’t able to do the whole thing – we always did the full ballet, never just the second act – so because I was also roughly fair-haired I danced the black act (Odile) for her”. This was probably on May 18th, 1944, in Hammersmith.
Shearer continued the interview by discussing the internal politics of Sadler’s Wells.
“Now, I think this important to say. Sooner or later, particular people come along who the director particularly likes. It’s not absolute favouritism, but it does happen…. in all companies probably …. it’s only human. There were one or two (dancers), of my age or slightly older, who went through a phase of this, or de Valois, who went through a phase on them so to speak. To my great luck, she never had any phase on me at all, which I found a very good thing. Too much would be given to the dancer of the moment, and nobody could ever fulfil what was expected, whereupon they would be dropped. But, if you were never in this category, or sometimes used as a last resort when there was nobody else, if one was put on (the schedule) like that and was reasonably successful, it was a much more genuine way of arriving at something. I just am glad that I was never a particularly favoured one.
Mind you, I wasn’t necessarily aware at the time that this was happening in the company. It was just very hard work, and one was trying to get through it and not drop down with a broken leg oneself. There was a tremendous boom for the ballet during the war because it was the great escapist entertainment; it was so fantastic and unreal that it completely took people out of themselves. So, we worked 52 weeks a year, no holiday at all, and we toured terrifically. We did 8 shows a week, always, and then for two London seasons we did 9 shows a week, with 3 performances of the same programme every Saturday at 1.30, 4.45 and 8.30.
We had full houses every single day of the year. I didn’t know what it was like to be out of work. In fact there was too much. One was very cushioned and spoiled in that way, and one thought it was normal”.
Shearer went on to describe her history of dancing in the “classical” ballets.
“Of course, any classical dancer is aiming for those big classical roles because there isn’t anything like them. It would be crazy if you weren’t. I did Sleeping Beauty first (she first danced as Aurora, on March 2nd, 1946, at Covent Garden), then Swan Lake (she first danced the twin roles of Odette/Odile, on August 20th, 1946) and Coppelia (she first danced Swanhilda on November 11th, 1946), all within a year. But I only did Swan Lake for 3 years before de Valois removed me from it. She didn’t like me in it, that I was too lightweight in every way, so I didn’t ever dance it again. I was sad really, because it’s a marvellous part, but I’m sure I wasn’t ideal”. Actually, Shearer danced it again in 1951 and 1953.
“One role I never enjoyed at all, and unfortunately was always hideously successful in, was Swanhilda. I found it arch and pert, all the things I really don’t like, and terribly mock-jokey in the middle act. One was very lucky to be doing it at all, I suppose, but I could well have done without it occasionally.
But I was a classical dancer, and I was always a little bit ‘fish out of water’ when it came to real character things like the Spanish dance in the 3rd act of Swan Lake. I enjoyed doing it, but I probably looked like a classical dancer doing a Spanish dance, instead of doing it convincingly. You can’t help it if you’re like that. Even in the classical roles, to be perfectly honest, I never felt 100% happy technically, but that was because I had this ridiculously high standard. I never felt that technique was my strong point. It would be false modesty not to know what one’s very strong points were, and I knew that lightness and speed were really mine, and I (made do) with the technique I had. But I remember very well, before I started doing Aurora, standing at the back of the stage or in the wings watching Margot do it, and thinking how marvellous for her to have had a certain number of years of dancing these big, heavy, classical parts and knowing, absolutely, with rock solidity, that she could do them. She could almost relax on the top of the part, knowing she’d got all the nerves and initial worry over. And that showed how little I knew about anything.
When I started to do those roles, I was so nervous before going on that I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. But that, in fact, was the best time, which you only appreciate in retrospect. That was the time I had nothing to lose. I was a new, young one; everyone was with you, absolutely, longing for you to do well, and you had no reputation to make a mess of. You may think you are nervous, but it’s nothing to the kind of real nervous you get when you’re much older and start to get a little bit of reputation as being good in something. Then people start to come wondering, ‘Is she going off a bit?’ They’re so much more critical, and if you have done one very good performance, it’s got to be topped. It’s got to be better, better, better every single time. But it’s such a physical thing. You can’t always be better. All that nerve strain is very exhausting, and I think it gets worse. That’s why I’m so full of admiration for somebody like Margot who has been able to go on for years at that level, with people expecting so much more all the time. If I had wanted to very much, which I didn’t, I could have gone easily for another 10 years. I’d still have been only 38, and a great many dancers are that age and whirling away like mad. But people are temperamentally either suited to the ballet or they’re not, and I don’t think I was”.
Next, Shearer discussed the ballet Giselle and her meeting with Tamara Karsavina in 1948.
“I had always wanted to do Giselle, always. I suppose I saw Margot in it first. I was in the corps de ballet for a long time in it and I danced one of the two leading Wilis for a long time, mostly to Margot’s performance because she danced most of them, and sometimes to Beryl (Grey)…. Inevitably, it was Margot’s performance that was stamped on that production, and you were just put into it, because this almost “set” piece was there in your mind’s eye all the time. Seeing a great many people do a thing is not necessarily a great help.
When I discovered I was going to dance Giselle, I remembered that Karsavina lived in London. And I felt, ‘Here is somebody, still alive, who remembers how this was danced at the Marinsky and who had danced it herself many times. Really it is madness not to get in touch with this woman and find out some things about the part and what she feels about it’. So, I plucked up courage and I wrote to her. What I hadn’t realised was nobody was bothering about Karsavina at all, and she was very hurt by it. I heard afterwards that she had always felt ignored completely. I knew she had been there for the Spectre (de la Rose) rehearsals. She came to coach Margot and Alexis Rassine– but the whole thing was shut off”
Referring to herself, Shearer continued, “anybody else who was going to dance it never saw Karsavina at all – and that (consultation with Fonteyn) had just been a little isolated episode and never again. I’d never met her; I just wrote out of the blue and explained the situation. She replied at once and said she’d be delighted to see me and would I come for tea. She had a charming little apartment….. When I arrived, I just plunged straight in, and the dear old thing had the rug back and was demonstrating for me.
It was the first act particularly I wanted to ask her about because (I was unhappy with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s interpretation of it). You want some reality so you can feel for this girl in this situation.
Moira Shearer in her costume for Act 1 of Giselle. Neither date nor photographer known. Photo used with the permission of the Moira Shearer Archive.
My problem then was that Karsavina showed me one or two of the mimed sections of that first act the way they had done them, which were quite different, and I realised I couldn’t possibly put them in. There were little, tiny things I could use, but I had to be terribly careful about not disturbing anybody else, since they were going to be exactly as they always were. Anything I could use must be something that concerned (just) myself, like the way Giselle moves forward when she encounters Bathilde…. The way Karsavina showed it was … less arch…
So, I had very few rehearsals … just with Alexis (Rassine) as Albrecht, and never on stage at all ….. you must make the best of it… de Valois didn’t see it (my interpretation of the role) till the matinee when she was in front. (At the end of the first act) she was round to my dressing room and she waded in…. where had I got these ludicrous ideas?
So, I said, ‘Anything that you find unacceptable I got from Madame Karsavina, whom I went to see because I was interested enough to find out her view of the part’.
That stopped her absolutely cold. She didn’t say another word; she marched out of my room.… then Karsavina was brought in to coach Margot …. I think it did improve certain aspects of that production”.
The interview continues as a lengthy, sometimes technical, discussion of Shearer’s experiences in dancing in Giselle. Her memory of details of the ballet is prodigious. She touches on, variously, the criticism of the reviewer, Cyril Beaumont, of her playing on the role, followed by long discussion about interpreting the character of Giselle; on dancing with Rassine, Robert Helpmann, Michael Somes, David Paltenghi and John Hart; on the music; on Ashton and Ninette de Valois as choreographers and teachers.
Shearer then addressed working with George Balanchine in the ballet, Ballet Imperial, and Margot Fonteyn’s struggles to dance to Balanchine’s choreography.
Moira Shearer in Ballet Imperial in 1950. Photograph by Roger Wood.
“This was the only time, apart from Cinderella, that I ever had a stage call and with the choreographer too. I think he (Balanchine) saw right away that I had got this point (regarding his unconventional choreography) and he worked on and on with me. He was there for my first performance, too, and I know he was pleased.
I am sure I reached a particular standard of technical dancing in Ballet Imperial that I never reached in anything else. He expected it, and you couldn’t let that man down”.
Shearer then moved on to discuss the impact of the critics and the role of the audience in influencing the dancer’s performance.
“There were always just a few people whose opinions one respected because they really knew about it. Quite frankly the critics never. If it doesn’t sound too patronizing, the majority of them do not know anything about ballet. They will try to be technical and pretend they know … this fearful peppering of reviews with little technicalities – which were almost invariably wrong – makes any dancer or choreographer reading it realize it isn’t worth tuppence.
The audience has no effect on the way you dance – none….. (dancing) is a totally self-contained thing…. You are creating something within the stage and the concentration has to be total on what you’re doing, all the way through…. You create an illusion and the audience receives it”.
Shearer summed up her dancing and acting careers in the following terms.
“Ballet is an intensely selfish career, and if you’re going to do it absolutely 100%, as you must, it’s a 24 hour day business and everything else takes second place. Well, if you’re going to be married successfully and have children, this is just not possible. This I felt was hopeless. So, (I quit ballet and) I did about 5 years of theatre, thinking it was perhaps a more reasonable career to pursue and still have some kind of marriage and life with the children, and I discovered it was not possible. To me there wasn’t really any question about the decision…… So, I just quietly removed myself into domesticity…”
Finally, Shearer wistfully confronted her unsuccessful attempt to become an actress by saying, “You are trying to do this very, very difficult art (theatre) and apparently failing dismally. But, of course, on you go because it is your work, it is what you know, and you must”.
Sources.
Dale Harris, transcript of an audiotape of interviews conducted with Moira Shearer, recorded in Edinburgh in August 29th, 1976 and August 31st and September 1st, 1978. The New York City Library Archive, Lincoln Center, New York.
Barbara Newman, Striking a Balance, Dancers Talking about Dancing, Elm Tree Books/Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London, 1982
In 1931 when Moira Shearer, who was then known as Moira King, was five years old she accompanied her parents to live in the small town of Ndola in Northern Rhodesia. Her father was a civil engineer and was working to help establish the copper industry there. The following year Shearer’s mother enrolled her daughter in a small dancing school where she took Saturday morning classes. In her interviews with Dale Harris, Shearer concedes that she remembered little of the classes nor did she recall the name of the teacher. However, the classes were probably run by a former dancer called Ethel Lacey. Lacey had been trained in the Cecchetti method.
Shearer did recall that Lacey’s lessons were very informal and involved all forms of dance, including folk dancing. In the spring of 1932, the Ndola newspaper reported on a dance recital where Shearer performed to the music of the Scottish pipes. The reporter noted, somewhat prophetically, that Shearer’s dancing exhibited the “lightness and spontaneity (that) are the special qualities of all born dancers”.
Lacey confided to Mrs King that she believed her daughter had the talent to become a ballet dancer and encouraged her to continue her training once they returned to Britain.
In 1934 the King family returned to Scotland and Shearer began her formal academic education at Bearsden Academy, north of Glasgow. Mrs King contacted Nicolai Legat, the former Marinsky dancer who, after the Russian Revolution, moved to Britain and with his wife, a former ballerina, set up a dance school in Colet Gardens in west London. In 1934 he included Leonide Massine, Tamara Karsavina, Andre Eglevkski and the American, Sono Osato, among his students.
However, on the basis that he did not accept beginners, Legat turned down Mrs King’s request that her daughter join his school. He recommended that, instead, she enrol her in the Mayfair School of Dancing that was run by the former choreographer Flora McDonald Fairbairn. Thus, in the summer of 1937 when the King family moved to London Moira began her formal training. She attended an academic school each morning and took dancing lessons every afternoon.
She had been studying with Fairbairn for only a few weeks when Legat came poaching for dancers that he needed for a planned dance recital. He took note of Shearer’s dancing and asked Fairbairn who she was. When Fairbairn gave her name Legat realised that was the same student he had rejected earlier. He immediately judged her to be no “beginner” and in September 1936 offered her a place at his school.
Shearer recalled in her interview with Harris that she learned a great deal from Legat. However, initially Shearer intensely disliked his regimented teaching style but as she progressed she began to enjoy the classes more. Sadly, Legat died within a few months and in January 1938 his widow, Nadine Nicolaeva, took up the reins of running the school. Shearer considered her a good teacher although not as talented as her husband.
Later that year Fairbairn requested of Nicolaeva that Shearer dance in an open-air “Pageant of the Dances of Europe in London’s Regent Park”. Fairbairn directed the event and most of the dancers came from her school of dancing.
As the attached programme, dated June 18th, shows Moira King had a couple of roles; one as a jester and another in a dance of the Austrian Tyrol.
The programme for “The Pageant of European Dances” in Regents Park, London, June 18th, 1938. The Henry Mein Collection at the University of Surrey Archives and Special collections.
Thus, other than her appearance in Ndola, this was her first foray into the limelight.
Shearer remained Nicolaeva’s pupil until the beginning of the war in September 1939 when the school closed temporarily and the Kings returned to Scotland.
Mona Inglesby was also a student at Legat’s school and she met Shearer there. When Inglesby founded The International Ballet in 1941, she invited Shearer to join the company. She was then barely 15 years old. In 1938 Inglesby had known her as Moira King. However, when Miss King attended the Vic-Wells School in 1940, the principal, Ninette de Valois either suggested or perhaps, demanded, that she change her name to Moira Shearer which, as history records, she did.
Sources.
Dale Harris, transcript of interviews with Moira Shearer in Edinburgh, August 29th, 1976 and August 31st and September 1st, 1978. New York City Library Archives, Lincoln Center, New York City.
Barbara Newman, Striking a Balance, Elm Tree Books, 1982.
The Russian Ballet Society, russianballetsociety.co.uk/history/
University of Surrey, Archives and Special Collections, Henry Mein Collection.
Moira Shearer’s dancing was often compared to that of her close contemporaries Beryl Grey and Violetta Elvin and most especially to that of Margot Fonteyn. Some critics talked of her dancing in “the shadow” of Fonteyn and, true as this might have been, it did not concern Shearer. She strove to emulate Fonteyn but recognized that there was only one prima ballerina assoluta in the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.
Shearer had many critics. Some praised her dancing in glowing terms; some thought she was a second rate dancer; some wrote for magazines or journals that focused on ballet and were well known and respected in the ballet world; some, in the more popular or provincial press were anonymous or were only known by their initials; some, like Iris Morley had a definite bias in the way they viewed ballet; some were very much part of the ballet “establishment”; some like A.V. Coton were fiercely independent.
Moira Shearer as Giselle, 1948-53
As the reviewer in The Times in March 1950 indicated each ballerina that dances it brings a different interpretation to the title role of Giselle. This critic might well have been thinking of the three English ballerinas who predated Shearer in the role. Alicia Markova, who first danced the role in 1934 with the Vic-Wells Ballet, Margot Fonteyn, who replaced Markova in 1937 and the precocious Beryl Grey, who premiered it in1944 when dancing as a teenager with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet.
After her first performance as Giselle in the summer of 1948 Shearer was photographed at Covent Garden with her 3 predecessors. There is no record that they saw her dance that July evening but perhaps they did.
The critics who saw Shearer’s first attempt at Giselle were sharply divided in their evaluation of her performance. The anonymous writer of a review for The Stage was full of praise; “she gave a moving and distinguished performance…. she possesses what more matured ballerinas sometimes lack, a vital personality”.
On the other hand, the distinguished dance historian and critic, Mary Clarke, writing in the journal Ballet Today in 1950 recalled that, in 1948, Shearer was “badly miscast and (was) putting up a good fight against a tradition into which she could never fit”. Cyril Beaumont, critic for The Sunday Times, agreed. Shearer recalled in her interview with Dale Harris that Beaumont believed she had the wrong colouring to play the part of Giselle. She wanted to write to him and remind him the Carlotta Grisi, the original Giselle, was similarly pale-complexioned and had fair hair. However, contemporary images of Grisi don’t support Shearer’s contention. Perhaps more significantly, in his review Beaumont said nothing of Shearer’s dancing or interpretation of the role.
One critic evoked the recollection of that original Giselle in Shearer’s first performance. He wrote of it that it was a “lovely and gentle interpretation (and had) lightness and grace that perhaps resembled Carlotta Grisi’s”.
After seeing her 1950 performance in Giselle Mary Clarke had cause to change her mind about Shearer’s abilities. Shearer had made great strides and Clarke was genuinely moved by her performance. “She has obviously thought a great deal about the character and presents Giselle first of all as a girl living at an emotional tension which might easily snap and result in madness”.
Clarke goes on, “she dances beautifully throughout and with a new freedom; she has great elevation, is wonderfully light and performs both beats and turns excellently”. However, she notes, as did several other critics of Shearer’s technique, that “her hands and arms are still her weak point”. As Shearer later commented to Dale Harris she had what she termed “spikey hands”. Here she was referring not to their physical appearance …. they were, indeed, long and narrow…. but to the fact she did not use them in the conventional way to create soft, rounded movements.
Moira Shearer as Giselle in Act 2. Photo by Maurice Seymour.
Shearer danced about 20 times as Giselle in the years 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1953. As Clarke suggests Shearer learned a great deal about the demands of the role over that 5-year span and she was obviously intent on improving her interpretation of it. The critics of her later performances often took note of this and, perhaps because of this, she commanded more press for her performances in Giselle than for any other of her ballets including Cinderella which was created for her.
For all her progress in interpreting the role, even in 1950 Shearer remained the second cast to Fonteyn. From March through June of that year she shared the role of Giselle with Fonteyn who typically danced in the evening performances while Shearer appeared in the matinees. However, Shearer danced on the evening of March 20th and the critics seemed to have been out in force to witness her performance.
The anonymous critic for The Times, wrote on March 21st of Shearer’s technique that it much improved but it was not yet of second nature that she could use it to express emotion. However, the same critic conceded, “she showed dramatic power and had a stage personality that suffused sympathy and conviction. She was radiant without false sentiment and made Gautier’s romanticism credible because of her light touch”.
The reviewer in The Telegraph praised Shearer’s “fine performance” but tempered the praise by saying that while her technique was equal to the part, it was not as “mature” as Fonteyn’s. As Fonteyn had danced the role of Giselle numerous times since her debut in it in 1937, this is perhaps hardly surprising. Shearer, the critic concluded, was a well-endowed but “young“ dancer. She showed warmth, grace, and even pathos, but not the “last tragic ounce” of it that made the character of Giselle believable.
Leigh Ashton, the critic for The Daily Mail found the ballet boring but praised Shearer for turning it into what it was supposed to be, “a vehicle for a prima ballerina”.
Audrey Williamson writing in “The Tribune” on April 14th wrote that Shearer possessed the attribute of “genuine youth” needed for playing a young peasant maiden but while she showed lightness, gaiety, “profound emotional power” and poignancy she lacked the “balance and lyrical fire” required of her in Act 2. Nonetheless, Williamson noted that the “mad scene” showed “the fresh intelligence that marks all Shearer’s work as an actress”.
Moira Shearer in the “mad scene” in Act 1 of Giselle. Photo by Duncan Melvin. Undated but probably 1948.
In the winter and spring of 1953 Shearer shared the role of Giselle with Markova and Violetta Elvin and danced it on February 13th and 16th. Markova was then in her 40s. James Monahan, the dance critic for the Manchester Guardian, was in the audience on the 13th and wrote in no uncertain terms of Shearer’s performance. He noted the recent rise of young ballerinas at Sadler’s Wells whose grasp of “classical technique” might challenge Shearer’s but the quality of whose performances “would not begin to compete with hers”.
Monahan continued that “Moira Shearer owes her success less than does any other dancer of her generation to sheer technical ability. She depends essentially on certain inimitable qualities of her own – on a combination of length of line with remarkable lightness and with equally remarkable natural grace”. Monahan also praised Shearer’s ability to mime, especially in the mad scene.
Monahan’s praise for Shearer was not, however, boundless. He was, for example, highly critical of her March 1953 performance in Swan Lake. In his review of Shearer’s interpretation of the aristocrat in the adagio in Mamzelle Angot, he makes the observation that it is “an example of a dance being suited perfectly to a particular dancer”. In other words, Shearer’s abilities were often but not always equal to the demands of the role she was dancing.
Sources.
Leigh Ashton, The Daily Mail, March 21st, 1950.
Mary Clarke, The Sadler’s Wells Ballet, a History and Appreciation, MacMillan, 1955.
C.V. Coton, The Daily Telegraph, A New “Giselle”, July 14th 1948.
Dale Harris, transcript of interviews with Moira Shearer in Edinburgh, August 29th, 1976 and August 31st and September 1st, 1978. New York City Library Archive, Lincoln Center, New York City.
The Daily Herald, March 21st, 1950.
The Daily Telegraph (P.F.J.) March 21st, 1950.
The Manchester Guardian (J.H.M., James Monahan), November 11th, 1947 and February 14th, 1953.
The Stage, July 15th, 1948 and September 20th, 1951.
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 also 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 named 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.
In the 1948 film, The Red Shoes, the director Michael Powell sets out to take full advantage of two of Moira Shearer’s many talents, most specifically her brilliant dancing and her beauty. His goal was to create of her a fairytale princess.
This is most obviously apparent in the scenes depicting the arrival in Monte Carlo of Victoria Page or, Vicky, the ballerina that Shearer depicts. Her impresario, Boris Lermontov puts her up in the Hotel de Paris, where, he assures her, she’ll be “most comfortable”. Lermontov and his team including the ballet master, the music director and conductor and the stage designer are staying at a villa down the coast in Cap Ferrat.
When, in London, Lermontov announced to Vicky that he had selected her to travel with his company to Monte Carlo, he didn’t divulge to her what role she might dance in his new ballet. However, once she was settled in at the hotel, he summons her to the villa to tell her of his decision.
Michael Powell directs the scene in The Red Shoes, where Vicky, played by Moira Shearer, leaves the Hotel de Paris for her meeting with Boris Lermontov, director of the ballet company. Lermontov’s limousine can be seen through the front door. Photographer unknown.
He sends his chauffeur to pick her up in his Hispano-Suiza landaulet. Vicky, as she later explains to Lermontov, was about to go out to dinner with friends in her sumptuous full-length Jacques Fath gown, a diamond tiara perched atop her Titian hair. In response to Lermontov’s summons she changes her plans and leaves the hotel. We see her cross the lobby and, displaying a fine ankle, daintily descend the front steps to be shown to the car by the chauffeur.
He drives her along the Corniche to an entry to the steps leading up to the villa, helps her out of the car and says to her, “Montez, Mamzelle”(climb up, Miss). As he leaves, Vicky pushes open the massive iron gates and begins her ascent of the 150 weed-strewn steps on this warm Mediterranean evening. A few frames later we are shown her arriving at the top with not a trace of perspiration on her beautiful brow.
Vicky begins her long climb to Lermontov’s villa. Screenshot from The Red Shoes.
This is, of course, all the stuff of fantasy. Even though it has already been established that Vicky is a socialite and, perhaps a well-healed one, it seems unlikely that she would have packed that bulky Jacques Fath dress for her debut appearance in Monte Carlo. No impresario, however maniacal, would have subjected his prima ballerina-to-be to that treacherous climb especially as the main entry to house had a driveway leading up to the main door.
Vicky nears the top of the steps to Lermontov’s villa. Cap Ferrat and the Mediterranean are in the background. Photographer unknown.
Instead, Powell was intent on creating of this scenario an image of fantasy in as many ways he could. In addition to highlighting Shearer’s beauty, Powell sets out to augment it with the allure of the Riviera and the quality of the evening light. He has created his fairytale princess.
When she reaches the villa Vicky is welcomed by Lermontov who, in due course, offers her the job. He then sends her home for an early night, apparently, without any dinner.
Moira Shearer, ballerina, had begun to see the writing on the wall as early as 1948. In 1949, when asked what she wanted to do after leaving the ballet she replied, “straight dramatic acting …. that’s why I’m taking drama lessons now, in my spare time – what there is of it”. This is probably a reference to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Although she does not specify a date, Gwynneth Thurburn, the principal, recalls Shearer taking lessons with her.
The realisation that she would have to move on from her career in ballet sprung from a number of sources. First, by her own admission, she knew she would never challenge the pre-eminence of Margot Fonteyn at Sadler’s Wells Ballet. By 1948, she was resigned to the reality of being number two. The bigger problem was her place in the “ballet world”. She found it very “narrow” and, thus, ultimately, unfulfilling. In addition, Sadler’s Wells was an hostile environment starting at the top with the director, Ninette de Valois, with whom Shearer often clashed.
This tension came to a head in late 1948 when Fonteyn was injured and Shearer replaced her in the lead of Fred Ashton’s ballet, Cinderella. Consciously or unconsciously many of the members of Sadler’s Wells resented Shearer’s success in the role. This resentment dissipated when Fonteyn returned to dance after 2 month’s absence. Yet, the damage had been done. Shearer’s perceived ambition, it seems, was proven on the basis of a chance event that had advanced it.
Another source of Shearer’s impending decision to quit ballet for acting was, of course, The Red Shoes. While very little acting was required of her in that film, she was exposed to other actors with whom she had to interact. Chief among these were Anton Walbrook who played, Lermontov, the director of the ballet company and Marius Goring who played Julian Crastner, her lover and, later, her husband. With barely a moment of preparation or any training Shearer was forced to “act” and thereby, how to act. From the point of view of dancing the making of The Red Shoes was extremely disappointing and frustrating to Shearer but the film had made her aware of a world beyond ballet that was potentially open to her. This would have been reinforced by the eventual success of the film. She could not yet act but her obvious “star appeal” led audiences to believe she could.
Shearer continued to labour at Sadler’s Wells for a further 5 years. In that time she enjoyed continued success, as Giselle, for example. She travelled with the company to North America in both 1949 and 1950 and consolidated her position as “number two”. However, illness and injury began to have its impact and she was often out of commission for months on end. Gradually her position at Sadler’s Wells was seriously eroded and she was replaced by other developing ballerinas like Violetta Elvin and Nadia Nerina.
She married Ludovic Kennedy in 1951 and therefore marriage and, later, pregnancy also had to be factored into her decision-making process. Also, in 1951 she appeared in another Powell and Pressburger film, The Tales of Hoffmann although she was not required to act.
After a further injury in the Spring of 1953 Shearer hung up her point shoes at Sadler’s Wells and her final ballet performance was as a guest with The Festival Ballet in January 1954.
Meanwhile the stage and film producers had been circling, waiting for an opportunity to exploit her talents. Thus, in April 1954, she was persuaded to “star” in a British film called “The Man who loved Redheads”, that was based on a Terrence Rattigan play called “Who is Sylvia”. With Rattigan’s approval the title was changed and the script was modified to ensure that the four characters portrayed by Shearer were “front and centre”. She was to play, in quick succession, a teenage girl, a gullible cockney lass, a Russian ballerina and a middle-age social butterfly. The film was panned by most critics as were Shearer’s performances. However, A.H. Weller, the film critic for The New York Times was seduced by Shearer’s charm and noted that she “has developed acting talents that are both surprising and refreshing”.
Michael Benthall, director of The Old Vic Theatre in London, also apparently believed in Shearer’s potential acting abilities and invited her to join his upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that would open at the Edinburgh Festival in August 1954 and then tour North America. Shearer would play a major role as Titania. She accepted the invitation and began rehearsals in July.
Benthall’s confidence in her appeared justified by Shearer’s performance at the microphone when the cast and orchestra recorded the play’s soundtrack in August. On the recording, she was a confident and authoritative Titania.
However, her subsequent performances on the Edinburgh stage were another matter. The critics roundly criticised the production as a whole and many singled-out Shearer’s acting. They concluded that her voice was too small and did not project to the audience; many of her lines were lost. Her dancing was impeccable, as always, but the majority of the audience had come to hear Shakespeare’s prose and not to see her dance.
The production fared no better on the other side of the Atlantic. The review of the New York opening night in The Stage for October 7th concluded that “while Miss Shearer’s exquisite beauty and grace comes close to being worshipped, her reading of Titania disappointed even her greatest admirers”. Walter Kerr, reporting in The New York Herald Tribune labelled the production as “tedious”. Of Moira Shearer he wrote, “when lovely Moira Shearer is distracting you from the language by weaving her enchanting arms through the air, you forgive a lot. (Miss Shearer must move to be arresting though; her diction is faulty, her delivery all on one key)”. The correspondent for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle echoed this criticism, saying that Titania “simply isn’t up to her lines”.
In the American press it was rare to find a positive review of Dream. The critic in the Oakland Tribune had a great deal to say that was positive but judged Shearer’s performance on her “grace of movement and elegance of posture and gesture”. He said nothing of her acting. Thus, it seems, he witnessed the ballerina and not the actress.
When interviewed late in the tour Moira Shearer was put on the defensive by being asked to address the consistently bad reviews. Her assertion that the tour had been a commercial success rang hollow and her final lament that the bad reviews “stuck in the craw” must have reflected her disappointment at the negative reaction to her best efforts. She must have left Dream realising that she still had much to learn of acting and when, subsequently, Benthall offered more opportunities at The Old Vic she turned them down, choosing, instead, to spend a year in repertory at The Bristol Old Vic where she hoped to learn her craft.
Dream closed in Montreal on December 18th and Shearer flew back to London. After a 6-week break, early in February she began rehearsals in Oxford for a play called I am a Camera. Camera was written by John van Druten and was based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel about life in Berlin in the 1930s. The play was originally produced in New York in 1951. When it opened in London in 1953 Dorothy Tutin played the lead role of Sally Bowles. As it was successful in the West End, the producer, Donald Albery, booked it for an extended tour of the British “provinces”. However, Tutin was not available for the tour and had to be replaced. Albery asked Shearer to take on the lead role and, despite her misgivings, she took up the challenge.
Camera opened at the New Theatre, Oxford on February 7th, 1955. John Barber, the drama critic for The Daily Express was in attendance and wrote a gushing review of Shearer’s performance. While she still lacked craft and skill of Tutin, he had, he claimed, witnessed the birth of an actress.
Moira Shearer as Sally Bowles in I am a Camera, February 1955. Photo by Angus McBean and used by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Like the West End run Camera played to packed audiences at every venue. One member of the cast, John Gale, suspected that a considerable portion of the audience was there primarily to see Shearer who had, of course, star billing.
A very deferential article in the June 1955 issue of Theatre World addressed on the problems Shearer confronted in the transition from ballet to acting. Focusing on her success in Camera the writer concluded that it had been an ideal vehicle by which Shearer could improve her acting. “Each scene in the play reveals a different facet of Sally’s character and so provides Miss Shearer with an opportunity to acquire a wealth of experience in a short space of time”.
Perhaps because appearances at each theatre were limited to a week Camera didn’t generate much press either locally or nationally. Thus, the critics were essentially silent.
Shearer left the play in May 1955, probably at the end of an appearance at The Theatre Royal in Nottingham. In August she moved to Bristol and began rehearsals at the Bristol Old Vic. Her first appearance was on October 18th in the title role in Giraudoux’s play called Ondine. This was followed in quick succession by roles in Uncle Vanya and Volpone. As a repertory company the Bristol Old Vic had only 15 permanent actors at its disposal. This meant that each actor would be expected to participate in almost every production. Shearer was no exception and in early 1956 she was exceptionally busy. On February 14th she opened in King Lear as Cordelia; on March 6th she was Miranda in Don Juan or The Love of Geometry and on April 17th she was Lily Sabina in The Skin of our Teeth. On June 19th she was photographed at London Airport en route to Zurich where she was to appear in The Rivals and on June 26th she was back in Bristol to appear in Shaw’s Major Barbara.
A few years later, when discussing her decision to quit the stage, she admitted that she had grave doubts her acting ability from the very beginning of her tenure at Bristol. She stated in a 1994 interview that she was fully aware that she had to rid herself of all the techniques that she had been trained to perform as a dancer. Gwynneth Thurburn remarked on the tension in Shearer’s posture and movements when she first came to her and thus lessons focused how to breathe and relax as well as how to walk. However, most importantly of all Shearer had to learn how to use her voice. “After being mute for all those years”, she said, “I had to force my voice into a new mould when I started acting”.
Thus, when she opened in Ondine, she was still a work-in-progress and was filled with self-doubt. After the first night she told her interviewer that “If I could give it all up tomorrow I would”. Reflecting previous criticism of her acting, a reviewer wrote of her performance that “naturally Miss Shearer is graceful but vocally the part is above her”.
A review in The Stage for February 23rd, 1956, is very critical of the Bristol Old Vic’s production of King Lear and says of Shearer’s performance that she “makes little impression as Cordelia”.
Moira Shearer as Cordelia in the Bristol Old Vic’s production of King Lear in February 1956. Photographer unknown.
The poor reviews were hardly unanticipated. She was, after all, in Bristol to learn her craft and she had given herself a year to do so. Major Barbara, her final role with the company, would be the acid test. The drama critic Caryl Brahams was at the opening night and wrote a lengthy review of Shearer’s performance. She began by saying that “there can be no doubt that Miss Moira Shearer is a star – whether she is an actress or not is perhaps another matter”. Brahms is gently critical of Shearer’s voice and her movements on stage but highly praises her skill as a satirist. She concludes by asking the question, “but is she that hard-working … hard-hitting Major Barbara? No – or, at least, not yet. At the moment she must gives us, not what the part requires of her, but what she can, and that is her intelligent, sweet-natured and touchingly hopeful imitation of an efficient young actress playing Major Barbara – a performance at one remove from the part and without much contact with the audience”.
If Shearer had read Brahms’s review it would be little wonder that she was again discouraged. Yet it undoubtedly echoed her own evaluation of her status.
Major Barbara ended its brief run at The Old Vic in late July 1956 and Shearer, about 5 months pregnant, took a break.
In the summer of 1957 Shearer was persuaded to return to the stage by the prolific producer Henry Sherek. The play was Man of Distinction, a comedy by Walter Hansenclever set in Berlin in the 1930s. Shearer played the role of Lia Compass, Eric Porter was her father, and Anton Walbrook was Hugo Mobius. It was to prove to be a disaster.
Moira Shearer as Lia Compass in Man of Distinction, August 1957. Photographer unknown.
Rehearsals began in London in early August and the play opened at the Edinburgh Festival on the 14th. In September it moved to Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Blackpool, each for a one-week run and on October 15th opened at the Princes Theatre in the West End. A review in the magazine Plays and Players noted that Shearer “brought the only touches of distinction” to an outdated play. John Barber, writing in The Daily Express also praised her performance but advised his readers to not see the play. It closed two weeks later, on October 28th. On the same date an unhappy Moira Shearer told Barber that she would quit the stage. This was to be her only appearance as an actress in the West End.
Shearer briefly returned to the stage in 1977 and 1978 at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. She played Yelena Renevskaya in The Cherry Orchard and Judith Bliss in Hay Fever and received good reviews in the local press. The drama critic for The Glasgow Herald praised Shearer’s Renevskaya as “wonderfully elegant, charming and in several senses, light; she almost seems to float through the play”.
Her final stage appearance was in Glasgow in 1994, when aged 68 she appeared as the crone, Juliana Bordereau, in The Aspern Papers. The review in The Stage praised her performance. “Moira Shearer is splendid as the aunt and her caustic conversations with Dibbens have an expressive clarity”.
Sources.
John Barber, The Daily Express, February 7th, 1955 and October 28th, 1957.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 22nd, 1954.
Clifford Gessler, The Oakland Tribune, October 28th, 1954.
Walter Kerr, The New York Herald Tribune and Post Dispatch, October 3rd, 1954
Jackie McGlone, The HeraldScotland (The Herald/Sunday Herald), Beyond the Aspic Papers, September 10th, 1994.
The Stage, October 7th, 1954 and September 29th, 1994.
A.H. Weller, “Four of a Kind: Moira Shearer plays Air in “Redheads”, New York Times, July 26th, 1955
In 1957 Moira Shearer’s husband Ludovic Kennedy was a newscaster for the British TV network Independent Television News (ITN). Kennedy had been a long-standing supporter of the Conservative or Tory Party, then led by Anthony Eden. However, Kennedy became increasingly disenchanted with the Tories particularly over their inept handling of the “Suez Crisis” in 1956. In addition, he had moved to the left politically because of his growing interest in the abolition of capital punishment.
Thus, in 1957 when Kennedy met with Jo Grimmond, the newly appointed leader of the left-of-centre party, the Liberals, and Grimmond encouraged him to join him in his efforts to rejuvenate the party, Kennedy was ready to take up the challenge. However, as ITV did not allow politicians to be employed in the newsroom, Grimmond and Kennedy decided to wait for the right moment to come when Kennedy might have the opportunity to seek office. They didn’t have to wait long.
The standing minister of parliament (MP), a Conservative, for the town of Rochdale in Lancashire, suddenly died and, by law, in order to replace him, a by-election was required. The Liberals had rarely fared well in Rochdale with most elections contested between the Conservative and Labour parties. However, with Kennedy as his candidate, Grimmond sensed an opportunity to win the seat for the Liberals.
Grimmond proposed Kennedy as his choice for the party’s candidate to the election committee of the Rochdale Liberals and it agreed to consider him. Thus, on January 6th, 1958, he travelled with his wife, Moira Shearer, to Manchester by train. There is a press photo of him sitting in his compartment on the train and typing the speech he would give before the committee. In Manchester the Kennedys were met by a member of the committee and driven to Rochdale where Kennedy would attend an interview.
Ludovic Kennedy and Moira Shearer en route to Rochdale, Manchester, January 6th, 1958. Photographer unknown.
After the committee’s approval the Kennedys immediately returned to Amersham in Bucks where they had just moved. Kennedy tendered his resignation to ITV. Within a few days he drove back to Rochdale in his Morris Minor 1000 “Traveller” to find a place to live and to meet with the team that the party had assembled to support him. They didn’t have much time. The election would take place of February 13th.
Ludovic Kennedy on a grey, cold January morning in Rochdale. Photographer unknown.
Up until late October Moira Shearer had been appearing in a production of the play, A Man of Distinction, in London. She would commute to the theatre from Amersham by train each afternoon and return late at night. By now she was also the mother of two young daughters, the younger, Rachel, being barely a year old. So, with the help of a fulltime nanny she was juggling her children’s care with her acting commitments.
Man of Distinction was a flop and folded after only a three-week run in the West End. This failure and the brutal realisation that her brief acting career was essentially over was a considerable blow to Shearer. The silver lining of this sudden change in her plans was that she was available to help her husband with his election campaign, and she apparently did so with enthusiasm.
This decision became an important element in Kennedy’s preparation. As a TV “personality” Kennedy enjoyed broad recognition but with his equally famous wife by his side it was likely that his appeal to voters would inevitably increase. Nonetheless, Rochdale was a gritty, working class “mill town” and, thus, fertile ground for the Labour party. It was still going to be an uphill battle for the Liberal candidate.
Grimmond, of course, also realized this and thus he directed an experienced team led by Edward Wheeler to support Kennedy. This support included the provision of campaign literature and the organization of canvassing and public appearances and speeches by both Mr and Mrs. Kennedy. Shearer had not anticipated taking an important role in the campaign and in an article in the newspaper, the Daily Express, she had explained her view of what her part would be. “I am going to Rochdale as Mrs. Kennedy”, she said, “not as Miss Twinkle Toes. I shan’t make speeches. I shall lick stamps if necessary”.
Nonetheless, Jo Grimmond’s man decided she should make a speech. Thus, a month later, on February 6th, she spoke to an audience primarily made up of middle-aged women (and a few, male, reporters) and told them she knew nothing of politics but that her years as a ballerina on the road had put her in the company of many Lancastrian landladies. She went on to say that she might be the Prime Minister yet, the reporter adding that she was, of course, joking.
There were many hurdles to confront in the campaign, chief among them that Kennedy was not a Lancastrian and that both he and his wife spoke a patrician tongue. As there was nothing to be done to deny this, Kennedy’s strategy was to energetically reach out to voters and to “press the flesh” at every opportunity. He was perhaps aided by the fact that the national press had picked up on the election as newsworthy. Thus, there were many paparazzi ready to record the Kennedys at work. There are numerous photos of them canvassing door to door, engaging in conversation would-be voters, including shopkeepers, elderly ladies and manual workers.
In one image published in the Daily Express that a somewhat skeptical reporter suspected was a staged “photo op”, Shearer emerges from an alley behind some washing drying on a line. Was there, he implied, no limit to what Grimmond’s crew was prepared to try for their cause? Or, perhaps, the reporter concluded, it was simply an opportunity that the alert photographer could not pass up.
Moira Shearer campaigning for her husband in Rochdale. January or February 1958. Photographer unknown. Published in the Daily Express.
Kennedy’s campaign was vigorous and effective, but he did not win the election. Instead, he came in a respectable second to the Labour candidate. A few days after his concession speech the Kennedys returned to Amersham to plan their holiday in the sun at a rented villa in Nice in the South of France.
A year later Kennedy was to run for the same seat in the General Election. Once again, he was second to the Labour candidate but, this time, by a tighter margin. This loss represented the end of his political career, and he returned to writing and campaigning for more personal causes.
Later in 1958 Moira Shearer briefly returned to the stage appearing in a Royal Command Performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Old Vic in London and in a short run in Oxford of a play titled Triangle. In 1959 she appeared briefly in a film, Peeping Tom, directed by Michael Powell and, in 1960, danced again in a French film, Black Tights. She took the role of Roxane to Roland Petit’s Cyrano in a ballet choreographed by him. Subsequently she returned to private life in Amersham and had two more children while living there. She quietly disappeared from the spotlight.
Sources.
The Daily Express, January 7th, 1958
“The Candidate’s Wife …. or a Picture for Cynics”. The Daily Express, PhotoNews, January or February 1958. Exact date unknown.
The Guardian.com/politics/the-northerner/2016/jan/02/ludovic-kennedy
In 1954 the British impresario Donald Albery produced the play “I am a Camera” for London’s West End stage. It was based on John van Druten’s play that had been staged in New York in 1951 and that, in turn, was based on Christopher Isherwood’s novel about life in Berlin in the 1930s, titled “Goodbye Berlin”.
The London production was given at the New Theatre and starred the very accomplished Dorothy Tutin in the lead role of Sally Bowles. John van Druten acted as the director. It was a major success, especially for Tutin, and ran from May through January 8th, 1955.
Subsequently Albery assembled a different cast for a projected 6-month season in the British provinces. For the week of performances at the Theatre Royal, Brighton starting on January 10th, 1955, the role of Sally Bowles was played by the RADA-trained actress Jocelyn James, who had been Tutin’s understudy, but when the play opened in Oxford on February 7th Moira Shearer had assumed the lead. As, in late December 1954, Shearer had just returned from a long tour of the U.S. and Canada with The Old Vic’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she may not have been available for the Brighton engagement. Many in the support cast used in Brighton were also replaced but some, like Marianne Deeming, Anton Diffring and John Gale, were retained.
It is not known why these changes took place but it seems that Albery very much had his eye on the box-office in casting Shearer.
When Tutin was in rehearsals in 1954 it was probably Albery who commissioned the well-known theatre photographer, Angus Mcbean, to take publicity shots of her that were used to advertise the play outside the theatre and in newspapers and magazines. Similarly, it is likely that he asked Mcbean to photograph Shearer as Sally Bowles in early 1955.
Moira Shearer as Sally Bowles in I am a Camera. Photo by Angus McBean, 1955. Photo reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
The cover of the programme used for the London production was an almost exact copy of that used in New York in 1951 and featured a cartoon of Sally Bowles with a cigarette holder to her lips. When it came time to design the cover for the provincial run the same image was used but, added to it, in large red letters was “Moira Shearer”. It seems as though Albery anticipated her to be the draw as much as than the play itself.
The cover for the programme for the appearance of I am a Camera in Birmingham.
John Barber, the drama critic for the Daily Express, had reviewed the West End production and his evaluation of it was also added in a box on the cover. It read, “such a bad, bad girl in a good, good play”.
Barber reviewed Shearer’s opening night in Oxford , where the tour began, and gave her a rave review. He concluded that, in terms of craft and skill, that, while she was no Tutin, he felt that he had witnessed the birth of an actress.
The play dealt with the themes of promiscuity and sexuality, so it was bound to attract the attention of the then highly sensitive censors and both they and the Lord Chamberlain reviewed the script. In addition, at some date before opening in the West End, Albery met with the censors to put his case that the script not be expurgated. However, changes were required. John Gale, a member of the cast for the provincial tour, reporting on the performance in Eastbourne in the summer of 1955, noted the presence of the local police throughout the show.
Gale also expressed his opinion that a good part of the audience in any venue was there primarily to witness the beauty of the leading lady and in the north of England, far from the glare and glamour of the West End ,the advance notices for the play in the local newspapers advertised “the personal visit of Moira Shearer”.
Shearer received very mixed reviews. The correspondent in the Birmingham Weekly Post gave her a “thumbs up”. “Moira Shearer is all exquisite grace and beauty; and she has a voice of unexpected depth and proves herself an actress of considerable ability”. The critic in the Eastbourne Gazette was not impressed by the play or by Shearer’s portrayal of Sally Bowles. “She overacted. Her attractive lisp was lost in an avalanche of words and only occasionally did she come over naturally”. In the opinion of this same critic Michael Gwynn as Christopher Isherwood didn’t fare any better.
Like the West End run, the provincial tour, primarily in towns and cities like Nottingham, Bournemouth, Cardiff and Leeds in England, Scotland and South Wales, was a great financial success. Thus, Albery’s optimism in his venture was apparently borne out.
For Shearer the tour appears to have ended in Southsea in June and she began her acting career at the Bristol Old Vic at some time between August and October.
Sources.
John Barber, The Daily Express, February 8th, 1955.
Birmingham Weekly Post, February 18th, 1955
Eastbourne Gazette, June 15th, 1955.
John Gale, Theatre Archive Project (online resource), no date.
Glasgow Herald, April 1st, 1955. “Moira Shearer in New Role”.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger brought in Sir Thomas Beecham, the British conductor and impresario, to conduct the music for the ballet sequence that was the centrepiece of their 1948 film, The Red Shoes. The music was written by Brian Easedale who also served as conductor for the balance of the film.
After The Red Shoes was released, Beecham suggested that Powell and Pressburger consider the opera The Tales of Hoffmann as the subject of their next film. The opera was created by Jacques Offenbach in 1880. Beecham also offered his services as conductor and those of The Royal Philharmonic, the orchestra he had founded.
Powell and Pressburger enthusiastically accepted his offer and in 1950 Beecham created the score and commissioned the English libretto which were to become the basis for the film. Beecham worked with the Royal Philharmonic to make a recording of the opera sung in English. The voiced parts were sung by a number of established opera singers like Dorothy Bond and by the Sadler’s Wells Chorus. In the film itself, with the exception of Anne Ayars and Robert Rounseville, who actually sang their parts, the other actors and dancers would lip-sync theirs’s to Beecham’s recording.
Before the opera itself begins, Hoffmann, the poet, who is the subject of the piece, and his current love interest, Stella, are introduced. In the original opera Hoffmann is in the audience at the theatre where Stella is singing. In the film Stella becomes a ballerina who is played by Moira Shearer and Powell and Pressburger create an epilogue as a way to showcase her dancing talents. As William Germano expresses in his book on the film, the creators “give the audience a view of Moira Shearer doing what they came to see her do: dance”.
This addition, titled The Enchanted Dragonfly, in which Shearer dances with and, eventually, consumes her partner, Edmond Audran, was choreographed by Fred Ashton to match Shearer’s dancing style. Many of the critics praised the ballet and Shearer’s execution of her role while others objected to it as being superfluous and, thus, an empty exercise. An article in the July 1951 issue of Ballet Today wrote of the ballet itself that it had “undistinguished choreography which is acrobatic in movement and curiously static in design”. The critic in the Paris Review focused on Shearer’s performance and wrote, “her adamantine, technically flawless executions in the “Enchanted Dragonfly Ballet” … are bloodless perfection”.
Moira Shearer as a dragonfly in The Tales of Hoffmann. Photographer unknown.
Hoffmann is stricken by desire for Stella at her performance. Stella obviously returns his affection as she writes him a love note on a handkerchief and encloses her room key. This she gives to Andreas, her perfidious servant, in a break in the performance and instructs him to deliver it to Hoffmann. It is, however, intercepted by Hoffmann’s rival, Lindorf, who bribes Andreas and, thus Hoffmann is left unaware of Stella’s interest.
Hoffmann leaves the theatre and enters Luther’s Tavern to drink and regale his friends with “tales” of his many loves. While there and perhaps already drunk Hoffmann imagines a hunchback named Kleinzach, portrayed on one of the beer steins displayed in the tavern, coming to life. The hunchback emerges from the front face of the stein and attempts to woo a beautiful young woman dressed in a medieval costume. Kleinzach is played by Ashton and the object of his love by Moira Shearer. However, she appears to be more intent on regarding her reflection in her mirror than on his advances and summarily spurns him. Hoffmann’s story of Kleinzach seems to unconsciously mirror his own rejection at the hands of his lovers. In the original opera Kleinzach has no love interest and Powell and Pressburger appear to have inserted this to reinforce the parallels between the hunchback and the unrealistic Hoffmann. The change also gives them another opportunity to utilize Shearer’s talents. While the vignette makes no demands on Shearer’s dancing skills her miming forcefully portrays her character’s arrogance.
Fred Ashton as Kleinzach and Moira Shearer as his “lady love” in The Tales of Hoffmann. Photographer unknown.
Shearer returns to dance (and sing!) in the first act of the opera itself. Here she plays the part of Olympia, the animated doll created by the inventor Spalanzani played by the Russian dancer Leonide Massine. Spalanzani is aided and abetted by Dr. Coppelius, played by Robert Helpmann, who creates magic eyeglasses that complete the deceit. Together they dupe an unsuspecting Hoffmann into believing that Olympia is real. When he realizes that she is an illusion, Hoffmann is both crestfallen and out of pocket.
Many of the critics expressed that they considered Shearer’s portrayal of Olympia as her most successful foray into films. She was generally praised for her lightning-fast footwork, for her mime and her humour. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times that “(her dance numbers) are cinematic gems, combining a rare and thrilling fusion of pantomime, music and dance”.
Moira Shearer in her role of Olympia in The Tales of Hoffmann. Detail of a photo by Baron.
Shearer confessed to Dale Harris that she generally disliked portraying dolls like Swanhilda in ballet but enjoyed dancing as Olympia and especially liked working with Ashton.
In addition to dancing with Shearer in his role as Spalanzani, Massine was also involved in its choreography and often arrived early at the studios at Shepperton to prepare. Shearer sometimes shared his taxi from west London to rehearse with him and to participate in production of the many costumes she would use.
Shearer is absent from Acts 2 and 3 that concern two of Hoffmann’s other lovers. She returns in the epilogue which again takes place at Luther’s Tavern.
However, before this final scene Powell and Pressburger inserted another vignette that was intended to showcase Shearer’s talents. It opens with Shearer dancing alone on stage where she creates the image of Stella embodying all of Hoffmann’s lovers. She is then joined by Audran to dance a thoroughly romantic duet in which she wears a reproduction of the calf-length tulle skirt worn by the renowned 19th Century ballerina Marie Taglioni. Finally, she and Audran appear together dancing in a churrigueresque landscape dominated by four massive pillars. As they finish their dance, they disappear into the sunset and the curtain is shown falling on their performance.
This image then dissolves to one of Hoffmann and his companions in the tavern. Shearer suddenly reappears as Stella, this time wearing a sumptuous fur-trimmed gown. Having completed her performance at the theatre next door she rushes to find Hoffmann. As the tavern is in a cellar she enters from the street above, stands atop the steps and, according to the original libretto, “gushing with excitement”, proclaims to Hoffmann, “My darling! What a night! I have never sung better. The ovations!” She pauses as she sees her would-be lover slumped over and exclaims, “Hoffmann! Asleep?”
Nicklaus, Hoffmann’s companion and muse, informs her, “No, ma’am”, “Passed out. You have come too late”
In the original libretto Stella expresses her anger and frustration at Hoffmann, “Asino! Porcaccio!” (“ass, dirty pig”) but in the film Powell or, perhaps, Ashton instead shows her looking at Hoffmann with sadness and disappointment. As she does so Lindorf enters to present her a small bouquet, wrap her in his cloak and lead her away up the steps to some unknown destination. His triumph over his love rival, Hoffmann, is complete.
Moira Shearer in her role as Stella at the conclusion of The Tales of Hoffmann. Photographer unknown.
However, this is not quite the end of the film. Instead, Beecham, in a final vignette, is shown energetically conducting the last few phrases of Offenbach’s music and then laying down his baton on the lectern. One suspects that Powell and Pressburger intended this postscript acknowledge Beecham’s central role in creating the film.
Sources.
Ballet Today, July 1951.
Pigeon Crowle, Our Star Ballerina: Moira Shearer. Woman’s Own magazine, September 1950.
Bosley Crowther, New York Times, April 5th, 1951.
William Germano, The Tales of Hoffmann, BFI Classics, 2013.
Dale Harris, transcript of interviews conducted with Moira Shearer in Edinburgh, August 29th,1976, August 31st and September 1st, 1978. New York City Library Archive, Lincoln Center, New York City.
In 1937 an 18-year-old Michael Benthall, who was then an undergraduate at Oxford, went to see a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream staged by Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic Theatre in London. Vivien Leigh played the part of Titania and Robert Helpmann was Oberon.
The production included music that Mendelssohn had written for the play in the 19th Century. Unlike most previous 20th Century interpretations of A Dream, Guthrie’s was designed as a spectacle. One critic termed it “neo Victorian”, a reference to the way it had been presented in London by Charles Kean and Beerbohm-Tree in the previous century.
Benthall was impressed by what he saw and apparently carried the memory of Guthrie’s interpretation forward to 1954 when he was established as director of the Old Vic and was considering staging a new production of the play. In cooperation with the Edinburgh Festival, it was decided to present the play at the festival in August and September of that year. Subsequently Benthall negotiated with the American impresario, Sol Hurok, for a 9-week tour of the U.S. and Canada, beginning with 29 performances in New York at Metropolitan Opera House in late September.
A Dream ran at the Empire Theatre in Edinburgh from August 23rd to September 8th, 1954.
Robert Helpmann as Oberon and Moira Shearer as Titania in a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Edinburgh in August 1954. Photographer unknown. Photo published in The Scotsman.
The drama critic for the Glasgow Herald on September 2nd published a review under the headline “Shakespeare with all the Trappings”. It was highly critical of the production. For example, of Shearer’s performance the critic wrote, “Moira Shearer looked ideal as Titania but her voice is too small and one missed some of her words”. While largely unimpressed by the acting he conceded that “the choreography is exquisite, especially the nocturne ballet danced by Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann and the corps de ballet”. The nocturne was choreographed by Fred Ashton; the balance of the play by Helpmann.
J.C. Trewing, writing in the Illustated London News for September 1954 seemed reluctant to either praise or damn the production and Shearer’s part in it.
“Agreed, the ballets are the best things in this evening. Moira Shearer, as we all know, is a snowflake-dancer. The pas de deux with Robert Helpmann is a pleasure. But we do go, or should we …. to A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the sake of the verse”. He then places Shearer’s acting performance in true perspective. “Moira Shearer, delicate, auburn-haired, is a ballerina for our affection; but she speaks Titania thinly, without apparent zest”.
The day after the last performance in Edinburgh, the cast and 30 tons of props were loaded onto a charter plane for the journey across the Atlantic. On arrival of the company at Idlewild Airport in New York on September 18th, Benthall was interviewed by a New York Times correspondent.
When asked about the genesis of the production Benthall said, “I can compare the production with nothing I know in the straight classical theatre; what I think it’s really most like is the great court masques of the 17th and 18th Centuries. This all started 6 years ago, at Stratford on Avon, when I put on a production of “The Dream” using a recorded bit of the Mendelssohn score as background ……. That production was presented entirely for the play alone, the music being just incidental; but I fell in love with the music, which I thought brought the play marvellously alive. By some miracle, Mendelssohn managed to weave into his score the same kind of color and magic that Shakespeare had written in verse more than 200 years before”.
Benthall continued, “the logical next step was visual …. the sprites played by dancers, for … only then would they be given the ethereal lightness to set them on a plane far removed from the mortals of the play. I realize the play is beautiful by itself, but I became convinced that if presented in combination with Mendelssohn’s full score, it would make and evening so full and rich as is rarely found in the classical theatre today”.
The Times correspondent interjected “perhaps his dream of The Dream would have remained a dream … without Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer” and Benthall added that “in a musical-ballet version you needed dancers who could also act…. I knew Moira Shearer could act….”
Benthall’s evaluation of Shearer’s acting skills was somewhat ingenuous. By 1954 she had had virtually no training in acting. That would have to wait until she joined the repertory company, The Bristol Old Vic, in the summer of 1955.
When asked about preparations for her “acting” role in the 1948 film, The Red Shoes, Shearer told Dale Harris that the director, Michael Powell, had provided her with the services of a young actor but all they achieved was a brief discussion about “The Importance of Being Earnest”. Powell, in fact, cautiously shielded her from exposure to any demanding dialogue. Her most memorable lines, beginning with “I am that horror”, were mercifully brief. In her next film, The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Shearer utters not a word. In A Story of Three Loves (1953) her conversations with James Mason were dominated by him.
Thus, by 1954, Shearer would have been the first to concede that she could not act. However, she had a beautiful voice. Prior to the Edinburgh Festival premiere between August 16th and 20th the full cast and orchestra recorded the play for a long-playing record. In front of the microphone, according to one critic, Shearer’s Titania is “powerful and convincing”.
A Dream opened on September 23rd at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York to a packed audience and overwhelmingly negative reviews. The general consensus of these was that the actors were not “first rate” and that spectacle drowned out Shakespeare’s wonderful verse. Shearer received the lion’s share of adverse criticism but she was not alone. Stanley Holloway’s Bottom was hardly convincing. Only Helpmann escaped the critics’ wrath.
The review in the magazine, Time, for October 4th, 1954, was kinder than most but still damning. For that reviewer the Old Vic version of A Dream was “lovely” and “fairylike” and Mendelssohn’s score was enchanting; it was A Dream “employing the classic patterns of romantic ballets, A Dream mounted with lush moonlit décor”. However, the review continued, Mendelssohn was the hero of the evening rather than Shakespeare and “Moira Shearer’s dancing far surpasses any actor’s speech; the ass’s head that Bottom wears is far more entertaining than Stanley Holloway’s Bottom”.
Stanley Holloway, who played Bottom, explains the animated ass’s head he wears in the production to Moira Shearer, August 1954. Photographer unknown. Photo published in The Scotsman.
The reviewer characterised the overall performance by saying, “ultimately the worst defect …. is that by using an almost uncut text it makes matters too sluggish and protracted for a musical spectacle while so much dancing and music are fatal to a true unfolding of the play”. In sum, it is only ”a medley of impressions (and) much that is unmercifully dull”.
John Gassner, reporting in the Educational Theatre Journal for December 1954 under the heading “Broadway in Review”, was one of the more virulent critics. He writes that “The marriage of Shakespeare’s words to Mendelssohn’s music was more conducive to boredom than bliss. The intercession of Moira Shearer’s loveliness and of the painstaking choreography was futile. The production was ill-conceived … everything was lovely, everything proficient” but, he concludes, mightily boring.
After the performances in New York and Philadelphia on October 18th the company set off on a tour of the US and Canada that included cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Montreal but also venues on university campuses like the University of Minnesota and Michigan State.
The criticism in the local newspapers that evaluated the overall production largely reflected that in the New York press. The exception was the reviewer in the Oakland Tribune who had seen the production in San Francisco and felt it was a successful amalgam of verse, music and dance.
Moira Shearer as Titania professes her love of the ass to the assembled fairies. Neither date nor photographer known. Photo published as a cover to a record of Mendelssohn’s music.
Much of the local press focused on Shearer, partly because she had just announced her intention to quit ballet. These critics, too, concluded that, while she looked the part, she didn’t deliver her lines.
When interviewed for the Minneapolis Star Tribune Shearer was asked for her reaction to the widespread criticism of the production. She felt that much of it was misguided and was at pains to stress the fact that the production was more elaborate than any “Metropolitan” opera; there was a huge cast of 42, a ballet corps of 28, a 60-member orchestra and all those props. To her the sold-out performances indicated that the public response was positive. Yes, she conceded, there had been mixed reviews from the critics. The reporter wrote, “Miss Shearer offered a few flatfooted comments on some of the critics”. “Really”, she said, “you’ve got to approach this as a spectacle. Some of them (the critics) are disturbed because they expect this bare stage and lectern business …. The public ultimately is the final judge and they’ve been most enthusiastic… they wouldn’t sit through it if they were bored”. She concluded, “I suppose you always remember the bad reviews. They stick in your craw”.
Sources.
Glasgow Herald, September 2nd, 1954.
Dale Harris, transcript of an interview made on August 31st, 1976, and September 1st, 1978 in Edinburgh, New York City Library Archive, Lincoln Centre, New York.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune, October 23rd, 1954.
New York Times, “Extravagant Dream, Old Vic to open at Met.”, September 21st, 1954.
Oakland Tribune, October 28th, 1954.
Time Magazine, “Old Play in Manhattan”, October 4th, 1954.
J.C. Trewing, Illustrated London News, September 11th, 1954.
Moira Shearer and Fred Ashton, one of the principal choreographers for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, had a long professional relationship that extended from 1943 to 1967. In that timeframe, he created several ballets that drew upon her extensive and remarkable ballet skills.
Moira Shearer and Fred Ashton at Covent Garden in 1967. Photographer not known.
In the autumn of 1943, while he was on leave from service in the Royal Air Force, Ashton choreographed a ballet called The Quest. He created the central roles for Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann but also those for the two teenage ballerinas in the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. Beryl Grey played Duessa and Moira Shearer was cast as Pride. Shearer had been with the company for about 18 months, and Pride was her first important role.
In his 1976 interview with Shearer, Dale Harris made the assertion that Ashton chose her for the role of Pride because of her beauty because the “role required it”; Shearer didn’t respond perhaps because this assumption would have made have made her bristle; she spent the majority of her life in ballet trying to get her audience to judge her on her performance rather than on her striking appearance, her “beauty”. When the production of Quest moved from the New to the Princes Theatre in November 1944. Pamela May assumed the role of Pride.
Shearer went on to appear in several of Ashton’s ballets, the most significant of which were the full-length ballet, Cinderella, and, of the shorter ballets, Symphonic Variations. She also had roles Les Patineurs, Scenes de Ballet, Apparitions and A Wedding Bouquet.
Symphonic Variations was the first ballet created after World War 2 by Ashton. The ballet employs six dancers; three female and three male; for the first and for most of the subsequent performances Margot Fonteyn was the lead ballerina and was supported by Pamela May and Shearer. Michael Somes was Fonteyn’s partner and was supported by Henry Danton and Brian Shaw. An article in Ballet Today in 1946 suggested that the six dancers were chosen for their “musicality”, their ability to interpret Franck’s music, as much for their technical prowess.
In Symphonic Variations the curtain rises to silence, to the six dancers standing motionless, the three ballerinas in front. Fonteyn was at the centre, flanked by Pamela May and Shearer. There were six “variations” some of which were duets while others focused on groups of four or on all the dancers. Fonteyn and Somes danced the more demanding duets. The ballet lasted 17 minutes during which time all the dancers remained on stage.
One of the reviews of the premiere performance was published in the Manchester Guardian on April 26th, 1946. “Last night his ballet was performed brilliantly by Margot Fonteyn, elegantly by Moira Shearer, and very competently by Pamela May and the three male dancers”
The ballet remained in the Sadler’s Wells repertoire for many years. Between 1946 and 1953 Moira Shearer danced in it for a remarkable 70 times. This included performances on tours of the British provinces and in Florence, Paris and the US. Occasionally substituting for Fonteyn, she danced the “lead” at Covent Garden about half a dozen times.
Following her 1952 pregnancy Shearer returned to dance at Covent Garden in February 1953. Her first performance was as the lead in Symphonic Variations.
The magazine, The Sphere, reported on her performance. “On February 7th Moira Shearer returned to the Royal Opera House and made her appearance in Symphonic Variations….. The dancer’s pale alabaster beauty makes her an ideal exponent of this choreography, which exploits in an exalted mood the beauty of movement for its own sake and is as detached from everyday life as pure mathematics. Michael Somes partnered Miss Shearer in masterly fashion, giving a feathery lightness to the lifts that did much to accentuate her wraithlike appearance. There could be no more suitable ballet to provide a vehicle for Miss Shearer’s stylish poise and quietly confident attack”.
Scenes de Ballet, Ashton’s next ballet, premiered at Covent Garden on February 11th, 1948. In the lead roles were Fonteyn and Somes. Ashton had written it for Fonteyn and, according to Royal Opera House Archives she danced in it at the premiere and for a further 11 times, most of them in 1948.
Shearer took over as the lead dancer on February 25th, with Somes as her partner, and Grey danced it on February 26th. In the period that Shearer was at Sadler’s Wells she appeared in Scenes about 20 times. Her fInal appearance was on September 21st, 1951, when John Hart partnered her.
Moira Shearer in Scenes de Ballet, 1948. Photographer not known.
Macaulay writes that Scenes was one of the few ballets where Shearer challenged Fonteyn’s pre-eminence at Sadler’s Wells. Nonetheless, Fonteyn danced at the majority of the first season’s performances while Shearer dominated those in 1949, 1950 and 1951.
The journal, The Stage, for March 16th, 1950, reviewed Shearer’s performance in her March 14th appearance in Scenes. “In her elegant lime green costume, she brought a glamorous sophistication to the brilliant glitter of Ashton’s choreography”.
Also in 1948 Ashton created his first full-length ballet, Cinderella. The lead and title role was again created for Margot Fonteyn. However, Fonteyn decided that she did not want to dance the role at every performance thus Ashton and the director of Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Ninette de Valois, decided that Shearer would share the “first cast” with Fonteyn. Typically, Shearer as second cast would have had no first-hand direction from Ashton. Instead, she would have been expected to learn what she needed simply by observing Fonteyn’s rehearsals and performances.
In this unusual case, when rehearsals began in the autumn both Fonteyn and Shearer received Ashton’s direction.
Fred Ashton rehearsing Moira Shearer in Act l of Cinderella. Early November 1948. Photographer unknown.
In late November both Fonteyn and Shearer appeared in the premiere of the ballet, Don Juan, that was choreographed by Robert Helpmann. Toward the end of the final act Fonteyn was injured but managed to complete the performance. However, what she had thought was a slight sprain turned out to be a torn ligament. Fonteyn was taken to hospital, examined and her ankle placed in a cast.
Her injury would require 6 weeks of rest thus Fonteyn was ruled out of the December 23rd premiere of Cinderella. Shearer would dance the lead and Violetta Elvin, the original third cast, was moved up the order to dance as Shearer’s deputy. There were 18 performances up until February 28th , 1949 when Fonteyn returned. Up until this time Shearer and Elvin danced the lead about the same number of times. After Fonteyn’s return Shearer didn’t dance in the ballet for the rest of this initial season.
While each ballerina had her individual strengths in the interpretation of the role, all three ballerinas received positive and, sometimes, rave, reviews from the dance critics. However, the general consensus was that Fonteyns interpretation of the role was the most successful. Ashton maintained that he had created the role for her. While Shearer was successful in her duets with Michael Somes several critics felt that she didn’t display enough pathos in her solo in the kitchen scene in Act I.
When asked about Shearer’s interpretation Ashton described Shearer’s dancing as “brittle” which perhaps implied that it lacked emotional depth. This was a criticism that was repeated often by other critics throughout Shearer’s career.
Shearer’s final stage collaboration with Ashton was in his ballet, Façade. Shearer’s first appearance was on October 31st, 1942, when she danced a minor role in the “valse”. Several years later Ashton took advantage of the elegance of her dancing to cast her as the naïve “debutante”, opposite his lascivious “dago” in the tango. They were to repeat this pairing several times, including during both tours of North America by Sadler’s Wells, in 1949 and 1951.
Moira Shearer and Fred Ashton dance the tango in his ballet, Facade, at Covent Garden on December 17th, 1967. Photographer not known.
Ashton and Shearer also gave charity performances of the tango, the first at The Opera Ball on March 22nd, 1950, in Stanhope Gate in London and subsequently in 1967 on December 17th, at The Friends of Covent Garden Ball. In the first case they had danced the role several times during that spring season. In the second, however, both came out of retirement. Ashton was 63 years old and Shearer a slim and youthful 41. She remarked after their brief rehearsal that even after 16 years that she remembered the steps but admitted that she lacked the stamina.
Sources.
John Amis, Notes on Covent Garden, Tempo, number 10, Winter 1948-49.
Ballet Today, July 1946. Edited by P.W. Manchester.
Dale Harris, transcript of an interview of Moira Shearer in Edinburgh, August 29th, 1976, and September 1st, 1978. New York City Library Archives, Lincoln Plaza, NYC.
“Ballet makes unceasing and exhausting demands on its votives…..a dancer often spends the whole day in the theatre and is never free from rehearsals, the daily classes and special classes, photo calls and dress fittings”.
Peter Craig Raymond, Ballet Today, December 1954.
Moira Shearer leaves her parent’s flat in west London and heads off for work at Covent Garden. Circa 1946. Photo by Gordon Anthony.
With the exception of the month-long summer holiday, Sundays and designated days off, and even on the days she was not dancing Shearer went to work at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Depending on daily schedules she would have been expected to be there at sometime between 9 and 10 a.m. Classes or practice lasted until around 11.30 a.m. followed by short break; rehearsals began at noon and lasted until 2 or 3 p.m. Thus class, practice, rehearsals or dress rehearsals might require up to 6 hours in total. Matinees were usually staged at 2 p.m. so, in this case, the time for practice and rehearsal was limited to a couple of hours.
Shearer on her way to the wardrobe department at Covent Garden for adjustments to her tutu. Circa 1948. Photo by Louis Klemantaski.
Also on the schedule were fittings, repairs or adjustments to costumes and the occasional interview or photo shoot. As dancers rarely met with the ballet mistress or master, schedules and casting were posted on a bulletin board that had to be consulted daily. Assignments for the following day were often not known until after an evening’s performances. A dancer’s schedule might change suddenly if another dancer was ill or injured and had to be replaced.
In Shearer’s case the most notable example of this was in 1949 when she was selected to replace Alexandra Danilova as Swanhilda in Coppelia. Danilova and Leonide Massine were dancing with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet for the spring season. Danilova was due to dance as Swanhilda on March 30th but inflamed her tendon in practice and Shearer was chosen to step in at very short notice, so short, in fact that, according to the popular press, she and her partner, Frederick Franklin were still practicing up until the time the curtain went up. The role was, of course, familiar to Shearer, although she hadn’t danced it many times and not for the preceding six months.
The Sadler’s Wells Ballet programme for March 30th, 1949, noting Alexandra Danilova’s injury and her replacement by Moira Shearer.
There was rarely time for lunch so dancers grabbed a bite whenever they had a spare moment. On nights when that they were dancing they might not eat anything for a number of hours beforehand. Dinner would have to wait until after a performance. Thus, Shearer would often eat at home.
Shearer in her costume as Aurora in Sleeping Beauty grabs a bite and a “cuppa”. Circa 1946. Photograph by Gordon Anthony.
According on the ballets scheduled, evening performances usually began at 6.45 or at 7.30 pm and might last for 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Preparations for a performance, dressing and make-up might require an hour. Once the performance was complete and the dancer had left the stage, costumes were carefully shed and stored in the dressing room and makeup was removed. Then it was a matter of getting past the autograph hunters at the stage door.
On nights she was dancing she would be lucky to begin her journey home by 10 p.m. Thus, it was a 13 hour day when she was dancing and 10 when she was not.
Until Ludovic Kennedy came into her life in 1949 and offered her a ride home, Shearer would have had to rely on a London bus or the underground.
Sources.
Alan Ivimey, “Ballet Dancer” The Children’s Newspaper, Dec 9th, 1950.
Peter Craig Raymond, Ballet Today, Dec 1954, “The Career of Moira Shearer”.
John Speed, Background to Ballet, circa 1950. Photos by Louis Klemantaski.
In 1987 BBC Northwest hired Gillian Lynne to choreograph and direct a ballet based on the life of the Salford-born painter L. S. Lowry. The ballet or, as Lynne preferred to call it, “dance drama”, was to be performed by the Northern Ballet, based in Manchester and directed by the former Royal Ballet dancer Christopher Gable. He would portray Lowry. The music was composed by Carl Davis. The BBC would record and air the performance before the company went on tour with the ballet.
Gillian Lynne and Christopher discuss “A Simple Man” in 1987. Photographer unknown.
Lynne wanted Moira Shearer to dance the role of Lowry’s mother, Elizabeth, and approached her with the proposal. Shearer initially resisted. She had not danced since 1967 when she and Fred Ashton appeared in Façade dancing the tango together. This was a single appearance at a Christmas show at Covent Garden after which Shearer returned to her family life. At the time of Lynne’s proposal, she was an “empty nester” living in Avebury with her husband, Ludovic Kennedy, and preoccupied with writing.
Despite her misgivings Shearer agreed to travel to Manchester for a filmed test. Lynne, who was an old friend, eventually persuaded Shearer to take the part. However, Shearer stipulated that she would only participate in the performance before the cameras and would not go on tour with the company. Thus, Gable asked Lynn Seymour to step into Shearer’s shoes on the road.
Rehearsals began in June 1987 and filming, which took place in November 1987, required 8 days. There is no record of when or how long Shearer spent in rehearsals or before the camera. The finished product, made up of 8 scenes, was about 40 minutes long. Shearer danced in 3 scenes and was on stage for probably around 10 minutes. Lynne’s direction explored the mother’s complex and controlling relationship with Lowry. In her final scene his mother dies in Lowry’s presence and we witness his profound anguish.
Christopher Gable as Lowry and Moira Shearer as his mother. Neither date nor photographer known.
Shearer had few opportunities to actually dance – just some fleeting solos and duets with Gable – but considerably more opportunity to use her miming skills. As the review in The Stage suggests, her portrayal of the mother’s “disapproving face and her principled, evangelical bearing tells us why” Lowry was so repressed.
As was typical of her, Shearer denigrated her performance, calling it an exercise in “geriatric movement”.
Perhaps because the ballet was produced initially for broadcast there seems to have been very limited contemporaneous critical review of the performance. However, in their evaluation of the DVD that was subsequently produced, a number of critics praised it, one writing to say that it was a “pleasure to see Shearer perform again in a fittingly impressive part”. Another wrote of the “gloriously moving performances from Gable and Shearer”.
During her tenure at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Moira Shearer was partnered by numerous male dancers. These included Robert Helpmann and Michael Somes. However, as they were primarily matched with the prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn, Shearer, as the second cast, was usually partnered by other dancers. Chief among them were Alexis Rassine, David Paltenghi and John Hart. These partnerships are explored below.
Alexis Rassine
In her 1978 interview with Dale Harris Moira Shearer recalls the first night at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House at the start of the first North American tour by the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1949. She remembers the night well because of her horror at having to dance in the Bluebirds suite in Sleeping Beauty, a role, she said, that she had not danced before.
In fact, this was not the case. She had danced it four times in the season of “rehearsals” for the American tour that was staged at Covent Garden from August 8th to 13th.
Shearer’s uncharacteristic lapse of memory probably resulted from a number of factors. First, although it obviously still irked her, it occured almost 30 years earlier. Second, she was extraordinarily busy for the week of August 8th, 1949. She danced in Sleeping Beauty either as a bluebird or in the lead role, as Aurora, every day. Then on August 16th she announced her engagement to Ludovic Kennedy.
In October 1949 at the premiere of Sleeping Beauty in New York she would have been forced to wait until Act 3 before she took the stage. She was always nervous before a performance and, having to wait that long, while she could hear the audience’s rapturous reception of Fonteyn’s dancing, would have undoubtedly heightened her anxiety.
At the time she was Sadler’s Well’s second ranked ballerina behind Fonteyn, a status that she both merited and fully accepted. Ninette de Valois, the director of the company had a strict policy that Fonteyn always dance the first night of a season or tour. Shearer or, occasionally, as, for example, in the case of Sleeping Beauty, Beryl Grey would dance on the 2nd night.
Thus, why was Shearer thrust into the first night lineup as a Bluebird? The answer is probably because Sol Hurok, the American promoter of the 1949 tour had asked de Valois to “load” the first night cast. Thus, for example, Violetta Elvin danced as the Fairy of the Crystal Fountain and Grey as the Lilac Fairy. From Hurok’s point of view, it was imperative that Shearer was included because, as a result of her success in the film, The Red Shoes, she was “box office” in the US.
The other Bluebird, Shearer’s partner, was Alexis Rassine. He was another reason for Shearer’s concern. As the photo of them dancing together in the ballet, Promenade, shows, he was of slight build and little taller than Shearer. In her interview with Harris she said of him that, while she enjoyed dancing with him, he did not inspire confidence in a ballet that required big lifts. Nonetheless he was an experienced and sensitive dancer and had partnered Margot Fonteyn in Spectre de la Rose, Carnaval and Giselle. During World War 2, when many British male dancers were serving in the armed forces, Rassine was often called upon by de Valois. Shearer first danced with him in 1942 in The Birds. In 1944 she partnered him in Spectre when she took over from Fonteyn the role of the young girl. Subsequently she danced with him in Les Sylphides and in Coppelia in which he was Franz to her Swanhilda.
Moira Shearer and Alexis Rassine dancing a duet in the ballet Promenade circa 1943. Photo by Gordon Anthony.
Shearer and Rassine’s Bluebird, understandably, because it was almost always danced in the shadows of Fonteyn’s Aurora, didn’t get much contemporaneous press and what little was published, was, at best, lukewarm. For example, in Chicago in November 1949, Shearer, according to the dance critic for the Chicago Tribune, didn’t “have her heart in it” and Rassine was dismissed with faint praise as “a reasonably competent partner”. A Canadian critic concluded that, based on the October 1949 performances that he saw in New York, Rassine was a fine “soloist” but not a strong partner. This criticism seems to echo the consensus of a number of critics on Rassine’s abilities throughout his career.
After World War 2, with a return to the company of more powerful dancers like Michael Somes and John Hart, Rassine was increasingly consigned to less demanding roles and to appearances on the road. Thus, for example, on the second North American tour in 1950-51, in San Francisco and at Purdue University, he partnered Shearer as Albrecht in Giselle and, in 1951, was Siegfried to her Odette/Odile in a performance of Swan Lake in Blackpool.
Oher ballets in which Shearer and Rassine danced together included Rendezvous, in 1943, Spectre de la Rose, in 1944, and in Carnaval.
David Paltenghi
David Paltenghi was exempt from military service in World War 2. Therefore, like Rassine, he was much in demand at Sadler’s Wells during the war but less so after it. Between 1942 and 1945 he partnered Shearer several times in a pas de deux in Les Patineurs and danced the role of Eusebias to her Chiarina in Carnaval in which he is downhearted until he meets her, but she merely dallies with him, offering him a flower and then running away to hide.
Moira Shearer as Chiarina and David Paltenghi as Eusebias in the ballet, Carnaval, circa 1945. Photo by Edward Mandinian.
In 1946 Paltenghi was Siegfried to Shearer’s Odette in Lac and in 1947 he once danced as Florimund to Shearer’s Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. As this seems to have been the only occasion they danced together in Sleeping Beauty, he was perhaps substituting for John Hart, Shearer’s perennial partner.
Shearer considered Paltenghi to be a good partner but not a good dancer. In her 1976 interview with Dale Harris, she commented that she thought he’d taken up dancing too late in life. Other critics said he was weak technically. In Swan Lake he partnered Grey more frequently than Shearer. As he was tall, he was, in this respect, a good match for Grey.
As Paltenghi does not appear in programmes after his appearance in Adam Zero on February 18th, 1948, he appears to have left Sadler’s Wells around that time.
John Hart
In her interview with Dale Harris Shearer indicated that she partnered with John Hart many times and, because he was, what she described as “rock solid”, she enjoyed dancing with him. Their association at Sadler’s Wells Ballet extended from 1946 to 1951. As he was already an established member of the company when Shearer joined it in 1942, they might have partnered each other for even longer, however during World War 2 he served in the Royal Air Force.
Their first recorded partnership was on October 30th, 1946, when they appeared together in Symphonic Variations. On this occasion Hart replaced Shearer’s earlier partner, Henry Danton, who had left Sadler’s Wells to study in Paris.
Once she had recovered from a tendon injury Margot Fonteyn returned to the title role in Ashton’s ballet, Cinderella, on February 28th, 1949. Until that time Shearer had danced as Cinderella with Michael Somes as her Prince. On Fonteyn’s return Somes partnered Fonteyn and continued to do so when the ballet was staged again in April 1949. Shearer then became the second cast and John Hart took the role of the Prince.
There were numerous occasions where Shearer and Hart danced in the same ballet at the same performance but did not partner each other. This was the case, for example, for Tricorne where Shearer danced in the Jota, usually with Massine and Grey, while Hart danced as the Governor.
Moira Shearer and John Hart at practice. Date and photographer unknown.
Programmes and Royal Opera House archive records indicate that Shearer and Hart danced together at least 60 times between 1946 and 1951. They were most often partnered in Symphonic Variations but also in Sleeping Beauty, where Shearer danced as Aurora and Hart was Florimund, in Scenes de Ballet, Swan Lake and in Mamzelle Angot. In Ashton’s ballet, The Wedding Bouquet, in which Shearer took the role of the jilted Julia and Hart was the bridegroom, they danced a duet.
Sources.
Moira Shearer interviewed by Dale Harris in Edinburgh, August 29th,1976 and September 1st,1978. Transcript of an audiotape held at the New York City Library, Lincoln Centre.
Royal Opera House archives, Covent Garden, London.
In the late 30s Fred Ashton choreographed The Wedding Bouquet based on a play by Gertrude Stein with music by Lord Berners. The ballet was, in fact, the result of a collaboration between Ashton, Berners and Constant Lambert, musical director of the Vic-Wells Ballet.
The plot of the ballet concerns a wedding reception at a French country house around 1900. Various intrigues, focused on the bridegroom’s numerous infidelities, play out during the ballet as his former lovers comprise many of the guests. Chief among these is the “forlorn” Julia.
Margot Fonteyn portrays Julia in the 1943 production of The Wedding Bouquet.
It was first performed at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre by the Vic-Wells on April 27th, 1937 with the 18-year-old Margot Fonteyn dancing the role of Julia. Ninette de Valois, director of the Vic-Wells and a former dancer, was cast as Webster, the organizer of the wedding, and Robert Helpmann was cast as the bridegroom. There appears to be no critical record of this performance. However there is a wonderful amateur film of a rehearsal where all three principals appear.
On the June 14th 1943, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet mounted a revival of the ballet at The New Theatre in London’s West End. Palma Nye took replaced de Valois as Webster but Fonteyn and Helpmann retained their roles. Moira Shearer, in her second year at Sadler’s Wells, danced as one of the guests. The performance did not seem to generate much press. The August 25th edition of the magazine, The Tatler, ran a very brief byline to a series of photos of Fonteyn, Helpmann, Margaret Dale (as the bride) and Alexis Rassine. However, it commented favourably on the range of Ashton’s choreographic talents.
When the ballet was again performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on February 17th, in 1949 Helpmann once again played the bridegroom but Shearer replaced Fonteyn as Julia. She danced the role several times over the following weeks and months.
Once again, the ballet generated very little contemporaneous comment or criticism in the British press. The correspondent in the February 18th Daily Express panned it, saying that the performance that he saw fell well short of the “charm and the humour of the original 1937 version, this despite the brilliance of Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer”. On the other hand, the February issue of the specialist magazine, The Dancing Times, saw much to be admired in it and considered the performance to be a success. It commented that “each character appears as painted in Gertrude Stein’s words” and that “the ruined Julia (is) beautifully played by Moira Shearer”.
As far as Shearer’s performance is concerned the most positive reaction came in the publication, The Stage, in February 1949. “So ideally cast is Moira Shearer in the revival of this humorous Lord Berners ballet that one could almost imagine that it had been written round her forlorn red tresses, as she danced the distraught tragedy queen at the French provincial wedding”. For once Shearer’s colouring was seen to act in her favour.
The Wedding Bouquet was part of the repertoire during both the 1949 and the 1950-51 Sadler’s Wells Ballet tours of the US and Canada. Shearer danced the role of Julia and Helpmann of the bridegroom at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on September 21st and 23rd, 1949. During the 1950-51 tour both Helpmann and John Hart danced the role of the bridegroom. On October 27th, 1950, in Los Angeles, Helpmann took the role while on November 29th in Memphis and on January 2nd, 1951, in Winnipeg, Hart assumed it. This Winnipeg performance appears to be the last time that Shearer danced as Julia.
Sol Hurok, the American entrepreneur who was instrumental in bringing the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to North America, writes in his memoirs a paean to Moira Shearer. He describes her as “cultured and highly intelligent”, “intensely musical both in life and in the dance”, a talent particularly evident in her performances in Swan Lake and in Ashton’s ballet, Façade. He concludes by saying “she is well-nigh indispensable to Wedding Bouquet”.
There is a single set for Wedding Bouquet that features a backdrop of a French provincial house and grounds and two tables filled with champagne bottles and glasses. For much of the ballet the stage is filled with wedding guests dancing together. At other times the bride and groom are featured with and without guests. However, the central character is the distraught Julia who is shown, at one point and, much to his horror, clutching the groom’s leg and later pursuing him in a wild dance across the stage. In the final scene all the guests and the bride and groom have departed and Julia is left alone in the centre of the stage seeking solace in her dog, Pepe.
Moira Shearer as Julia in the 1949 production of The Wedding Bouquet. Her dog Pepe is played by Annette Page.
Notes.
The ballet is about 30 minutes long.
Sources.
Daily Express, February 18th, 1949. “Covent Garden Wake up!”
Sol Hurok, S. Hurok Presents, Memoir of the Dance World, 2022, 2025.
The Dancing Times, February, 1949
The Stage, February 24th, 1949. “A Wedding Bouquet”.
The Tatler, August 25th, 1943. “A Wedding Bouquet”.
Symphonic Variations was the first ballet created after World War 2 by the choreographer, Frederick Aston. Its genesis was Cesar Franck’s concerto of the same name. Ashton had listened to the music a number of times during the war and decided to produce a ballet based on it.
The dance critic, Stephen Williams, writing in the journal, The Stage, of the success of the ballet’s premiere wrote, “Symphonic Variations is pure ballet – Franck’s …. “Concerto” expressed in terms of absolute dancing. There is no “story”, no drama, no characterisation”. He goes on to describe it as, “a shaping of the visions and the movements which the music evokes in the mind”.
The premiere was on April 24th 1946 at Covent Garden; it was originally planned for March but the lead male dancer, Michael Somes, had injured his knee earlier in the season and thus it was postponed
The ballet employs six dancers; three female and three male; for the first performance Margot Fonteyn was the lead ballerina and was supported by Pamela May and Moira Shearer. Somes was supported by Henry Danton and Brian Shaw. An article in Ballet Today suggested that the six dancers were chosen for their “musicality”, their ability to interpret Franck’s music as much for their technical prowess.
There was no orchestra; the music was played on the piano by Angus Morrison.
The ballet lasted 17 minutes during which time all the dancers remained on stage although sometimes were motionless. Margaret Dale, another Sadler’s Wells ballerina, later commented that, though the ballet is brief, the demands of the choreography on the dancers are exhausting.
The curtain rises to silence, to the six dancers standing motionless, the three ballerinas in front. Fonteyn was at the centre, flanked by May and Shearer. There were six “variations” some of which were duets while others focused on groups of four or on all the dancers. There is no visual record of the premiere but film footage of a rehearsal gives some sense of the elements of the performance.
Rehearsal of Symphonic Variations at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, October 1949. Photo by Gjon Mili.
One of the initial reviews was published in the Manchester Guardian on April 26th 1946.
The writer is not identified by was probably the dance critic, P.W. Manchester.
“Only a very musical or a very unmusical choreographer would make a ballet to Cesar Franck’s Symphonic Variations ….. Frederick Ashton has done this dangerous thing. His ballet, bluntly called Symphonic Variations was performed by the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company last night at Covent Garden. Happily, no choreographer, except perhaps Balanchine, is more musical than he.
As with the title, so with the ballet itself: it is a straight issue between composer and choreographer. Sophie Fedorovitch’s backcloth is a terse abstraction; her costumes are plain and functional; there is no story and there are only 6 dancers, who remain on the stage throughout. They either dance or stand still; they do not mime at all. But the ballet is no mere string of divertissements. It is, on the contrary, tightly woven. It is a classical ballet in a true but not quite orthodox use of the term. Mr. Ashton, in fact, set himself a musical problem and has sought no adventitious aid in trying to solve it. That is rare, brave and stimulating.
There are 6 variations …… he has not at all kept the music’s pattern. He has made his own pattern, and kept …. the music’s sense of a single flowing series.
Last night his ballet was performed brilliantly by Margot Fonteyn, elegantly by Moira Shearer, and very competently by Pamela May and the 3 male dancers. The result was almost entirely successful. The reason for the “almost” is – the piano. In these variations the piano is the soloist, the star, the ballerina …. Mr. Ashton’s pattern does not quite account for this soloist”.
The ballet was very well received and remained in the Sadler’s Wells repertoire for many years. Between 1946 and 1953 Moira Shearer danced in it for a remarkable 70 times. This included performances on tours of the British provinces and in Florence, Paris and the US. Occasionally substituting for Fonteyn she danced the “lead” at Covent Garden about half a dozen times.
Rehearsal of Symphonic Variations in Paris, September 28th, 1948. Michael Somes lifts Moira Shearer. Margot Fonteyn kneels in the foreground and Pamela May is a pointe. Unknown photographer.
Programme for performances of Symphonic Variations at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris in September and October 1948.
Due to her 1952 pregnancy Shearer was long absent from Covent Garden. On her return in 1953 she first danced the lead in Symphonic Variations.
The Sphere for February 12th, reported on her performance under the headline,
“Covent Garden, Shearer’s Return”.
“On February 7th Moira Shearer returned to the Royal Opera House after an absence of 18 months….Miss Shearer …. made her appearance in Symphonic Variations, Frederick Ashton’s masterly abstract comment on Cesar Franck’s music. The dancer’s pale alabaster beauty makes her an ideal exponent of this choreography, which exploits in an exalted mood the beauty of movement for its own sake and is as detached from everyday life as pure mathematics. Michael Somes partnered Miss Shearer in masterly fashion, giving a feathery lightness to the lifts that did much to accentuate her wraithlike appearance. There could be no more suitable ballet to provide a vehicle for Miss Shearer’s stylish poise and quietly confident attack”.
The New York Times reported of this same performance that it was greeted by rapturous applause and that Shearer took 7 curtain calls. This over-the-top response must have been both unusual for a British audience at that time and embarrassing to Shearer. While she was dancing the central role there were no great solos, no touching duets with Somes and, thus, no reason to draw attention to her. But, if we are to take the review at face value, it is evidence of how the London ballet public had missed her. It was obviously a special occasion.
A few weeks later Shearer injured her tendon while she was rehearsing for Giselle and left the Sadler’s Wells Ballet after a career spanning 11 years.
Notes.
Angus Morrison was the pianist throughout 1946 and 1947. He was replaced subsequently by Jean Gilbert. Gilbert had joined Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1944 and played both in rehearsals and performances. She toured with the company in the US and Canada in 1951.
Shearer, in her interview with Dale Harris in 1978 makes scant reference to Symphonic Variations but stresses the need for “musicality” in the dancers.
The four other dancers for the February 1953 performance were Nadia Nerina, partnered by Brian Shaw and Rosemary Lindsay partnered by John Hart.
Sources.
Ballet Today, July 1946. Editor P. W. Manchester.
The Manchester Guardian, April 26th, 1946, Ballet at Covent Garden.
The New York Times, February 8th, 1953. Moira Shearer Scores.
The Sphere, February 12th, 1953. Shearer’s Return.
David Vaughan, transcript of an interview with Margaret Dale, January 1975. New York Public Library, Lincoln Plaza, New York City.
Stephen Williams, The Stage, May 2nd, 1946, Covent Garden, “Symphonic Variations”.
Moira Shearer 