Moira Shearer

1926 – 2006

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  • Moira Shearer discusses Ninette de Valois with Dale Harris.

    Introduction.

    The interviews excerpted here were conducted by Dale Harris in Shearer’s home in Edinburgh in 1976 and 1978, 25 to 30 years after the fact. Harris was an American dance critic and historian.

    The transcript in the New York Library archive is in its original typed form with redactions and edits, some in Shearer’s hand; it is publicly accessible but only with permission from the archivist, to be read only at the Lincoln Center Archive; as no photocopying is allowed it was transcribed by hand, using a pencil only.

    While the transcript is in the public record, the audio on which it is based will not be available until 2036.

    As there were 2 years between the 2 interviews there is some repetition. The following record and analysis is focused on themes concerning De Valois. There is a certain amount of editing of materials which involves combining those from 1976 and 1978. I have added text (in italics) to increase clarity where I considered it necessary.

    The interviews spanned 3 days and thus the audiotape is many hours in length. The transcript runs for more than 263 pages.

    The notes are based on other sources and on my interpretation of them.

    The International Ballet (1941-42).

    I was supposedly fully trained. I had 5 years of training but, goodness you begin to learn when you join a company. That’s when you really start learning. But I was adequately equipped technically so I could go into the company. Then ….. I started learning and stayed with the company for exactly one year. De Valois, meanwhile, wrote to my mother and said she would like me to join her company.

    Joining Sadler’s Wells Ballet.

    I went in the spring-summer of 1942 into the (Sadler’s) Wells. They were at the New Theatre and we worked there right through the war. I adored the New!

    Almost the first thing I did was Karsavina’s waltz, her part in Sylphides, and went on in it as well as all the corps de ballet work taught by the other people who pushed one through it.

    I did The Gods Go A-Begging which was a ballet by De Valois. That was more important really as it was the principal part … I don’t know why De Valois gave this part to me or whether it was unusual. Beryl (Grey) also did the same kind of thing but she was very exceptional, and she had been trained entirely in the (Sadler’s Wells) school. De Valois was, I think, training her up for a particular position in the company. Then she was age 15. I was 16 by the time I went into the company, and we were just within the same year but at either end of it. She was doing the second act of Swan Lake and all sorts of things right away. Did she do corps work? Yes, I think she must have done.

    De Valois also gave me a lovely thing to do but, oh! she nearly killed me in the course of it too.

    It was a very hard thing for somebody brand new in the company to be put through however there it was and it did no harm. I’m sure strength of character came through …. because of it. She gave me a lovely pas de deux that June Brae did at that time in De Valois’ own ballet Orpheus and Eurydice. It was called the “peasant” pas de deux although it had nothing to do with peasantry (in) the way that Giselle has, nothing, in a lovely suit of Grecian draperies. I was very surprised to find myself doing this but it was lovely. I don’t know if she approved of the way I did it or not but I went on doing it for a while so it must have been alright. As well as that I had a tremendous lot for 4 years of corps work – a terrific lot. But I don’t regret that at all. I was delighted to do it – not at the time – one grumbles bitterly as everyone did but it was marvellous training. Also, I think you are more acceptable within a company ….. there are a great many dancers always in De Valois’ company….. De Valois was a great one for favourites … the corps was totally filled with long gone favourites. They didn’t leave because there was no other company to go to at the time. But because of the narrowness of the life you just stuck with it. So, they came back and back until they were the corps de ballet of the Sadler’s Wells Company.

    It was something I minded terribly. I’d come from the outside and, in a way, luckily for myself was never really one of them. I was never really accepted by them or by De Valois … one was always the outsider, a little bit distrusted, a little bit disliked and I’m sure I may have been dislikeable. You know there are always 2 sides to everything and I’m sure I may have been difficult and tricky, perhaps, just to work with daily. But luckily one was knocked down all the time. They heard me being bawled out. They heard me having a really rotten time. There I was, backrow, backrow, backrow for years. I did my best. I went through it all so they couldn’t pretend they hadn’t seen that one had at least gone through the mill too. I was never a favourite…. Absolutely not. Oh no. Thank goodness!

    Cecchetti training vs the Russian style; regimentation.

    (Harris noted that De Valois had received Cecchetti training; Shearer commented…)

    She was very much a dancer of this kind; very neat, very exact, very quick. The Russian style gives you almost more training for the top half of the body than for anything else… They concentrate on epaulement. This was the great thing, how you used your shoulders, your back…. The manner of using the arms and shoulders was considered (terribly) important. This was ignored in the other (Cecchetti) style which I thought was a great loss.

    We all suffered from .. regimentation and this came from De Valois who is nothing but strong-willed. She had an absolutely precise idea of how everything should be performed – her own ballets, and others – and exactly how everyone should dance.

    She’d always run the company that way – saw us as girls and boys to be drilled …. I always felt pulverised by nerves and lack of confidence which so took away what you were able to do …. never gave you a sense of arrival. De Valois wanted to make sure that none of us would get grand ideas about ourselves … throwing weight around.

    When I joined the company  … with Margot Fonteyn as (prima) ballerina she (De Valois) was … attempting to turn us into replicas of Margot. De Valois ran her company in a very British way – naturally enough ….. I realized from the very start that I was at a very great disadvantage with De Valois in that my training and my subsequent way of dancing were not, in her view, acceptable, not in the Sadler’s Wells style.

    So, she tried to change this, to knock this out of me and this went on for several years. I was … rather strong-willed and, with the arrogance of extreme youth, I felt I was dancing the way I could. Looking back on it I think I was right. Everyone is made so differently in their own individual way … physically, temperamentally and mentally … so each dancer moves and interprets a part slightly differently, in their own individual way. (This is) surely infinitely more interesting and varied for audiences too.

    De Valois was … very rigid in this way and there were constantly rows over my inability to conform. Finally, I think she became exhausted as I adopted a very simple little stratagem. I would rehearse with her in the way she wanted …. this kept the peace and was more tolerable for everyone. Then in the performance I danced the only way I could while trying to give my best performance. Of course there was trouble afterwards.

    (Harris asked for an example and Shearer explained the mechanics of how she danced a pas de deux in Les Sylphides)

    The company (was) a fairly small company – big by the standards of British ballet companies because it was virtually the only one – but very small on an international scale. We then went in 1946 to Covent Garden and suddenly everything had to expand and be really professional …. on a big international scale…. Ninette de Valois’ great years were the early years. Because a woman with less tremendous administrative drive, driving ability, ruthlessness and discipline – discipline was her great, great thing -could not have achieved what she did.

    I often felt that it was like a young ladies’ finishing school and she was the matron and we were all being drilled into shape but, in a way, in those early years that is what was wanted (needed). Maybe she carried it too far, but I think this is what built the company up into a marvellously disciplined force…. Then it got to the watershed and (to) Covent  Garden (and having really become big scale) she continued in exactly the same way and seemed to fight against the company becoming really international, professional, commercial … a certain commercial quality has to come into it and, as Hurok did when took us to America in 1949, to sell the company in a big way. We had to put ourselves across as Diaghilev had always done with his companies. I think De Valois not only wouldn’t do this, but couldn’t. I think this was beyond her scope and … she undid a lot of the good she had done in the early days. She did waste a great many dancers in her company.

    De Valois and Sadler’s Wells Ballet teaching.

    (Harris commented that De Valois “always liked neat dancing. Shearer replied …)

    She was that kind of dancer herself ….. we all like dancers who dance in our way… it upset me very much to be forced into something which, not only did I not like, but which I knew I didn’t do well – with any sort of style or elegance. I genuinely thought (that) the Italianate-British style was ugly…

    De Valois, at lower left, rehearsing her ballet, Orpheus and Eurydice, with the female cast probably prior to its premiere in 1941. Photographer unknown.

    (Ursula Moreton) I’m afraid (that) I refused to go to her classes because they were mechanical and ugly … there was one very British teacher there who I liked very much … Ailne Phillips, Dabs as we always called her. She was a very technical teacher which was exactly what I needed at the time. She had a way of getting me through my private lessons – it was which I found enormously helpful because she allowed me to stay within my own style. And she gave me more technical strength and stability than I had when I first went there, because, as I said, I wasn’t a great towering technician.

    …. Then old Nicholas Sergeyev was still giving hopeless classes …. He was a lovely old boy but he couldn’t teach for nuts.

    I had to join the Sadler’s Wells school for 2 weeks because I came from another company (and) because I was Russian trained which was frowned upon then (which was uppermost with everything) and (because) I had not been to the Royal School. De Valois put me into her Sadler’s Wells school for these 2 weeks. I suppose to say that I had come to (from) her school …. Which I did, literally. Sergeyev gave all those classes and I was stunned, of course, because I had never quite gone through this before.

    The Russian Style.

    I’ve always loved the Russian style and the Russian school of ballet so much more than any of the others. I think the Italian style in the old Cecchetti way was probably the most perfect technically … I think it would give you a steely, brilliant technique which possibly the Russian style would not give you. There are some people, of course, who want to see this, who want to go for the technicalities…. but I didn’t find that beautiful… I’m so grateful (that) I had all my original training in that (Russian) style.

    (Harris asked if the “notion of performance” was foreign to De Valois’ view of ballet. Shearer replied ..)

    Yes, sadly. De Valois actively disliked it in some of her dancers. One or two of us had individuality, which was inevitable, it was going to come over inevitably even in the most straightforward technical things that you did …. It is something which some people have and can do nothing to alter.

    The Red Shoes and aftermath (1947).

    (Harris asked Shearer how she was chosen for The Red Shoes)

    Powell went to the ballet a lot and saw me in Giselle which involves some acting. He got in touch, arranged to meet, showed me the script, told me to take it away and read it, hoped I would like it and so on. He built it up as a very great chance for a young, unknown dancer. I found the script rather dreadful – still do to this day. It really was women’s magazine stuff. Sentimental backstage story which could never happen. No dancers or ballet companies are like that. Really, I couldn’t take it seriously. So, I said “no” – I hope as politely as possible. A year went by. I discovered Helpmann and Massine would be in the film. That made quite a difference as I had faith in both of them. But, in the end, it was De Valois who almost made up my mind for me.

    The moment I made this film De Valois completely changed towards me. It had always been difficult of course. But now there was an atmosphere of total mistrust (whether she used this as a lever, I don’t know). The very fact that she would then say, “oh well, she will always be going off … we can’t trust her … she’s strange and she’s really got her feet in both camps”. She couldn’t have felt that genuinely about me. It was so absolutely untrue. But I just know that from the moment I did go back into the company after doing the film or dancing “Carmen” in Paris – the suspicion and the feeling .. of her suspiciousness of me… (of) things being tougher. To me it is terribly sad that there wasn’t greater rapport in the company. It’s a very good illustration of what she could do to a dancer. If one didn’t have a certain strength inside one it could really have demolished one for life.

    The Bluebird Incident.

    … (on) the first tour (of North America) in 1949 she (De Valois) had a particular point of wanting every member of the company on stage dancing in that (first) performance of Sleeping Beauty. One saw the point of this. (However) it was difficult when one or two of us were also going to dance Aurora and therefore wouldn’t normally have been on (stage) until the 3rd or 4th performance. However, she said we must all be in it so she recast some parts so she could get us all on…. she didn’t discuss this with any dancer …. She just told you what you were going to do…. She put it on the (notice) board (at Covent Garden) and there it was and one read it. I saw to my absolute amazement that I was down to dance the Bluebird with Alexis Rassine. I thought “heavens” because this was something I had never done at all, may never do again and it’s going to be awkward.

    I knew the rehearsal formula ….. or lack of it…. of course, the worst happened and there was no rehearsal (although) we did go off to a basement 2 or 3 times. Rassine, who I had loved dancing with, was a help but he was not a strong partner…. If you’re going to be flung very quickly in a very important occasion … one obviously loved the rock-solid solidity of someone like John Hart with whom I danced a great deal and … loved dancing with, a wonderful partner. No terrific dancer but a wonderful partner.

    Shearer rehearsing her role in the Bluebird pas de deux in The Sleeping Beauty with her partner Alexis Rassine in August 1949 at Covent Garden. Photographer unknown.

    However, there it was and I had to cope with the situation. He (Rassine) was very bored at having to rehearse it because he had performed it so often. I had 3 very rough rehearsals of this with the piano. Then we arrived in New York City and De Valois, of course, knew  (of) my problems..

    Looking back I think I was temperamentally unsuited to being in the ballet. I don’t think it was my thing. I think I had the same problem (as Olga Spessivtseva) because I suffered from the most terrible nerves you could imagine. I tried not to let this show through too much but I had to go through agonies before performances especially over the big classics because I was never a great thundering technician. I had a very adequate technique and I had some good points, great speed and … a very good jump. Technically I was OK. I don’t want to minimize myself and then people take you at your own undervaluation…. But I wasn’t a great technician who could come out and do 8 fouettes or anything like this. As a result, this was another worry (as) I was never absolutely certain if I could produce all the technical fireworks again and again and the nerve strain was very great. De Valois knew this. And with the Bluebird I had to wait until the third act that (opening) night and she knew I would get (to the theatre) way before performances began and put my makeup on and warm up and do my class. But I would have to sit through the whole evening in the dressing room, and I would be a wreck by the time it got to the Bluebird. She was right; she couldn’t have been more right…. Everyone else in the company seems to have been aware of this and thought me a perfect fool (for) not having refused (to do) this arrangement but I just didn’t think I could refuse. I was very naïve … (and) never did say, “no, I won’t do (it)”. I just felt (that) one didn’t do that…. I was obviously rather slow and naïve about all that. As a result, De Valois was able to use me considerably.

    When it got to the evening (of the premiere of Sleeping Beauty) The (old) Red Shoes film had been shown in New York (from) the year before (and) it was still running…. I … hadn’t tumbled to this by De Valois had. (Consequently) I was the only person in that company (Sadler’s Wells) that anybody in America knew. As a result (when) all the characters (in Sleeping Beauty) make the polonaise round the stage in procession – the minute Rassine and I came on stage there was cheering, banging and yelling and I could hardly do (hums melody) … my knees went to jelly and (as) we came around to the front of the stage, it just got louder and so one realized that this (is what it was because, again, you aren’t sure). At heart I was never sure. I thought some marvellousness had happened somewhere (else, and) which they were applauding (that) – but it (then) became clear (that, in fact) this was for us. I felt a) so embarrassed by it that I couldn’t wait to get off the stage (quickly enough) and, b) I thought, “oh my god I’ve really gone to jelly now. I don’t think I can dance at all”.

    De Valois didn’t allow me on stage again for the next 10 days of that season so I just had to sit around in New York and go and do my classwork and go out again. For 10 solid days I did not dance. Then she put me on in matinees as Aurora 10 days later. I think she thought, as they say in Scotland, “well, that’s settled her hash” which means “I made mincemeat of her anyway”. I’m being very straightforward about this …and I don’t hold it against De Valois. Perhaps, from her point of view it was a sensible, wise thing to do… but it was very rum to be on the receiving end of it. I think she thought that the matinee would go by absolutely unnoticed by anybody, but this is where America, I find, is wonderfully fair and interested and gives encouragement. All the critics bothered to come along. It really saved me because – the John Martins of this world … – because I did dance well. By that time I was so low (that) I thought I had nothing to lose at all. I went on – De Valois wasn’t in front …. nobody who mattered at all in the company was there. It was just a boring old matinee and I was on. There were all the critics and they gave me smashing reviews; they really did. It just gave me a marvellous lift to get going again. But even thinking about it still upsets me rather because I thought it was so unnecessary. She didn’t have to do that and it really crippled me forever more.

    (Harris asked what other roles she danced in North America in 1949)

    I never did Swan Lake. She (De Valois) just firmly said she didn’t like me in Swan Lake. I was the wrong colouring and I was too lightweight … so I was taken out of that; don’t know if I danced Giselle. I believe I may have done some matinees.

    Balanchine and Ballet Imperial (1950).

    De Valois (had a) policy of working with (rehearsing) only the first cast – the rest of us were left to pick up the scraps. So, when Balanchine came with Ballet Imperial he rehearsed only with the first casts which was Margot (Fonteyn), Michael (Somes) and Beryl (Grey). I was 2nd cast and Violetta (Elvin) was 3rd – we learned the choreography by listening to (attending) rehearsals (but (standing) at the back of the stage).

    (Then) Balanchine told De Valois (that) he wanted to rehearse 2nd and 3rd casts.

    I arrived terribly early in good practice clothes, clean and tidy. And we started. I had listened to him very much in the early rehearsals and I knew he wanted this strange “offness” to everything. Instead of being up and down on your legs, he wanted you to give the impression (that) you were falling all the time … you were at a diagonal.

    Shearer rehearsing Balanchine’s ballet, Ballet Imperial, at Covent Garden in 1950. Her partner is Michael Somes; at far right is Beryl Grey. Photographer unknown but possibly Roger Wood.

    It was fiendishly difficult …. I picked up the steps by watching Balanchine showing Margot. Didn’t go through it with anybody although my partner was watching too … I busted my gut for him at the first rehearsal  (and thought) (“well, I might break a leg but, here goes”). Mastered it and got pleasure from it.

    Balanchine (said) (to me), “Oh, my dear. You know I didn’t know you could dance like this because, you see, I saw The Red Shoes”. And to me it was the …… I could have kissed him. I wish I had now because I never had the opportunity again. But I was just so thrilled because I felt, how wonderful. Of course, he saw the failings in my dancing in the movie and it was so marvellous that one had the opportunity to, so to speak, show him that it wasn’t like that anymore and he saw and he understood and was so glad to bring so much more out of me through this ballet (Ballet Imperial). It was lovely….. Balanchine was a breath of fresh air from the outside (like Massine).

    De Valois.

    (Shearer attended De Valois’ 80th birthday party in 1976 at the Dorchester Hotel, London)

    I saw old friends but didn’t know how they would greet me. De Valois was not (had not been) exactly wild about me. Anyway, I waited my turn. As we were all going up to speak to her she seemed nonplussed …. “Oh! Moira” and embraced me.

    Then she said to her husband, “Arthur, look, your favourite, the only one you wanted to see!”

    …. But De Valois could be caring … she nursed me through the pain of an appendicitis between acts of Sleeping Beauty. So, she could be kind and motherly.

    Notes.

    The International Ballet.

    Shearer joined the International Ballet on May 19th, 1941 when she was just 15 years old and left on February 28th, 1942. De Valois was well aware of Shearer’s potential because she had been briefly a pupil of the Vic-Wells Ballet School in 1940 and even danced twice (in Coppelia) with the Vic-Wells Ballet on April 15th and 27th. De Valois may also have seen Shearer dance with The International Ballet when they performed in London.

    “De Valois wrote to my mother”.

    Shearer’s parents might have been living in London at that time. Mrs Shearer and her daughter left for Scotland when the Blitz began in September 1940. Shearer recalls she was a student at the Vic-Wells school for only 6 weeks.

    The Vic-Wells Ballet formally became the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in February 1941 although the transition was begun in 1939)

    Cecchetti vs the Russian Style.

    Ninette de Valois was the founder, director of the Vic-Wells Ballet (later the Sadler’s Wells Ballet), a choreographer and former dancer, Diaghilev-trained.

    Shearer admits to arrogance but would have made sure her changes would be minor and not affected others’ performance. Shearer’s attitude eventually led to her being increasingly sidelined; De Valois demanded conformity; Beryl Grey was seen as a “good” girl because, as she recalled, she was “terrified of Madame”, Shearer was the “bad” girl and was not afraid to confront her.

    The correspondent for magazine, The Tatler, wrote on October 19th, 1949, “Some in London fear that this adulation (poured on the Sadler’s Wells Ballet after their performances in New York) will turn the heads of such as Mesdames Margot Fonteyn and Moira Shearer. Not if Mme. Ninette de Valois knows it. The cool, little Anglo-Irishwoman, who has given her life to the creation of this superb corps de ballet and its works, has a sense of discipline that frightens even the most renowned of dancers. She treats the whole troupe as a mixed class of potentially disobedient children, nice children and clever children; but, just the same, children”.

    The Red Shoes and aftermath.

    Powell may have seen Moira Shearer in Giselle but, as she didn’t dance the lead until 1948, it is unlikely. In 1946 and 47 when he was pursuing her, she was dancing only as a Wili or as Zulme, their leader. She had danced as a Wili, which was essentially a corps role, since 1942. She first danced Zulme in 1944.

    Powell’s memory of first seeing Shearer was when she was dancing as a lover in “Miracle in the Gorbals” possibly in March, April or May 1946.

    “oh well, she’ll always be going off…”.

    Shearer is only speculating here based on her suspicion and insecurity. There is no record that De Valois expressed these opinions, although, obviously Shearer believed her capable of it.

    Sadlers Wells teaching.

    Ursula Moreton was assistant director of Sadler’s Wells from 1946 to 1952. Ailne (Babs) Phillips was a former Sadler’s Wells and International Ballet dancer and from 1942 on both taught and acted as an administrator at Sadler’s Wells. She became De Valois’ friend and confidant and helped her get the Turkish Ballet School up and running in the late 1940s.

    “I came from another company”, i.e. The International Ballet.

    “I was Russian trained”, i.e. by Nicholae and Mme Legat.

    The Royal School… Shearer means the Sadler’s Wells School, as she explains subsequently. The Royal School of Ballet was founded later.

    Sadler’s Wells Ballet.

    “the other people who pushed one through it”.

    This is probably a reference to learning the minor parts by watching other members of the corps.

    Beryl Grey joined Sadler’s Wells in August 1941 about 9 months before Shearer.

    Orpheus and Eurydice. The programmes show that Shearer danced both as a “spirit” and peasant on May 27th, 1942, and June 6th. De Valois might have been looking for someone to (occasionally) replace Brae and, in a small company like Sadler’s Wells, she would have needed to use any and all her dancers to full potential.

    Corps de Ballet. Shearer indicates that she danced in the corps for 4 years, i.e. until the company moved to Covent Garden in February 1946. In fact, while regularly taking on major roles like Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, she continued to dance in the corps throughout 1946.

    “the narrowness of the life”.

    Shearer here refers to the world ballet in general. It seems unsurprising that less gifted dancers would never advance beyond the corps. Shearer often lamented the strictures of life at Sadler’s Wells and found it difficult to find anyone who, like her, had wider interests.

    “They heard me being bawled out”, i.e. by De Valois.

    The Russian Style.

    Shearer’s first dance teacher in Northern Rhodesia was Cecchetti-trained.

    The Bluebird.

    The Bluebird is a pas de deux that is danced in Act 3 of Sleeping Beauty. It is about 2 ½ minutes long.

    Olga Spessivtseva was known to be shy, introverted and a fanatical perfectionist.

    “one or two of us …..”. Shearer refers to Beryl Grey, Pamela May, Violetta Elvin and herself; as far as the Bluebird was concerned Shearer had previously danced it several times with Alexis Rassine in the public “rehearsals” starting on August 8th, 1949, at Covent Garden.

    Rassine was of light build and barely taller than Shearer; John Hart was tall and more muscular but was dancing as one of the suitor princes in Sleeping Beauty in New York.

    “I didn’t think I could refuse”.

    Shearer was correct. She couldn’t because, as she stated earlier, that she both and accepted that De Valois wanted everybody to dance the first night. Shearer “did it for the team”. Shearer’s nerves were her problem, not De Valois’.

    Shearer disliked the The Red Shoes and thus made fun of it by inserting “old” into the name of the film. It opened at the Bijou movie theatre in New York in 1948.

    Newsreels of the premiere include footage of Fonteyn and Shearer leaving the stage at the end of the performance with huge bouquets. It appears that Hurok made sure that Shearer was recognized that night.

    “For 10 solid days I did not dance”.

    After 27 years (in 1976) Shearer’s recall isn’t always accurate. The programmes indicate that she danced in Symphonic Variations on October 12th and 13th, 1949 and the matinee that she refers to was on October 15th, 6 days after the opening night.

    From De Valois’ point of view, she had obligations to her prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn and to Pamela May who still outranked Shearer. Thus, May danced the second performance of Sleeping Beauty on October 11th. The third performance was on October 14th and was probably danced by Fonteyn; the fourth, on October 15th was probably again danced by May. There were a further 3 evening performances of Sleeping Beauty in New York, all danced by Fonteyn; the 2 remaining matinees were danced by Shearer.

    “there were all the critics ….”.

    John Martin wrote in the New York Times on October 20th, 1949 and compared Shearer’s interpretation of Aurora to Fonteyn’s. “It is an extremely youthful performance in spirit but danced with wonderful skill and precision… her interest is apparently more in total effect rather than in the relish of detail for its own sake, and what emerges is a completely winning characterization of a story-book heroine who is as much at home in the air as on the ground”.

    Beryl Grey danced in Swan Lake on October 22nd, as did Margot Fonteyn on November 1st. Grey was tall, athletic and dark; Fonteyn was smaller than Shearer but was also dark.

    This is no record of any performance of Giselle during the 1949 tour of North America.

    Balanchine and the Ballet Imperial.

    Robert Helpmann choreographed most of the ballet in The Red Shoes and most critics agreed that it was uninspiring at best.

  • Life in the Corps.

       When Moira Shearer transferred from the International Ballet to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in the spring of 1942, she was moving from a very small barebones company of 21 to 22 dancers to a considerably larger one, which according to the published programmes, had a complement of between 29 to 34. The International Ballet had a repertoire tailored both to the number of its dancers and to the physical constraints of many of its venues. Typical theatre stages in the towns and cities where they performed did not allow for production of full-length classical ballets with big casts. Rather the repertoire focused on production of excerpts of these ballets and on what might be called “divertissements”. Many of these were choreographed by the director of the company, Mona Inglesby.

       During the war The Sadler’s Wells Ballet was constrained in much the same way and their repertoire also included a large number of shorter, less complex ballets. Nonetheless, with a roster of around 30 dancers it was able to stage the classics like Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Coppelia and Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake).

       As a result, when Shearer joined the company, she was confronted with the challenge of learning parts in about 20 ballets almost all of which would have been new to her. It is little wonder that she spent the first 6 weeks doing nothing but learning and rehearsing. She did not dance in public until May of 1942.

       The ballets she learned probably began with Les Sylphides which was often used to open performances by Sadler’s Wells at that time. Her role in Sylphides was initially as a member of the corps of 16 dancers and she appeared in this relatively lowly capacity on many occasions. In September she graduated to dance a more demanding role with Beryl Grey and Pauline Clayden and in October she joined Margot Fonteyn and Celia Franca in the same role.

       On May 27th and, much to her surprise, Ninette de Valois, the director of Sadler’s Wells, assigned her the role of a peasant in a pas de deux in de Valois’ ballet, Orpheus and Eurydice. This was her first “solo”. She recalls that it was a major challenge for her and, while she received no feedback from de Valois on her performance, she danced the role several times. Her partner was probably John Hart.

       During her first 6 months Shearer danced in about 10 ballets in corps roles. These included The Prospect before Us, as a court lady, in Rendezvous as a “walker out”, in Lac des Cygnes as a swan and court lady and in Coppelia in the “dance of the hours”. This latter role she would have known well as she had danced it with Sadler’s Wells in April 1940 while she was a student at the Vic-Wells School.

       On November 24th Shearer danced her second “solo” as a serving maid in The Gods Go-A-Begging, a ballet choreographed by de Valois. While there is no record of this performance there are several photos of her in her simple “peasant” costume carrying a basket of lemons. The photos capture both elements of the choreography and Shearer’s obvious pleasure of dancing the part.

    Moira Shearer in her role of a serving made in The Gods Go A-Begging. Photo by Anthony.

    On November 26th Shearer danced as an attendant dove in “The Birds”; Beryl Grey took on the more difficult role of the nightingale and Alexis Rassine was the male lead. Shearer graduated to assume Grey’s role in February 1943.

       Shearer continued in her corps roles into 1943 and beyond. New roles emerged in February 1943 when she danced the mazurka in Coppelia and was one of a dozen wise virgins in de Valois’ ballet, “The Wise Virgins”.

    Shearer, third from left, dancing as a swan in Swan Lake on September 7th, 1943. Margot Fonteyn portrays Odette and Leslie Edwards is Benno. Photographer unknown.

    In a major break she danced the role of Pride in Fred Ashton’s new ballet, “Quest” which premiered on April 6th. This was the first role written for her. Dale Harris, in his 1976 interview of Shearer speculated that Ashton had chosen Shearer based on her “beauty”, as the role required it. Shearer did not respond to this assertion. She may have preferred to believe she was chosen based on her ability.

       Her performance in Quest generated her first press coverage. This appeared in the magazine, The Tatler, the trade journal, The Stage and in the daily newspaper, The Manchester Guardian. The Tatler praised her “exceptional grace and lightness of movements” and the Guardian for her “beautiful dancing”.

    Shearer in her role of Pride in Frederick Ashton’s ballet Quest in 1943. Photographer unknown.

    Thus, in her first year at Sadler’s Wells had progressed from being yet another swan in Swan Lake to a dancer who commanded the attention of the national press. Throughout 1943 and into 1944 she continued to dance in the corps as, in a small company, especially in wartime, this almost daily contribution was what was required. Shearer recalled that she danced in the corps for 4 years, a period that extended up until the company moving to Covent Garden. She added that she regretted not a moment of it.

    Sources.

    Dale Harris, transcript of interviews conducted 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 Manchester Guardian, July 8th, 1943.

    The Stage, April 8th and May 27th, 1943.

    The Tatler, March 24th, 1943.

    Notes.

    1. The repertoire at Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1942 and early 1943 consisted of 19 ballets. These included Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake), Sleeping Princess (Sleeping Beauty), Coppelia, The Birds, The Wanderer, Dante Sonata, The Prospect before Us, The Gods Go A-Begging, Rendezvous, Les Sylphides, Orpheus and Eurydice, Quest, Comus, The Wise Virgins, Giselle, Casse Noisette, Les Patineurs, Facade and Hamlet. A review of available programmes indicates that Shearer danced in the corps in most and the principal role in 3 of them.
    2. The major ballets would occupy an entire performance. Swan Lake lasted between 2 hours 45 minutes and 3 hours and had 2 intermissions. The shorter ballets or divertissements typically lasted between 20 to 30 minutes. Quest lasted about 45 minutes.
    3. The number of dancers varied by ballet. Swan Lake required almost the full company whereas Les Patineurs required only 15. The Birds and Les Sylphides required 20 dancers, Façade 23 and Comus 26.
    4. The available programmes record approximately 180 days on which Shearer danced; as she often danced in 2 if not 3 ballets on any given day, she probably gave at least 300 performances between May 1942 and May 1943.
    5. The signed photo of Shearer in The Gods Go A-Begging is by Anthony and might date to either 1942 or 1943. It comes from a collection of photos and programmes made by a ballerina at The Anglo-Polish Ballet. It has been slightly edited in Photoshop as the original cuts off her toe!
    6. Shearer’s signature on the photo by Anthony is one of the earliest known.

  • A Day in the Life of Moira Shearer. June 11th 1942.

       Moira Shearer had celebrated her 16th birthday in February 1942 while The International Ballet, for whom she then worked, were on the road in Sheffield in the north of England. Soon afterwards she left that company and, around the middle of March, joined The Sadler’s Wells Ballet that was based at the New Theatre on St. Martin’s Lane in London’s West End.

       Her first few weeks with Sadler’s Wells were probably spent in rehearsals. The repertoire then current included Les Sylphides, The Wanderer, Comus, The Wise Virgins, The Prospect before Us and Lac des Cygnes. She would have to learn parts in almost all of them.

       Shearer lived with her parents in a walk-up flat at Queens Gate in west London and commuted to and from work by bus or The Tube. She would begin the morning commute at around 9 am and would arrive at the theatre by 10. Mornings were devoted to practice and rehearsals. If there was to be a matinee, a dancer’s preparations for the performance began around I pm; if not, rehearsals extended into the afternoon. Dancers rarely had time to eat a formal lunch and thus grabbed a bite whenever they could. Their only substantial meal of the day would have to wait until they arrived home at around 11pm. Shearer’s mother would have hers waiting for her.

        Shearer recalls that she danced in “the waltz” during her first week at Sadler’s Wells. This probably refers to the performance on May 6th. The programme for this date acknowledges her dancing in Les Sylphides in the corps de ballet. Celia Franca, Beryl Grey and Margot Fonteyn danced the major roles in the mazurka. Shearer also appears as a “lady of the ballet” in The Prospect before Us on the same date.

       On Thursday June 11th, 1942, Shearer danced in 2 performances of Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake). The first was a matinee at 2.30 pm. As she was still in the corps de ballet her role in was a lowly one, as one of 6 “court ladies”. However, despite this, she was noted in the programm

    The programme for the matinee performance of The Sadler’s Wells Ballet at the New Theatre, London on June 11th, 1942.

    This particular performance of Swan Lake is significant as it was Beryl Grey’s first in the dual leading role of Odette and Odile. She was 15 years old and had joined SWB in 1941.

       Understandably she was considered a prodigy.

       The programme indicates that there were intervals between Acts 2 and 3 and between 3 and 4. Thus the performance probably lasted between 2 hours 45 minutes and 3 hours and ended at around 5.30 pm.

       This timing obviously allowed very little time before the beginning of the evening performance at 6 pm. This was particularly critical for dancers like Shearer who danced in both performances but in different roles requiring costume changes. Fortunately in Swan Lake she did appear until Act 2.

       In the evening performance Margot Fonteyn took over the lead role and Shearer danced as one of 14 swans.

    The programme for the evening performance of The Sadler’s Wells Ballet at the New Theatre, London on June 11th, 1942.

    The performance ended at around 9 pm allowing the audience, depending on where they lived, to return home in daylight and, thus, avoid the blackout restrictions in force. However, as Shearer had to take the time to remove makeup and change into her everyday clothes her journey home was probably in the dark.

  • Moira Shearer in Men Only.

    The May 1958 issue of the vaguely risqué British magazine, Men Only, included an article on Moira Shearer by the American writer, Sam Solon (S. L. Solon). The article was titled “Bewildered Beauty” and explored Shearer’s career as an actress.

    The cover of the May 1958 issue of Men Only. The artwork is by the Scottish illustrator, Robert Sherriffs.

    An edited and annotated version of the article appears below. Much of the biographical information is omitted because it is covered elsewhere in this blog.

       “The young woman who wept in the dressing room of London’s Princes Theatre was beautiful, famous, happily married, with two children, and bewildered. Moira Shearer had just announced that she was through with the theatre. “I don’t think I have any talent for it”, she told John Barber. “And coming from the tight little Covent Garden world I’ve always felt a bit of a stranger in the theatre. It seems silly after all this work”.

       This was the third time Moira appeared to abandon a course which seemed ready made for her…. she had quit the ballet after almost reaching its eminence. She had spurned films after showing she could act successfully in them, and now she was giving up the theatre. No wonder that those who like Moira and admire the delicate Bayeux tapestry-like quality of her art were appalled. Was it true that Moira, not yet 32 years old, had had her fill of a stage career?

       Well, it was announced the next morning that it wasn’t true….

       She gives the impression of uneasy wanderer in the jungle of the arts, as if she did not really believe in its creatures and their strange ways. The reason is perhaps that she is far “too-well-brought-up” to enjoy the noise, the passions, the glitter, and the noisome ballyhoo that are an inseparable part of show business. If Moira could act in some exquisite company of another age, performing masques and charades before kings and their ladies at Fontainebleau or St. Petersburg, she might avoid the plain vulgarity which invests the atmosphere of the “performing player”.

       Moira does not give the impression of greatness in her art as much as of fineness. There is meticulous craftsmanship and attentiveness to detail in her best ballet roles. The excitement of her unexpected beauty – and ballerinas are not as a rule beautiful- adds to a quality of other-worldliness. What is lacking is only felt in the long run- that is, a sense of total abandonment to her role which the greatest performers convey. Her capacity falls short of the tragic mood, and instead of the dying swan fading in an infinitude of sorrow, the viewer is suddenly aware of a tidy little girl worrying (it may be) about a hole in her tights.

       It is doubtful if she has contributed any lasting innovations to her chosen art. It came as a surprise when she suddenly – to her public- announced that she was leaving ballet for good. “I didn’t want to go on like Ulanova leaping about the stage until I was nearly fifty”. Not that anyone would find much wrong with that.

       She inveighed against the techniques used in film-making. “After six months of The Red Shoes method of filming, a dancer would have no technique left”.

       (She) went on to make two more films – The Tales of Hoffmann, which went nowhere in particular and did nothing much for Moira; and The Man who loved Redheads, which confirmed that she had a pleasant comic talent, a sense of timing and a lot to learn.

       Moira decided to learn the business of acting as seriously as she had studied dancing. She joined the Old Vic Company in Bristol and there in repertory went through an assortment of parts from I am a Camera to Major Barbara. It was harder work than dancing, and possibly drama critics are not as even-tempered as dance critics.

       When Man of Distinction opened in London with Moira playing opposite Anton Walbrook, the critics received it sternly. One said: “it is breathtaking in its lack of impact”. Another was even more succinct: “here is a play to avoid”. Most agree, however, that despite the feebleness of her part – not her fault – she looked like a promising actress. She needed more promising plays.

    Anton Walbrook as Hugo Mobius and Moira Shearer as Lia Compass in the play, Man of Distinction in 1957. While they portrayed lovers in the play as actors they did not get along well. Photographer unknown.

    The next year or two may see the settling down of Moira’s confused ambitions. She can become a considerable actress, but only if she chooses roles with care. In temperament and background she is more suited to the elegant comedies of Oscar Wilde than with the dramas of Ibsen. It would be a mistake if a few setbacks should discourage Moira from continuing her stage career. After all, how often is it that a single slender beauty embodies so much zest for performing, and so much authentic quality.

    Notes.

    The article seems to rely heavily on the reporting of John Barber, theatre critic for the newspaper, The Daily Express, who was actually present for Shearer’s announcement on October 28th 1957. Solon was not.

    “It seems silly after all this work”. Shearer was, in fact, correct. Despite all her best efforts, detailed by Solon in the article, she was not yet the actress she wished to be. She was, however, beautiful and famous and theatre impresarios lined up to take advantage of these qualities. She was, like many would-be actors before and after her, exploited. She was also paid, and, perhaps, paid well, for her efforts.

    “She had spurned films….”. This is inaccurate as the films obviously showed she was, up until that time, an unaccomplished actor.

    “Bayeux tapestry-like”. A mysterious analogy.

    “… it wasn’t true”. This is not case. Shearer quit the theatre on October 28th, 1957 on the night that the play in which she was appearing, “Man of Distinction”, folded after a three-week run at the Princes Theatre. Shearer did eventually return to acting but not until many months later.

    “an uneasy wanderer in the jungle of the arts”. Two critics who saw Shearer’s performance in “A Man of Distinction” praised it. One was John Barber, and the other was “RBM” (Raymond Bowler Marriott) who wrote for the trade journal, The Stage. Barber advised his readers to avoid the “desperately unfunny” play even though that would mean that they would miss Shearer’s “performance of twinkling enchantment”.

    Marriott wrote, “with her well-defined and amusing portrait of Lia (Compass) …. Moira Shearer shows that her apprenticeship to acting, first undertaken when she left the world of ballet, is bearing good results. Her performance has drive, variety and character. Her charm, which she uses with discretion, does much to make the evening enjoyable. One now feels that in the right part in a good play she could at last replace her ballet stardom with the other stardom she has worked so hard to achieve”.

    Solon writes as though he was familiar with ballet. While he was an American he may have been living in Britain at the time he wrote this article (in 1957 or 1958) and may have seen Shearer dance (up to 1953). He had been a writer for the London newspaper, The News Chronicle, during World War 2.

    “Not that anyone would find anything wrong with that”. Is Solon referring to Ulanova’s leaps or Shearer’s desire to quit ballet while she was still young?

    Making the Tales of Hoffmann gave Shearer a great deal of pleasure and, presumably, allowed her to continue to pay off her mortgage. While the film did not acquire the blockbuster status of The Red Shoes most critics considered it to be a success. Shearer’s brilliant dancing and mime were central to this success.

    I am a Camera was not produced under the aegis of the Bristol Old Vic; Major Barbara was. Camera with Shearer in the lead role was performed for 4 months in British provincial towns; it generated a great deal of critical press and was financially very successful. Major Barbara received almost no press. What little appeared was highly critical of Shearer’s performance.

    “the dramas of Ibsen”. After she completed her year in repertory at the Bristol Old Vic the company invited Shearer back as a “guest” to play Miss Julie in Strindberg’s play of the same name. However, it was not to be, as during rehearsals, both she and her leading man fell ill and the production was abandoned.

    ‘The next year or two……”. Solon’s hopes for a continuation of Moira Shearer’s were largely dashed. While she continued to appear occasionally on the stage and in films she gradually assumed a life of domesticity. When this article appeared in 1958 she had just settled into a large Georgian house in Amersham, Hertfordshire, caring for her husband and two daughters. By 1963 there were 4 children and the die was cast.

    Source.

    S. L. Solon, Men Only, May 1958

  • Michael Powell reminisces about “hooking” Moira Shearer for “The Red Shoes”.

    In 1987, while he was working in California, Powell wrote an article for the magazine, American Film. It was titled “Dance, Girl, Dance” and documented how, 40 years earlier, he persuaded Moira Shearer to appear in his film, “The Red Shoes”.

       The article is reproduced below with minor edits intended to add clarity to the text.

       “It is 1946. The Red Shoes are quivering with impatience in the wings. I am 41 years old and weigh 110 lbs. By now (J. Arthur Rank’s) Independent Producers are a power in the land…. Arthur Rank and John Davis, impressed by the half a dozen Academy Award nominations for Black Narcissus and by the success of A Matter of Life and Death, were anxiously waiting to know of our next subject – and what it would cost. They must have paled and looked at each other with a wild surmise when we answered them – “a film about ballet”.

       I can’t describe the plot better than Boris Lermontov does in the film.

       Lermontov: “the ballet of The Red Shoes is from a story by Hans Christian Anderson ….. oh! (by the way) in the end she dies”.

       On and around this beautiful tale Emeric (Pressburger) had spun a full-length screenplay for London Films in 1937 or 1938. I had read Emeric’s material. I said (to him), “I’ll do it if a dancer plays the part and if we create an original ballet of “The Red Shoes” instead of (just) talking about it”.

       There was a great deal of rewriting to be done. (In 1946) we figured on about four month’s preparation before we started shooting on location in France in June 1947. We allowed 4 weeks for that, to include a few pick-up shots in London, followed by the studio scenes of the principals, some of which would include the whole ballet company. Last of all came the ballet of “The Red Shoes” itself. This scheme worked out, more or less.

       We had to buy back Emeric’s script from Alex (Korda) ….. a score was commissioned and it was time to look for the girl.

       At this point fate, in the shape of Jimmy Granger, took me by the arm in the noisy Pinewood canteen. He had become a big star by now.

       (Granger said) “Mickey! You’re looking for a ballerina, aren’t you?”

       Jimmy always knew all the new girls as soon as they hit town, so I said, “Yes, Jimmy” and waited.

       (Granger) “Well, there’s a new girl at the (Sadler’s) Wells. She’s in Bobby Helpmann’s new ballet. Go see her. She’s got it, whatever it is”.

       The ballet was “Miracle in the Gorbals”. It was in the repertory already, and I would have to wait a week to see it. (In the meantime) I spoke to Bobby.

       (Helpmann) “Oh … Moira….. yes. You could do worse, I suppose. She’s very spectacular looking”.

       “Do you think she could do it?” I asked.

       (Helpmann) “Mmm …. she might … she’s coming up very quickly. She ought to be out there dancing leads, but you know Madame”.

       I said that I knew Miss (Ninette) de Valois.

       (Helpmann continued) “Yes, She believes in bringing them on slowly. There’s Margot (Fonteyn) too, you know. Ninette thinks the sun shines out of Margot’s little a..e. She wouldn’t want anyone to stand in her light, would she?”

       (Powell asked) “What sort of voice has this girl got?”

       Helpmann) “Well, she has a voice. She’s Scottish, you know”.

    Moira Shearer and Alexis Rassine in the dance of the lovers in the ballet, “Miracle in the Gorbals”, 1946. Photographer unknown.

    In due course I saw “Miracle in the Gorbals”. The girl was sensational. I asked that a meeting be arranged. A month went by – Miss Moira Shearer was at a class …. Miss Shearer was at a rehearsal … Miss Shearer was having costume fittings – then, finally she managed to fit me in between a hairdresser’s appointment and a performance.

       She was tall with the most glorious hair of Titian red that I had ever seen on a woman. And I’ve seen some. She had a cheeky face, well bred and full of spirit. She had a magnificent body. She wasn’t slim, but she didn’t have one ounce of superfluous flesh. Her eyes were blue. After a few minutes conversation I offered her the part. I would have offered it to her the moment we met but I didn’t want to seem frivolous. As it was, she looked startled.

       (Shearer) “Are you serious, Mr Powell?”

       (Powell) “Quite serious. The part is yours. We don’t start shooting until June next year. But, you understand, you have to prepare a long way ahead”.

       (Shearer commented) “You, too, I suppose”.

       Silence. Then.

       (Shearer) “What are you going to pay me, Mr Powell?”

       I grinned. She was Scottish, alright.

       (Powell) “Oh, a thousand pounds or so, and a retainer and expenses during the running up period”.

       (Shearer) “I see. I would have to get Miss de Valois’ permission, of course”

       (Powell) “Are you under contract to the Wells?”

       (Shearer) “We have no contracts”.

       (Powell) “Do you think she’ll be sticky about it?”

       (Shearer) “I beg your pardon, Mr Powell”.

       (Powell) “I mean, it cuts both ways, doesn’t it? No contract, I mean. She can hardly stop you from doing what you want to do, so long as you give her plenty of notice”.

       (Shearer) “The ballet is my career, not the cinema, Mr Powell. I must go now”

       A week later an agent rang up. He was not a very big agent, but I knew him. He said he represented Miss Moira Shearer. He understood that Powell and Pressburger had offered a leading part in a dance film entitled “The Red Shoes” to his client, at a proposed fee of £1000 plus a retainer and expenses. Miss Shearer would want a retainer of £1000 to be paid immediately, expenses to be agreed, and a fee of £5000 for a 12-week film, half of it to paid at the end of the first day’s shooting and the balance on the last day.

       To myself I nodded approval. She was Scottish alright. To the agent I said, “who did he think Moira Shearer was? Deborah Kerr?”

       At this point in their career the Archers (the Powell and Pressburger company) were tall in the saddle and pretty arrogant about it. They had recovered from the shock of the failure in “A Canterbury Tale” and were being courted by Sir Alex (Korda) who promised them the earth, moon and stars and a charge account at Claridges if they would only leave Rank for one picture and make for him a remake of “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. They seemed to have the world at their feet, or, at any rate, a ballerina’s feet, with “The Red Shoes” next on their list. But the gods smelled hubris and a thunderbolt struck. Moira’s agent wrote to say that she had changed her mind about doing the film.

       Bobby Helpmann was unsympathetic. “I told you so. The old girl has her dander up. She talks about gratitude and devotion, discipline. You won’t get Moira”.

       (Powell) “Why?”

       (Helpmann) “Because she’s scared”

       (Powell) “Of what?”

       (Helpmann) “Of losing her place in the running. Don’t be dumb. She’s out to take Margot’s place as prima ballerina assoluta”. She would not give that up for all the tea in China. Ninette has already promised Moira the lead in “Sleeping Beauty”.

       As soon as she made her decision Moira regretted it. At this point, when she was still hesitating, Emeric came to me. He looked more than usually mischievous. “Michael, we must find another girl for the part of Vicky”.

       (Powell) “I dare say, but what makes you think we’ll find another Moira”.

       (Pressburger) “Michael, have you heard the phrase “(use) a sprat to catch a mackerel”? It is in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations”.

       (Powell) “You mean a redheaded mackerel?”

       (Pressburger) “You go to America, you find another girl, you bring her back to England with lots of publicity to make a test for the part, and Bob’s your uncle”.

       (Powell) “Is that in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations too?”

       (Pressburger) “No, I learned it from Bill Wall. When I say, “Bob’s your uncle”, you say, “and Fanny is my aunt”.

       In America I met a lot of Russians all with ballerinas in tow. I met Sergei Denham. He found me a girl. I brought her back to England and we announced she was going to be tested for the leading role in “The Red Shoes” – and Fanny was my aunt: Moira changed her mind.

       To hell with Miss de Valois! She wanted to play and dance that part. So, is it any wonder that Emeric had such a seraphic smile?

       “Not a mackerel”, I said, “but a whale!”

       Emeric looked pained. “What a way to talk about a lady!”

    Notes.

    Caveat. While it is obvious that Powell had a prodigious memory it beggars belief that he could have remembered conversations from 40 years earlier in such detail.

    Emeric Pressburger was Powell’s partner and co-producer in the film company called The Archers.

    “… if a dancer plays the part”, of the female lead, Victoria Page

    London Films was owned by Sir Alexander Korda.

    In the finished film the choreography of “The Red Shoes” ballet was created jointly by Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine.

    “This scheme worked out, more or less”. There were eventually cost and schedule overruns. Powell attributed the former to having to keep 60 to 80 dancers on hand for the ballet scenes. Shearer was originally contracted for 3 months but her participation extended into early 1948. There is no record of Shearer’s contract being updated.

    The score for “The Red Shoes” ballet was written by Brian Easedale. He received an Oscar for it.

    Jimmy Granger was the British actor, Stewart Granger. He was born Jimmy Stewart but changed his name to Stewart Granger when he became an actor in the early 1940s. However, his old friends and acquaintances continued to call him “Jimmy”.

    Michael Powell was known as “Mickey” to his friends and acquaintances.

    Robert Helpmann was known as “Bobby” to his friends and acquaintances.

    “Madame” was the name everyone gave the director of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Ninette de Valois.

    “But you know Madame”. Was Powell a ballet-goer? Granger’s comment and Powell’s response suggests he was.

    Margot Fonteyn, was the prima ballerina at Sadler’s Wells.

    “What kind of voice has this girl got?” This questions seems to pertain the Powell’s intent of finding a dancer who could act.

    Shearer’s dance with Alexis Rassine as lovers in “The Miracle in the Gorbals” lasts only 90 seconds.

    “She was tall”. Shearer was 5’ 5 1/2”

    “Titian red”. Elsewhere Powell admitted to being attracted to red heads.

    “Her eyes were blue”. When asked what colour they were, Shearer’s daughter replied ,“blue grey”.

    “We don’t start shooting until June next year”. In Shearer’s case filming began, in Monte Carlo, on June 23rd, 1947

    “We have no contracts”. Other sources indicate that Sadler’s Wells dancers were under contact.

    “Do you thank she’ll be sticky about it?”. Powell’s recall omits that, given Shearer’s commitment to the Sadler’s Wells, any discussion with her would have involved Shearer being assured that filming not interfere with her dancing schedule at Covent Garden.

    “She can hardly stop you doing what you want to do ….”. Powell seems to arrogantly assume that Shearer would want to take up his offer. She would have undoubtedly bristled at this. This is clear in what she says next.

    £1000 versus £5000. The major discrepancy between Powell’s offer and the agent’s proposed fee is so great that it appears that either Powell or Shearer misjudged the situation. This is reinforced by Powell’s subsequent reference to Deborah Kerr who was one of the lead actresses in “Black Narcissus. Shearer would eventually be paid £5000 which probably represented the equivalent £2 million in 2026.

    “The old girl” refers to Ninette de Valois. Despite what Helpmann asserts, there is no record of de Valois having “threatened” Shearer. She didn’t need to, as Shearer knew the rules and played by them. Later, when she bemoaned the impact of “The Red Shoes” on her career at Sadler’s Wells, Shearer said, “(in 1947) I was just beginning to take on the big classical roles”.

    Helpmann’s memory is faulty as Shearer had danced as Aurora in “Sleeping Beauty” as early as 1946.

    “… the part of Vicky” refers to Victoria Page, the focus of the story of “The Red Shoes”.

    “…. find another Moira”. Powell later confessed that the film could not have been made without Shearer.

    Bill Wall was Powell and Pressburger’s chief electrician.

    Powell’s description of the denouement is altogether fanciful. In fact de Valois encouraged Shearer to accept the role and guaranteed her that she could return to Sadler’s Wells in the autumn of 1947. Shearer’s fears were also considerably mollified when she learned that both Massine and Helpmann had parts in the film.

    Source.

    Michael Powell, “Dance, Girl, Dance”, American Film, volume 12, number 5, 1987.

  • Keeping up with the overdraft.

    When asked by a reporter during one of her lecture tours of the U.S. in the 1980s why she took on such a long and exhausting schedule, Moira Shearer replied succinctly, “I have a terrible overdraft”.

       Needless to say, she was being euphemistic. One of her chroniclers at the time described the Kennedy family as being comfortably well off. Yet Shearer seemed to be aware both of the financial pressures on her and the importance of taking advantage of opportunities when these presented themselves.

       In 1948 the British newspaper, the Birmingham Post, in an article on “Ballet Dancing as a Profession” indicated that the minimum pay for a fulltime ballet dancer in London was £4 a week. The wages at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company probably exceeded that figure and perhaps even topped the London average of £7 a week. A fulltime dancer performed on average 8 times a week and the annual contact at Sadler’s Wells included a three-week paid holiday. All dancers, irrespective of sex or status, were allocated 2 pairs of point shoes a week. As they might well wear out at a single performance, shoes were carefully repaired by the dancers themselves. Like all other dancers Shearer learned to be frugal.

       By early 1950 the salary of members of the corps de ballet at Sadler’s Wells rose to between £6 to £8 and Margot Fonteyn as the prima ballerina earned £25 a week. Shearer, as one of the premiere danseuses, received between £12 to £15 a week.

       In 1947 Michael Powell, director of “The Red Shoes” offered Shearer the lead role in the film. The contract they negotiated was initially for 3 but was extended to approximately 5 months. Her salary was £5000 plus expenses. This represented a sum about 20 times greater than she would have earned at Sadler’s Wells over the same period.

    A portrait of Moira Shearer in 1947 at around the same time as when Michael Powell approached her about appearing in “The Red Shoes”. Photograph by Cecil Beaton for Vogue magazine.

    It is little wonder that she eventually agreed to these terms, although they were arrived at only after some tough negotiating by her agent. The agreement gave her financial independence and security of which other British ballet dancers could only dream.

    Sources.

    The Bath and Wiltshire Chronicle, “Ballerina’s Life without Glamour”, January 7th, 1950.

    The Birmingham Post, A Woman’s Notebook, “Ballet Dancing as Profession”, December 12th, 1948.

    David Thompson, The Independent, February 12th, 2006, “Film Studies: What made Moira a Star? Poise and charm? Suspicion and fear, actually”.

  • Jacques Fath and The Red Shoes

      At some time in the early summer of 1947 and before filming began on June 22nd, Michael Powell, director of the film “The Red Shoes”, convened a meeting at his house on Melbury Road, west London. Present were his co-director and producer, Emeric Pressburger, Anton Walbrook, the lead male actor, Moira Shearer, Hein Heckroth, the artistic director, and Jacques Fath, the French couturier. Fath was to design most, if not all of Shearer’s clothes for the film although the London designer, Jo Mattli, would produce many of them. Fath’s wife, a former haute couture model, was on hand to fit Shearer during filming in Monte Carlo.

       While there are a number of publicity images of this meeting there is no written record of it or of what discussions might have preceded or followed it. Thus, much of the following discussion of Fath’s role is based on speculation. Where it is employed, it is indicated as such.

       There is no record why Powell decided to hire Fath to create Shearer’s wardrobe for the film. However, Powell appears to have invested in him some of the responsibility for creating the romantic illusion that he was intent on achieving. Powell intended that the clothes will be used to reinforce the drama created by the actions of the actors and their dialogue. Exploring Shearer’s “costumes” worn in the film is therefor of some importance to an understanding of how Fath went about tackling the challenge with which Powell had presented him.

       Shearer wore about a dozen different sets of “street” clothes that Fath or Mattli designed or produced. Below is a description of each in the order in which they appear in the film.

       The first time we encounter Shearer is when she appears as a young socialite, Victoria Page. She is seated in a box with her aunt at the theatre where they watch the premiere of a new ballet. Victoria (or Vicky) is wearing a dark-coloured strapless evening gown, probably in silk and with considerable décolleté. In the next scene we meet her again in the same evening dress at a reception after the performance where she meets the impresario and ballet director, Boris Lermontov, played by Walbrook. Vicky moves effortlessly through the reception party acknowledging acquaintances as she does. Even though she is bullied by Lermontov to do something against her wishes she appears almost imperious and her flowing gown reinforces her status as the centre of attention.

    Victoria Page (Vicky, played by Moira Shearer) meets Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) for the first time at a cocktail party. She wears all full length evening gown designed by Jacques Fath. Photo derived from a screenshot. The director of photography for the film was Jack Cardiff.

    When she next appears, the stage and mood have changed entirely. Wearing a rather frumpy brown 2-piece suit and matching hat she tries to negotiate the melee of the market in Covent Garden. She is on her way to the Opera House where she is to meet Lermontov once again. In his choice of this very conservative clothing Fath seems to make a statement that she has cast off her aristocratic aura and has replaced it with one of a dancer who is about to enter the lowly ranks of the corps de ballet. Thus, in this same vein, she appears rather meekly at the stage door and awaits her turn to be admitted by the doorkeeper. Once inside she changes from street clothes to her practice outfit and becomes virtually indistinguishable from all the other dancers limbering up and practicing on stage.

    Vicky on her way to work on her first day at the Opera House at Covent Garden. She wears a 2-piece suit designed by Fath. Photo derived from a screenshot. The director of photography was Jack Cardiff.

    Subsequently on leaving Covent Garden for lunch one day Vicky runs into one of her society acquaintances sitting in his chauffeured 1936 black Rolls Royce. He indicates that he is waiting for Lermontov to join him for lunch. Surprised to see her and unaware of the new direction her life has taken, he breezily asks, “what are you doing here?”. Vicky wears a simple and elegant black coat that sets off her striking auburn hair. With this singular stroke Powell, aided by Fath, has momentarily transported her from the world of the mundane repetitions of the corps de ballet to her former status as a London socialite.

    Vicky meets an acquaintance by chance outside the stage door to the Opera House at Covent Garden. Her dark-coloured overcoat was designed by Fath. Photo derived from a screenshot. The director of photography was Jack Cardiff.

    While Lermontov has accepted Vicky into his company it is only in the lowest ranks. When the time comes for him to announce who among the corps will be travelling on tour to Paris and Monte Carlo, he gathers the female dancers to hear his decision. Powell creates a shot of Vicky waiting to hear if she has made the cut. Her face is filled with expectation and her summer dress announces she is ready to travel to sunnier climes. Fortunately, she is accepted. The dress she wears is a lightweight one-piece in a gay printed pattern. It will reappear several times while she is in Monte Carlo but only in publicity shots like the one of her asking the way of a local. Ironically, as Shearer was a true redhead and had very pale skin, her time in the sun was very limited. Powell did not want his female lead to show any evidence of a suntan.

    Vicky learns from Lermontov that she has been selected to go on tour on the Continent. Her printed dress was designed by Fath. Photo derived from a screenshot. The director of photography was Jack Cardiff.

    The company of the Ballet Lermontov crosses the Channel to open a tour of the Continent in Paris. Here Lermontov learns that his premiere danseuse, Boronskaya intends to marry and he summarily fires her. Once their stay in Paris is over the company boards a train for Monte Carlo and in one brief scene Vicky, wearing a dark dress with guipure lace trim at the neck, gazes from the window of her carriage to witness Lermontov’s frosty parting from Boronskaya. The lace trim is repeated in a band on Vicky’s head and her face is covered by a veil. The outfit seems altogether too formal for an arduous rail journey to the Mediterranean and it is unclear what impression Powell and Fath wish to convey. This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that on her arrival in Monte Carlo, when Vicky emerges from the lift on the plaza in front of the Opera House, she is wearing entirely different clothing. Her fitted blouse with the long sleeves has multiple coloured horizontal stripes in yellow, purple and pink on white and is worn over dark coloured stovepipe slacks. The message is clear. Her sleeves are rolled up and she is ready to go to work.

    Vicky arrives in Monte Carlo where the Lermontov Ballet will perform. Her cotton blouse and lightweight wool jacket were designed by Fath. Photo derived from a screen shot. The director of photography was Jack Cardiff.

    The use of slacks was one of the biggest innovations employed by Fath in the film. Slacks were extremely rarely seen in either Britain or France in 1947 and it would be another 10 or 15 years that they became fashionable even in films. However, they are symbolically put to considerable use in subsequent scenes.

       However, first comes the introduction of perhaps an even more iconic example of Vicky’s wardrobe. During rehearsals and much to Vicky’s surprise Lermontov puts her up in Monte Carlo’s most luxurious hotel, the Hotel de Paris. He assures her that she’ll be “very comfortable there”. There is clearly an intent in his choice. In a later scene Vicky is seen leaving the lobby wearing a sumptuous, turquoise-coloured multi-layered evening gown with a full-length cape and a tiara perched atop her striking hair. As she explains later, she was dressed to the nines as she was about to go out to dinner with friends. She cancels these plans when Lermontov suddenly summons her to a meeting in the Cap Ferrat villa in which he is staying. He sends his car for her and we see her get into it for the ride along the Corniche. Inexplicably the chauffeur drops her not at the main entrance but at the base of a long weed-strewn stone stairway that leads to the villa. Hitching up the hem of her heavy gown Vicky sets off up the hundred or more steps. She arrives at the top betraying not a trace of perspiration on her brow on the warm Mediterranean evening. This is perhaps the greatest of Powell’s flights of fancy in the entire film.  

    Vicky stands on the steps of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo prior to her meeting with Lermontov at his villa. Her silk gown and cape were designed by Fath. Photographer unknown.

    Fath’s gown is entirely out of character with anything else Vicky is called upon to wear but possibly symbolizes her transition from a lowly dancer labouring in the corps de ballet to the status of the star of the company. Powell has her left at the bottom of the stairway precisely so that he can record her ascent.

       In the meeting at the villa Lermontov announces to Vicky that he has chosen her to replace Boronskaya as the premiere danseuse in the company. As she will go to work the next morning he sends her home to bed.

       Instead of going to bed immediately as ordered, Vicky walks out to take in the view from a terrace below the Opera House that overlooks Monte Carlo. Here, by chance, she meets Julian Craster, the composer of the music for the ballet of “The Red Shoes”. Julian is casually dressed in a lightweight jacket over an open-necked sports shirt. Vicky wears a buttonless jacket with slightly padded shoulders over her striped blouse, slacks and white open-toed wedge shoes. As they part for the night it is clear that they are, at this time, still “just friends”. Their casual clothing seems to reflect their light-hearted conversation.

       Despite some early arguments between them over the tempo of the music Julian has created for the ballet, they eventually fall in love. Later we find them together in a hired horse-drawn “coche” that transports them slowly along a road beneath the pines on the seashore. The evening is warm and both wear casual, unself-conscious clothing. Julian wants to talk of love, but Vicky seems more intent on finding out from the driver where they are.

       When he hears of their love affair Lermontov reacts angrily and concocts a premise for firing Julian. Subsequently, in a scene set in the Monte Carlo Café, Grisha Ljubov, the company’s dance director, played by Leonide Massine, tries unsuccessfully to console the lovers. Later in the conversation, Sergei Ratov, the set designer and confidant of Lermontov mentions that Lermontov is leaving Monte Carlo by train the next morning. Vicky decides to go to the station to confront him.

       She is next seen waiting for Lermontov on the platform. She wears the same slacks she had worn earlier but, this time, with a bold, banded lightweight blouse. The combination seems to signal to Lermontov that she is here for a serious discussion. Politely but forcefully, she says to Lermontov, “I’d like to talk to you” and leads him to the waiting train. In their conversation Vicky makes it clear to Lermontov that if he fires Julian, as he has planned, she will quit his company. As it turns out, both held their ground. Vicky quit and moved to London to be with her husband.

    Vicky in the clothes she wore for her fateful meeting with Lermontov on Monte Carlo station. The cotton slacks and blouse were designed by Fath. Shoe designer unknown. Photographer unknown but possibly one working for Life Magazine.

    Nonetheless, the following year she returns to Monte Carlo, on holiday with her aunt. For the train journey there Vicky wears a dark green linen long-sleeved “jacket” over a full pleated skirt in green and white and an extravagant beige straw hat, a combination guaranteed to enchant any man but not, apparently, Lermontov. As the train pulls into Cannes station Vicky, much to her shock, sees him on the platform. He had learned of her impending return and has cynically engineered a meeting with her by waiting for her in Cannes. He boards the train and enters her carriage. After some initial banter, Lermontov earnestly tells Vicky that nobody else could dance the role in “The Red Shoes” but her. She listens intently and during the hour-long journey allows herself to be seduced. He obviously understands her passion for ballet and is able to persuade her to rejoin the company.

    Vicky catches a glimpse of Lermontov standing on the platform of Cannes station. She wears a dark green linen jacket designed by Fath. Photo derived from a screenshot. The director of photography was Jack Cardiff.

    This is last time we see her in formal clothes. When she subsequently returns to the Opera House to dance she exchanges them for a ballet costume and red pointe shoes. Vicky’s decision eventually leads to her death by suicide as she comes to the realisation that she is unable to reconcile her love for ballet with her love for her husband.

    Note.

    1. There is no record of whether Fath created clothing to specifically fit Moira Shearer’s diminutive frame or simply took items off the hanger and had a fitter modify them as needed. There is a photo of Fath taken in May 1947 depicting him showing an evening gown to a group in Paris. With the exception of trim absent at the hem, the gown appears identical to that worn by Vicky when we are first introduced to her in the theatre box and subsequently at a cocktail party. The material appears to be a dark coloured silk with white accents at the bodice.
    2. Once more there is no record of the material used in the suit Vicky wears to her first day at work at Covent Garden but it appears to be a pale brown lightweight wool. At her neck she wears a cream-coloured silk scarf and her matching pillbox hat is trimmed with stylized blossoms. Her face is veiled.
    3. The full-length gown and matching cape that Vicky wears to her meeting with Lermontov in his villa appears to be of silk.
    4. The balance of Vicky’s wardrobe appears to be primarily of cotton, linen, or lightweight wool.

  • The Making of a Ballerina

       Writing in the May 1948 issue of the magazine, “Sound”, under the title, “Ballerina; a study of Moira Shearer”, Jean Tucker, their dance critic, looked forward, perhaps a little apprehensively, to the projected September general release of the film, “The Red Shoes”. In it, Shearer played the part of a young dancer who was forced to choose between her love of her husband and her career in ballet. Tucker predicted the birth of a new “star”.

       However, Tucker wanted to remind her readers that Moira Shearer, dancer, had already been under the scrutiny of the ballet-going audience for many years. She outlined Shearer’s rapid progress through the ranks at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet starting in 1942. Characterising her roles as a swan in Swan Lake and as the leading Wili in Giselle, Tucker concluded that Shearer was “cool and remote and looked lovely”. However, Tucker continued, while she was “technically strong she never had … an obvious technical strength and force”. Yes, “she had superb poise, and a delicacy and precision” but this “at times bordered on irritating finickyness”.

       Tucker continued her outline of Shearer’s development as a dancer noting that she had gradually shed some of her more annoying “mannerisms” and had begun to assume a “stage personality”. She had grown from being a dancer and, in her interpretation of Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, had become a “ballerina”. Tucker expanded on what this status represented.

       “To the layman every dancer is a ballerina but actually it is a title earned only by a very few and after years of hard work, disappointment and success. A dancer may have technique or personality; style, histrionic or musical ability; she may be beautiful or have a perfectly proportioned figure; but unless she has all of these, plus the undefinable something which promises greatness, she will never be a ballerina. Even then success is largely dependent on opportunity. Moira Shearer has the main of these attributes. She has, of course, still much to learn and faults to correct. But she has earned the title ballerina while her promise remains unfulfilled”.

       Thus, in 1948, Shearer was still a work in progress. Shearer would have agreed with this assessment. Later in life, when lamenting her participation in “The Red Shoes” she said that in 1947 she was just beginning to take on the big, demanding roles at Sadlers Wells. She didn’t dance the lead in Giselle, for example, until July 13th, 1948.

       In a 1974 interview Shearer recalled what her success had required, starting with her year with The International Ballet.

       “I had been a professional dancer from the age of 15 – working a 52-week work year, shut up in rehearsal rooms and theatres until late at night. I would remove my makeup, go home in the tube and just fall into bed till I had to get up and start it all over again…. It was a highly technical and very physical life. And it had all been decided by other people. That’s what happens to dancers”. Those people included her mother, who launched her career by signing her up for her first dance lessons at the age of 6 or 7. Of her Shearer said, “my mother – very Scottish – gave me her version of love only when I achieved something. I literally had to earn my affection. I had to excel in everything. To have shown signs of laziness would have meant disgrace”.

       Among her subsequent mentors were Mona Inglesby, director of the International Ballet and Ninette de Valois, director of Sadler’s Wells. Both were strict taskmasters. Shearer rather ruefully concluded, “anyway, I was trained for nothing else (but dancing). And if you are successful at anything and are encouraged by approbation, (one) tends to continue”.

       Continue she did, through the ranks of Sadler’s Wells and by 1947 Shearer was second only to the company’s prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. However, that was to prove to be as far as she could expect to progress. As Shearer expressed to a reporter during the Sadler’s Wells tour of North America in 1949 each company had but one prima ballerina. She expected to remain in Fonteyn’s shadow.

    Moira Shearer dancing in The Red Shoes, 1948. A number of dance critics criticized her for her “spikey” fingers. Photographer unknown.

    Sources.

    Frank Entwistle, Sunday Express Magazine, 1974. “Things I wish I’d known at 18”.

    Dale Harris, transcript of interviews conducted with Moira Shearer in Edinburgh, August 29th, 1976, and August 31st and September 1st, 1978, New York City Library Archive, Lincoln Center, New York.

    Jean Tucker, Sound, May 1948.

  • Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy

       There follows a skeletal, fragmentary account of the life that Moira Shearer and Ludovic Kennedy spent together, primarily during their 56-year marriage. It is based on a 10-year search of the public record that includes newspaper/magazine articles and interviews of the subject by writers, critics and historians. In public Moira Shearer maintained her “stage name” throughout her life. In private, once the family moved to Scotland, she often became known as Mrs Ludovic Kennedy. Here she will be referred to as “Shearer”. Ludovic Kennedy is referred to as “Kennedy” and when they appear as a couple they are referred to as “the Kennedys”.

       This account is broken down into 3 periods. This first is 1949 to 1956, the latter date being when Kennedy began his professional career in television broadcasting; the second is 1956 to 1965, the latter date being when the Kennedys moved to Scotland; the third is 1965 to 2002 during which time they both gradually removed from the public limelight.

    1949 to 1956.

       Moira Shearer and Ludovic Kennedy met for the first time on February 2nd, 1949, at a costume ball held in at the Lyceum Ballroom, London to raise funds for the Vic-Wells Association, the organization that supported the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and the Old Vic Theatre. Shearer was on hand to hand out prizes for the best costumes. Kennedy had been given a ticket to the event at the last moment. At some point in the evening, he asked her for a dance. As he had seen the film “The Red Shoes”, he already knew who she was, thus this required some courage. She was the “star” of that film while he, at the time, was still a student at Oxford and working as a librarian at Ashridge College in Hertfordshire to fund his studies on Admiral Nelson.

       He subsequently invited her to dinner, setting in motion a very short courtship.  On May 14th, 1949, he proposed to her, while they were driving through Covent Garden, and she immediately accepted.

       Their engagement was announced in July while they were on holiday in a rented villa in Opio, near Grasse, in the south of France. The first published photo of them together was released to the press on August 17th. They are seen striding arm in arm through a west London street that was probably close to where she lived with her parents at an address on Melbury Road.

    Ludovic Kennedy and his fiance in London on August 17th, 1949 shortly after announcing their engagement. Photographer unknown, an AP stringer.

    On October 4th, 1949, Shearer joined the rest of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to fly from London to New York to begin their first tour of North America. They returned on December 13th. While his fiancé was away Kennedy had left his librarian’s position at Ashridge and moved in with his mother at Hampton Court. He was on hand to welcome Shearer home at on December 17th at London Airport.

       It was from her parents’ house that Shearer left by car for the chapel at Hampton Court where she was to be married on February 25th, 1950. After the ceremony the newlyweds flew to Paris where they caught an express train to Perpignan. From there they took a local train to Vernet les Bains in the Pyrenees, where they spent a 7-day honeymoon. When they returned to London Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy moved into the new house in Claborn Mews in Knightsbridge in west London. On March 7th Moira Shearer was back at work with the Sadler’s Wells at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. That night she danced roles in Les Sylphides, Façade and Symphonic Variations. Ludovic Kennedy went back to his writing in a study in the mews house.

       On June 16th the Kennedy were guests of Princess Margaret, the Queen’s younger sister, at Boughton House, Kettering in Northamptonshire. Princess Margaret was one of the major patrons of the Sadler’s Wells. Later in June they travelled north for a short holiday in the north of Scotland. Kennedy was an avid fisherman and his wife often accompanied him on trips to promising rivers. On their journey north they stopped in Dunfermline to visit her uncle, James Shearer.

       On July 1st, 1950, Shearer began 2 weeks work at Shepperton Studios outside London on her second film with the director Michael Powell. The film was “The Tales of Hoffmann”. During filming she and her husband took time out on July 10th to attend the opening of the New York City Ballet’s season at the Royal Opera House.

       On September 4th Shearer joined the other dancers of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet at London Airport for a charter flight to New York where on September 10th the company opened its second tour of North America. Her husband also flew to the US and using a car loaned to him by the Austin Motor Company closely followed the ballet company’s itinerary during the 6-week tour. Kennedy documented various events where he and Shearer were involved and included descriptions in his 1989 autobiography. He recounts, for example, that while in Los Angeles they met with the movie impresario Sam Goldwyn to discuss Shearer’s participation in a proposed film with Danny Kaye. They returned to the UK at the end of January although not together. Shearer flew home with the rest of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and Kennedy travelled from New York in the Queen Mary.

       On March 7th, 1951, Shearer developed appendicitis that required an operation and laid her up for 6 weeks. At some date during this period of recuperation the Kennedys returned to the villa at Opio for an extended holiday. In Cannes they met with the British film producer, Alexander Korda and, on his yacht sailed to Italy. They returned on June 13th and Shearer returned to work at Sadler’s Wells. A photo dated October 24th shows Kennedy on hand at Euston Station to see his wife leave for Blackpool where she would be dancing. From Blackpool the Sadler’s Wells continued to Glasgow for a week’s run so Kennedy was once again briefly a bachelor. At some date in 1951 he published his first book called “Nelson’s Band of Brothers”.

       An undated photo from November 1951shows the Kennedys leaving Claborn Mews for the last time. A limousine waits to take them to the station. They travelled by train to Southampton and a transatlantic liner that took them to New York. From New York they took the train to Chicago and Cheyenne, Wyoming where they rented a car and drove to Hollywood where Shearer was due to appear in the film with Danny Kaye. They arrived on December 7th. Filming would require several weeks and the Kennedys settled into a house rented from the British actor Brian Aherne in Santa Monica.

       Rehearsals began on December 10th. On December 20th Shearer withdrew from the film when she realised she was pregnant and the scheduling of her dancing would extend too far into her pregnancy for it to be safe. With her husband acting as her agent, she negotiated a role in another MGM film, “The Story of Three Loves”. Filming for this required only a month and was completed in late March 1952. The Kennedys then took a short holiday in British Columbia after which they returned to the UK. They arrived back at Southampton on May 2nd.

       Three weeks after their return, in early June, they moved into a new house in Hampstead, north London. Ailsa, their first child was born a few weeks later, on August 11th, 1952. Shearer was briefly back at work at Sadler’s Wells on December 12th and on December 22nd the whole family took a short holiday in Copenhagen.

       Moira Shearer quit her role of “guest artist” at Sadler’s Wells in April 1953 and briefly joined the Festival Ballet later in the year. In June the family took a month-long holiday in Sweden.

       In January 1954 Shearer travelled to Monte Carlo to appear with the Royal Ballet in Spectre de la Rose. Immediately afterwards she retired from the ballet.

       While living in Hampstead Kennedy began to research injustice in the British legal system and wrote a script for a play that dealt with one example of this that concerned the wrongful conviction of a young man. The play, titled “Murder Story” opened at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End on July 22nd. Both the Kennedys were on hand for the opening. Sadly, though it received some good reviews, the play only ran for 3 weeks.

       Early in summer Michael Benthall, director of the Old Vic Theatre invited Shearer to play Titania in his planned production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play was to open at the Edinburgh Festival on August 23rd and extend for 3 weeks. Immediately afterwards the company travelled to New York to open a 3-month tour of North America. Thus, Shearer was away from home for 4 months and her husband, aided by a live-in nanny, was charged with caring for Ailsa, who was 2 years old at the time.

       On February 2nd, 1955, Shearer began rehearsals at the New Theatre, Oxford for the play “I am a Camera”. The play had just completed an extended West End run with Dorothy Tutin acting in the lead role as Sally Bowles. Shearer was to take over her role for a tour of British provincial roles. It was to be her first primarily dramatic role. The play opened in Oxford on February 7th. John Barber, drama critic for the Daily Express wrote an enthusiastic review of Shearer’s performance and claimed he had witnessed “the birth of an actress”. Indeed, probably based primarily on Shearer’s participation, the play was a great success. She left the production in mid-May and briefly returned home. While Shearer was on the road Kennedy continued his research, writing and political activism from his base in Hampstead. The house was large enough for a live-in nanny with whom her shared care of Ailsa.

       At some point in the summer of 1955, probably in August, Shearer joined the repertory theatre company, the Bristol Old Vic and moved into digs in Bristol. As it was a repertory company with less than 20 actors, Shearer, like everyone else, acted in some capacity almost every day. Thus, there would have been little opportunity for her to travel to London to see her family. Kennedy continued to assume the major role for caring for their daughter. Shearer acted with the Bristol Old Vic until late July 1956 when she was 5 months pregnant. As her last role as Major Barbara was staged at the Old Vic Theatre in London, she was probably able to live at home during that production.

    1956 to 1965.

       Kennedy joined ITN (Independent Television News) as a newscaster at some date in 1956. This represented the moment when he would assume the role of major breadwinner for his family for the first time. His work required that he be present in the studio between 2 or 3 times a week. However, he had a relatively easy commute whether it was from Hampstead or Hampton Court where, for a time, the Kennedys lived in his mother’s 30 room apartment. As Kennedy related in his autobiography, they had grown tired of what he called the “social pressures” of living in Hampstead. By then they were both well-known faces and were on the hunt for a more private home. While they searched, they lived at Hampton Court.

     In late summer and autumn of 1956, during her pregnancy, Shearer had a light schedule. The Kennedys went on holiday in Scotland late August. Shearer was entertained with traditional Scottish dancing at Dalgatie Castle while her husband went fishing.

       Rachel, their second daughter was born in November 1956.

       On June 21st, 1957, the Kennedys were photographed at Rachel’s christening. With them was Margot Fonteyn who was Rachel’s godmother. At some date that summer they took another fishing trip, this time in northern Spain. The children were left with their nanny.

       The British impresario, Henry Sherek, persuaded Shearer to take the lead in a comedy called “Man of Distinction”. She began rehearsals in London on August 7th, and the play opened at the Edinburgh Festival a week later. The production went on the road in provincial towns and cities until mid-October 1957 and during this time Shearer lived in hotels or digs in those locations. On October 15th the play moved to the Prince’s Theatre in London’s West End and Shearer was able to live at home. During this London run the Kennedys moved into a large house in Amersham, Hertfordshire and Shearer daily commuted to work from there. The production was a flop, one critic writing that the only thing of distinction in it was Shearer’s presence. It folded after a 2-week run and on October 28th, 1957, Shearer announced she was quitting the stage. Thus, during his wife’s participation in the play Kennedy was one again primarily in charge of his daughters’ care. Given his commitments at ITN Kennedy was often absent from home for long hours on each of the days he was working.

       While working at ITN Kennedy met with the leader of the Liberal Party, Joe Grimmond, and decided to join political forces with him. As he couldn’t run for office while working at ITN, Grimmond suggested they wait for the ideal opportunity for him to enter politics. This arrived when the standing Conservative party candidate for the seat in Rochdale, Lancashire, died, thus triggering a by-election. Grimmond saw this is as an opportunity for the Liberals to challenge for the seat and he proposed Kennedy as his candidate to the local party committee in January 1958. On January 6th the Kennedys travelled to Rochdale to be vetted. Kennedy was duly approved and resigned from ITN. He almost immediately began his campaign. Initially he campaigned alone but was soon joined by his wife. It is likely they stayed in a hotel or digs for the entire month-long campaign. While he didn’t prevail in the election Kennedy recorded a respectable runner up to the Labour party candidate. During this campaign their 2 daughters were cared for by the nanny and housekeeper in Amersham.

    The Kennedys at Euston station in London, en route to Rochdale on January 6th, 1958. Photographer unknown, a Central Press stringer.

    In late February the Kennedys flew to the south of France for a holiday. It is not known if the children accompanied them. Ailsa was then 5 years old and Rachel just 2.

       Spring and summer 1958 were a relatively quiet period for the family, although Shearer made 2 brief stage appearances. In late August they went on another fishing trip, this time to Connemara in western Ireland. Shearer spent the autumn of 1958 primarily at home caring for her family while Kennedy, who had returned to work at ITN to host the news programme, This Week, also continued his writing and political activism.

    Ludovic Kennedy on the cover of the TV Times, July 25th, 1958. Photographer unknown.

    In January 1959 at The Old Vic Theatre in London Shearer was due to appear as a guest artist in the title role in the play, “Miss Julie”, but due to illness to both her and the leading man, the production was first postponed and eventually cancelled. Spring and summer were again spent primarily at home in Amersham but in late September Michael Powell asked Shearer at short notice to make a brief appearance in his film, Peeping Tom, that was filmed at Pinewood Studios. Filming required 2 weeks during which she may have lived with her mother-in-law in Hampton Court.

       At about the same time Kennedy again campaigned in Rochdale, this time during a general election. He lost to the Labour candidate once more and decided to quit active politics.

       In 1960 he joined the BBC News programme, Panorama and spent the next 3 years travelling the world to report on international political issues. As Shearer indicated in a 1961 interview, he was away from home for long periods. While at home Kennedy researched and wrote his book, “Ten Rillington Place” that concerned the miscarriage of justice in the case of Timothy Evans. The book was published in 1961.

       In June 1960 Shearer travelled to Paris to film the ballet, Cyrano, that was choreographed by Roland Petit and was part of a film called “Black Tights”. During filming Shearer stayed in an apartment in the city. The film was to be her last “public” appearance for many years.

       Early in March 1961 Shearer was told she was pregnant and her third daughter, Fiona, was born in Amersham Hospital in December. In February 1963 she gave birth to her 4th child, a son named Alastair and settled into a life of domesticity. Kennedy quit Panorama in 1963 but continued to be a presence in reporting of political issues in Britain. He was also still very much involved in researching and exposing failings in the justice system and wrote several books on the subject. The most important of these, published in 1964, was “The Trial of Stephen Ward”.

       In 1965, as Kennedy didn’t need to be constantly in striking distance of London the family moved from Amersham to a rented house in the Borders of Scotland.

    The Kennedy Family outside their “manse” in the borders of Scotland. The children are Fiona and Alastair. Radio Times, circa 1970. Photographer unknown.

    1965-2002.

       In December 1967 Shearer danced again in London, if only for a single performance. She joined the choreographer and dancer, Fred Ashton, to dance the tango from his ballet, Façade. The occasion was a charity performance for the Friends of Covent Garden.

       Early in 1970 the Kennedys travelled to New York and Chicago, ostensibly to promote his book on ex-patriot Americans, “Such Beautiful People”. While there they appeared together on the “Dick Cavett Show” and Shearer was interviewed for an article in the New York Times, titled “Moira Shearer as Wife and Mother”. At about this same time Shearer began to tour Britain speaking on the history of ballet. In 1973 the tours were extended to the US.

       On January 10th, 1973, while driving with 3 of the children, Shearer was involved in an accident in southern Scotland. At the time her husband was working in London and thus had to rush back to be with her. Fortunately, none of them was seriously injured and Shearer was discharged from an Edinburgh hospital after a 5-day stay. Rachel, then aged 19, was detained longer because she had to have splinters of glass removed from from her eyes. The accident appears not to have affected Shearer’s plans greatly as on March 7th she was lecturing in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin at the beginning of a 6-week lecture tour.

       Based on their mutual love of British literature and poetry the Shearers decided to “go on the road” to share these particular interests with audiences. This primarily involved appearing in theatres across the UK but also included cruises on the QE2. They set sail 3 times between 1975 and 1979. Their travels took them to New York, Capetown, Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong and Acapulco.

       In 1976 the Kennedys decided to downsize and bought a Georgian terrace house in an upscale part of Edinburgh. At the time neither Ailsa or Rachel was living at home and Fiona, aged 15 and Alastair, 13, were initially in boarding schools in Scotland. For a while Shearer’s mother who had been living elsewhere in Edinburgh, became too frail to live alone and thus, moved in with her daughter and son-in-law.

       In 1977 the pace of Shearer’s public life increased considerably as she appeared in “The Cherry Orchard” in an Edinburgh theatre, lectured, performed in a poetry reading with her husband and began writing book reviews for Channel 4 (TV). Kennedy continued his research on British Naval history and on legal injustice and his reports for the BBC News programme, “Tonight”, required occasional commutes to London between 1977 and 1979.

       In 1978 Shearer appeared in the play, “Hay Fever’ a production staged in Edinburgh, and set out on her 2nd US lecture tour.

       In 1979 Shearer became a presenter on Scottish Television (STV) of a programme called “Encore for the Arts” and in1982 worked as a news presenter on BBC Radio.

       From1980 to 1988 Kennedy hosted the BBC news programme, “Did You See..?” which reviewed the previous week’s TV programmes and again required his regular presence in the London studios. Remarkably he hosted it over 200 times over that span of time, being replaced on only on few occasions due to illness. While the programme was presented weekly there were breaks in the scheduling for 3 weeks at Christmas and for a more extended period in the summer.

       In 1985 Kennedys decided to leave Edinburgh and move to southern England. The weekly commute to London had begun to take its toll on him, they found social life in Edinburgh stultifying and all the children were by now independent.  After unsuccessfully searching for a house in London, they decided to move to a small Georgian house in Avebury, Wiltshire. The commute to London from nearby Swindon required about an hour.

    The Kennedys at home in Avebury, Wiltshire in May 1986. Photographer unknown.

    From 1986-89 Shearer wrote occasional book reviews for (BBC) Channel 4. In 1989 she accompanied her husband at Bafta awards in London where he was honoured for his service to journalism. Also, in 1989 Kennedy published his autobiography which he titled “On my way to the Club” and presented a BBC TV documentary on the World War 2 German battleship, Bismarck, that was based on his earlier book. He began to take an active role in a campaign for voluntary euthanasia. In 1995 he published a book titled “In Bed with an Elephant” that set out the case for Scottish independence.

       Shearer spent the 1990s largely enjoying her quiet life in the Wiltshire countryside but in1998 she began to write insightful book reviews for the newspaper, The Telegraph.

       In 1999 Kennedy published another book that explored his personal secularism; he titled it “Farewell to God”.

    Darby and Joan in the garden of their house in Avebury, Wiltshire circa 1990. Photograph by Denis Jones.

    In 2002, because they were unable to maintain what was a rather large house in Avebury, the Kennedys moved to an assisted living facility in Boars Hill, Oxford. Their last public appearance together was in 2003 when they attended the funeral in January of the Lib-Dem politician, Roy Jenkins.

    Notes.

    Data concerning “Did you see…?”, derived from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB, online)

    Shearer’s father, Harold King, died in 1962 and her mother, Margaret Crawford Reid Shearer in 1980.

    Sources.

    Aberdeen Evening Express, April 9th, 1952.

    Aberdeen Evening Express, August 23rd, 1956.

    Berwick Advertiser, March 16th, 1972.

    Daily Express, December 14th, 1949, The Ballet is Back.

    Daily Express, 23rd October 1957, Moving Time.

    Dale Harris; 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 Archive, Lincoln Center, New York.

    Dundee Courier, August 13th, 1952, “To Moira a Daughter”.

    Dundee Courier, December 21st, 1954.

    Dundee Evening Telegraph, June 20th, 1950, “Moira on Holiday”.

    Edinburgh Evening News, September 2nd, 1954, Ludovic Kennedy, Writer.

    Evening News, August 20th, 1957.

    Illustrated Evening News, October 13th, 1956.

    Kennedy, Ludovic, ‘On my way to the Club, an autobiography”, 1989, Collins, London.

    Picture Post, 28th March 1953, “Moira’s Baby”.

    Radio Times, December 3rd, 1970.

    Sketch, November 14th, 1949, “Ballerina and Groom to be”.

    The Stage, August 11th, 1954.

    The Stage, October 20th, 1955.

    The Stage, October 24th, 1957.

    The Stage, November 27th, 1958.

    Theatricalia, theatricalia.com/play/ (online).

    The Scotsman, January 10th, 1973.

    TV Times, July 25th, 1958, This Week.

    Woman’s Own (Collie Knox), March 11th, 1961, “Moira Shearer dances again”.

    Woman’s Weekly, September 13th, 1975, “Silver Wedding”.

    Yorkshire Post, December 22nd, 1952.

  • Dancing with CEMA and ENSA.

       On February 2nd, 1944, The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer reported that the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (SWB) were closing their London season at the New Theatre on February 5th and that on Monday, February 7th “they begin an Ensa tour …..Miss Margot Fonteyn and the rest of the company and orchestra, a total of some 70 people, will be going out with Ensa”.

       Strictly speaking this report is not accurate. The sponsoring body was not ENSA but the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA). ENSA was charged with bringing music and the arts to British military personnel during WW2 and immediately afterwards but primarily outside Britain. There is no record of SWB performing for the armed forces during this 1944 tour of the British provinces. The surviving programmes of venues on the tour credit CEMA. There is no mention of ENSA.

       CEMA provided financial support to SWB and other companies that allowed them to conduct tours outside London.

       The 1944 tour appears to have begun in Cambridge and continued to Derby, Hanley (Staffordshire), Bolton (Lancashire), Wimbledon, Newcastle and Hammersmith. The repertoire included A Rake’s Progress, Les Patineurs, Spectre de la Rose and Giselle.

       Moira Shearer danced a number of support roles in ballets like Giselle and Les Patineurs but on March 14th, in Bolton, took over from Margot Fonteyn the role of the young girl in Spectre de la Rose and, on May 18th in Hammersmith at age 18, danced the lead in Swan Lake for the first time. She was Odile to Pamela May’s Odette.

    The lead dancers of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet on their way to a rehearsal in Brussels in late January 1945. From left to right are Moira Shearer, Alexis Rassine, Margot Fonteyn, Gordon Hamilton, Pamela May, Margaret Dale and Eric Hyrst. All wear their ENSA uniforms. Photographer unknown.

    On January 18th, 1945, SWB travelled to Paris to begin an ENSA-funded tour of northern France, Belgium and Holland. The tour ended in Ostend on March 30th and included appearances in Paris, Brussels, Bruges and Ghent. The major venues were in Paris at the Theatre Marigny and the Theatre des Champs Elysees, where they performed for about a month and at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels (for 3 weeks).

    The first page of the programme for January 22nd, 1945 at the Theatre Marigny in Paris. As was often the case in wartime programmes the dancers in each ballet are not specified.

    The repertoire included Promenade, Miracle in the Gorbals, Dante, Façade, Sylphides, Hamlet and Les Patineurs. As the touring company was small Moira Shearer, as was true of all the dancers, performed in most if not all these ballets. A surviving snapshot shows her with Moyra Fraser preparing to go on stage in Brussels in Les Sylphides.

    Moyra Fraser, left and Moira Shearer prepare to go on stage. Photographer unknown.

  • Moira Shearer at Home.

       Moira Shearer had about a dozen homes in her lifetime; those in which she lived after 1950 she shared with her husband, Ludovic Kennedy and, after 1952 with their children. By the time, in 1985, Mr and Mrs Kennedy moved into their new home, “Rose Cottage” in Avebury, Wiltshire, they were “empty nesters”.

       There follows a review of those homes in chronological order.

    Morton Lodge, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland.

    1926-31

       In an interview in the Sunday Express Magazine, 1974, Moira Shearer said, “I was born in my maternal grandparent’s home in Dunfermline”. Her birth date was February 26th, 1926. She continues the interview with this assessment of her early childhood, “my mother’s family, though very well educated and artistic, was very, very Scottish – severe, critical, prejudiced, set in their views, and none of them liked children very much …..(I was) surrounded by very cold Scots and the feeling of repression was strong”. She spent the first five years of her life in that rather austere house. Shearer remembered that at one time she had a nanny who would dress her in clothes and hats she did not like and take her for walks.

    Morton Lodge, Dunfermline in 2025. The exterior of the house is as it would have been when Moira Shearer was born there in 1926. Photographer unknown.

    At the time of her birth Morton Lodge was primarily occupied by Shearer’s uncle, her mother’s older brother. It was a large, 4 bedroomed “villa”  that had a music room, an upstairs study and a large garden bordering the park. Her mother was an accomplished pianist and Shearer recalled enjoying the musical events that were held there.

       When she was older and immediately prior to World War 2 Shearer spent more time in Morton Lodge. She recalls wistfully that, “in my adolescence …. as an only child (I was) expected to behave as an adult”.

       Shearer’s father, Harold King, was a Londoner and practicing civil engineer. In the early 1930s he relocated to Northern Rhodesia, to assist in the establishment of the copper industry there. In 1931 he brought his wife and daughter to live in the small town of Ndola.

    Ndola, Northern Rhodesia.

    1931-34

       Shearer recalls, “when I was between 5 and 8 my mother and I went to Rhodesia to join him (her father). Life in a bush farmhouse … a locust plague…. some Saturday dancing classes from a rather good teacher who persuaded my mother I had talent”. While she had many memories of her daily life there, she confessed she remembered little of the dance classes and had to be reminded by photos.

       Ndola was just a dusty little outback town but had a newspaper and a reporter happened to be present when Shearer and the other pupils at Ethel Lacey’s dance school gave a performance. Somewhat prophetically he noted in Shearer’s dancing the qualities of a born dancer.

       In 1934 the King family returned to Britain and settled once more in Scotland.

    Bearsden or Glasgow.

    1934-36

       There is no record of where the King family lived in Scotland in this period but Shearer attended Bearsden Academy, northwest of Glasgow, where she received her only full-time formal education. As the school was not a boarding school the Kings must have lived nearby or, perhaps, in Glasgow.

    Queens Gate (number 3), South Kensington, west London.

    1936-39 (46)

       The record of where Shearer lived in London is incomplete. However, between 1936 and 1950 it is known she lived, first in Queens Gate in Kensington and later in Melbury Road, also in Kensington but further west. The move probably took place after the war. Because of the danger and uncertainty caused by the outbreak of war and by bombing of London, it is likely the family was forced to break up temporarily. Mr King worked for the Admiralty during the war and thus, might have been required to remain in London when his wife and daughter returned to Scotland.

       As, in 1936, Shearer’s mother had decided to promote her daughter’s dancing talent the King family moved into a flat in Queen’s Gate west London. Shearer was briefly enrolled in the Mayfair School of Dancing that was run by Flora Fairburn and subsequently in a school headed by Nicholae Legat.

       There is no record of this home in Queens Gate but it was without doubt one of the ubiquitous walk-ups in that relatively upscale area. It would have been one of a number of flats at the address and was therefore modest in size.  The address was well located for use of public transportation and Shearer would have commuted by bus or “tube” to Legat’s studio in Hammersmith. As she was so young was probably accompanied by her mother. The journey door to door would have required about 45 minutes.

       In September 1939 at the outbreak of war the Legat school closed and Mrs King and her daughter left London for Scotland. They returned a few months later during the “phony war”, early in 1940, as Shearer had been offered a place at the Vic-Wells school. It appears that the Kings continued to live at Queens Gate and in fact may have retained the flat throughout the war. However, when the “blitz” began in September 1940, Mrs King and Moira once again returned to Scotland. There is no record of where they lived although it may have been at Morton Lodge in Dunfermline.

       While Shearer was “on the road” dancing with the International Ballet throughout 1941 and in early 1942 she lived in digs in the provincial towns in which the company performed. However, there is no record where she lived in the breaks in the schedule and the summer holiday of 1941. London had to returned to some kind of normalcy after the Blitz and Battle of Britain, so it seems likely that the Kings continued to live there after 1941. Shearer joined the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in the spring of 1942. The company was based at the New Theatre in London’s West End and Shearer would have lived with her parents in west London and commuted to work by bus.

    13 Melbury Road, west London.

    1946-50

       An April 26th, 1946, edition of the magazine The Tatler ran a 2-page article on Moira Shearer. In one of the photos accompanying the article she is shown leaving for work at the bottom of the steps to her parent’s house in Melbury Road. The house was large and in a much quieter and more residential neighbourhood than Queens Gate. As it was so spacious it seems unlikely that the Kings occupied the entire house but records show that its conversion to flats did not take place until 1948.

    13 Melbury Road, Kensington in the 1960s. The exterior of the house had changed little from the time when the King family lived there in the 1940s. Photographer unknown.

    While the location was not quite as convenient for public transportation as was Queens Gate, Shearer still took the bus to work at Covent Garden. In October 1949 a local journalist, in a report titled “Moira Queues”, noted that she’d leave the house sometime after 9 am and walk to the bus stop to begin her commute.

       The house suddenly became the focus of public interest in February 1950. Mr King is shown leading his daughter down the steps and out of the imposing gate to an awaiting Packard limousine that was to drive them to Hampton Court where Moira was to marry Ludovic Kennedy.

       William Sumits, an American photographer working for Time-Life Magazine photographed Moira Shearer at home in 1949. In a series of photos, she is seen talking to her mother and in reading and answering fan mail some of it probably concerning The Red Shoes which had been released the previous year. The room in which she sits is remarkably sparse …. just a simple bed-settee, an armchair, a bookcase and a single graphic hung from the wall behind her. In one shot a pair of point shoes sits somewhat incongruously beside her, perhaps a “prop” requested by the photographer.

    Claborn Mews, Cadogan Square, west London.

    1950-51

       Prior to Shearer’s return from the Sadler’s Wells first tour of the United States and Canada in December 1949, her fiancé, Ludovic Kennedy was interviewed for a London newspaper. In the interview Kennedy noted that he had been “looking for place (for them) to live”.

       Kennedy and Shearer were married in February 1950 and in early May moved into a 4 room converted mews house in the very fashionable area of Knightsbridge, west London. It was relatively small but had a garage and seemed to meet their immediate needs. Kennedy, then a budding writer, had a study in which he could work. As Kennedy later remarked, in those days, his wife was the primary breadwinner.

       A photo that appeared in the popular press of the Kennedys relaxing at home shows an interior with walls lined with bookshelves.

       Another photo dated November 1951 shows them leaving this mews home for good. A Rolls Royce limousine waits to drive them to the train that will take them to Southampton and a transatlantic liner. They travelled to New York and, by train, onto to Hollywood where Shearer was to appear in a film.

       On their return from United States in the summer of 1952, they probably lived with Ludovic Kennedy’s mother in Hampton Court for a few weeks.

    Hampstead, north London.

    1952-56

       Only 3 weeks after returning from Hollywood and probably in early June, the Kennedys moved into a Queen Anne period rowhouse in Church Row, Hampstead. It had 10 rooms that included both a day and night nursery. Their first child, Ailsa, was born in August 1952, so the house needed a bedroom for a live-in nanny.

       As Ludovic Kennedy described it, the garden was the length of cricket pitch, had a huge apple, peach, plum and 2 pear trees. There are 2 very formally posed photos of Moira Shearer in this garden.

    Moira Shearer in the garden of the Kennedys’ house at Church Row, Hampstead circa 1955. Photographer was a stringer for the Daily Express which commisioned the photo.

    By Shearer’s account the house and the neighbourhood presented its problems. She complained that as it was a wealthy area there was considerable competition for the domestic help available. As it had 6 stories and as “the charwoman preferred easy one floor flats”, the Kennedys struggled to retain staff.  Moira had her professional commitments and could not manage the family and house alone. This is illustrated in the informal diary that Ludovic kept in April and May 1954 when Shearer was acting in the film, “The Man who loved Redheads” that was made at Shepperton Studios. He noted that on Sunday May 30th that his wife was up at 5 am to drive to the studios and didn’t return until late. Thus Ludovic, who was by then a newsreader on Independent Television News (ITV), assisted by the nanny, had to babysit his infant daughter for 10 days.

       Shearer was much in demand at this time. From August to November 1954, she was involved in The Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, first in the festival in Edinburgh, and subsequently on tour in the United States. While here is no record of this but Ludovic Kennedy probably continued to live in the Hampstead house where he helped the nanny care for his 2-year-old daughter.

       In the summer of 1955 Shearer joined the repertory company, the Bristol Old Vic and remained with them for the better part of a year. As it was a fulltime commitment Shearer must have lived in digs in Bristol. There is no record of this but, again, her husband must have assumed a major share of the care of their daughter. It seems likely that he and Ailsa continued to live in Hampstead. Shearer remained with the Bristol Old Vic until July of 1956 at which time she was again pregnant.

    Hampton Court.

    1956-57

       The Kennedys appear to have left the Hampstead house in early autumn 1956. They moved in with his mother at Hampton Court for a year while they looked for a house large enough to accommodate their growing family.

       In November, Rachel, their second child was born while they were living there.

       There is no surviving record that describes Mrs Kennedy’s home in Hampton Court but historical records indicate that apartments there were often very large. Mrs Kennedy’s was obviously spacious enough to entertain her son, daughter-in-law and their family.

    Amersham, Buckinghamshire.

    1957-65

       An October 22nd, 1957, newspaper article reports on the Kennedy family settling into their new Queen Anne house in Amersham, a small town in Buckinghamshire. It was a very large house and had an extensive walled garden with a lily pond.

       Shearer commented on the long-awaited move. “It’s maddening. It’s a different shaped house to our last, so we have to get all sorts of new furniture. And everything seems to have happened at once – the play opening, moving house, getting a new nanny, hoping for a new housekeeper! She’s coming this week allegedly, but I never believe such things until they happen”.

       The play she mentions was a comedy called “Man of Distinction” which, after an extended run in the provinces was about to open in London. She planned to commute to London each day and to return each evening. Thus, she was still trying to reconcile her career on the stage with her commitments to her husband and family.

       Fate was soon to intervene. The play was a flop and folded after 3 weeks. Shearer announced her retirement from the stage and settled into domestic life in their new house. She recalled, “Life was fantastically hectic when the children were young. I did have nannies at first and some were marvellous but either they were too expensive or couldn’t stay for one reason or another and temps were sometimes unsatisfactory. Finding a good permanent nanny proved so difficult I became utterly convinced I must bring the children up myself. Anyway this is what I wanted to do”.

       While in Amersham their third daughter, Fiona was born in the local hospital on December 21st, 1961. Alastair, their 4th child and only son was born in the same hospital on February 12th, 1963.

       Shearer’s return to family life at home was gradual. She supported her husband’s political ambitions by campaigning with him in Rochdale, Lancashire in 1958 and 1959. Later in 1959 the director, Michael Powell, somehow prevailed upon her to make a brief appearance in his film “Peeping Tom” and in 1960 she danced with Roland Petit in his ballet “Cyrano” that was part of a trilogy in the film, “Black Tights”. It was filmed in Paris and thus Shearer lived in an apartment there for several weeks.

       Subsequently, driven in part by her 2 pregnancies and the demands of her husband’s TV work, Shearer’s life became increasingly focused on her family. Ludovic was working for ITV from 1956 to 1958 and thus had to commute to their studios in London on the days he appeared. He was on a rotation with Robin Day and Chris Chataway so generally worked every third day. From 1960 to 1963 Kennedy appeared regularly on the BBC’s news programme Panorama. As Shearer noted in an interview she gave at Amersham in 1961, he was on the road a great deal such that she could count on him far less to babysit and, thus, she gradually faded from the public eye.

    Makerstoun, Roxburghshire, Scotland.

    1965-1976

       The “little Georgian manse” was in fact spacious and easily accommodated their rather large family. Only photos of the very plain exterior survive.

    The Kennedy family in the garden of their house at Makerstoun in 1970. The children are Fiona, aged 9 and Alastair aged 7. Photographer unknown. Published in the Radio Times on December 3rd.

    When the Kennedys moved from Amersham to Makerstoun in 1965, Ailsa was 13, Rachel was 8, Fiona was 4 and Alastair only 2 years old. As noted above Moira Shearer’s public life had shrunk considerably after completing Black Tights in 1960. She was now preoccupied with raising her family, getting them to and from school, organizing their social life and in keeping house and home. Her husband was less of a familiar face on the TV news programmes; rather he focused on writing and political activism and no longer needed to be in daily striking distance of London. He worked primarily from home. However, as Shearer noted, “now her husband is the family celebrity and breadwinner”.

       In an interview she gave in the late 1960s she reflected of the early days in Makerstoun. “As a housewife I was a complete novice. I hadn’t a clue how to cook the Sunday roast… how to make the gravy or bake a cake. At the same time, because I had achieved so much professionally I was quite ready to settle down to domesticity, it was new to me and gave me fresh interests”. “(As a dancer) I’d been living more by night than by day. Now I was getting up at dawn to feed a small baby”.

    Want Ad placed by Moira Shearer and published in a Caithness newspaper in 1967.

    Upper Dean Terrace, Edinburgh.

    1976-85

       The Kennedy’s Edinburgh home was a Georgian 4-bedroom townhouse in an upscale part of the city; it had both a front and rear garden and access to an adjacent park through which ran the stream called Water of the Leith. The house had 2 bathrooms, comfortably met the needs of its 4 permanent residents and still had room for guests.

       By the time the Kennedys moved to Edinburgh, two of their children had become independent. Ailsa had moved to London to study art and married in 1977. Rachel, after studying in Italy, was living and working in South Africa. The two younger children still lived at home, but both were attending boarding schools and thus were absent much of the year. Later both transferred to day schools and thus, then lived at home.

    Moira Shearer in her study at her home in Upper Dean Terrace, Edinburgh in April 1979. Photo by Chris Ridley for the Radio Times.

    Shearer continued to act in plays in Edinburgh occasionally, to lecture, sometimes with her husband, to travel and to work on television. These commitments combined with her responsibilities at home meant that she remained both very busy and firmly in the public eye.

    Avebury, Wiltshire.

    1985-2000

       In 1985 all four children were independent. Ailsa was 33, Rachel was 28, Fiona was 24 and Alastair 22 years old. Thus, the Kennedys decided to downsize and, in the process, move closer to their daughters living in England. They found a large cottage in Avebury in Wiltshire that, although it was quite isolated, was only a 20-minute drive to Swindon that was on a main rail line into London. Shopping was done in Marlborough, 7 miles away.

       There are no surviving details and only a single photo of the interior of the house that shows Ludovic Kennedy standing by Moira Shearer at her typewriter. The garden was extensive and was often used for photo shoots featuring perhaps Britain’s most famous Darby and Joan. The reporters continued to occasionally knock on their door.

    The Kennedys at home in Rose Cottage, Avebury, Wiltshire in May 1986. Photographer unknown.

       They settled into a life of writing and travel. Attached is a copy of letter written in Avebury from Moira Shearer to John Guest, one of her publishers and a longtime friend, in which she expresses her hope that she will be “really breaking into the writing world”. The reference to a book on Ninette de Valois suggests the letter was written in 1987 or 1988. Shearer wrote both books and book reviews in the 1990’s and when asked by what occupation she wanted to be listed in “Who’s Who”, she replied, “writer”.

    Second page of a letter from Moira Shearer to John Guest probably written in 1987 or 1988.

    The Kennedys remained in Avebury until they were no longer able to care for the house by themselves. They subsequently moved to an assisted living facility in Boars Hill, Oxford. This was to be Moira Shearer’s last home.

    Sources:

    Aberdeen Evening Express, July 5th, 1952

    Collie Knox, Woman’s Own, 1961; “Moira Shearer dances again”

    Daily Express, October 23rd, 1957, “Moving Time”

    Daily News, June 7th, 1954

    Evening News, June 30th, 1952, “Ideal Home”.

    Parker, Sarah, E., Grace and Favour: A Handbook of Who lived Where in Hampton Court Palace, 1750-1950, 2005

    Sunday Express Magazine, 1974, exact date not known.

    The Radio Times, December 3rd, 1970.

  • Leonard Boucher’s Diary.

       On January 16th, 1947, Moira Shearer made a presentation to 400 students of the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Arts (RADA) in London on the problems she experienced in dancing and acting in the film, The Red Shoes. Her presentation was reported in the Daily Express the following day, under the headline, “Making it was a mistake”. Shearer began with the complaint that “pictures on the hoardings made me look Jane Russell in black tights”. As the attached image suggests this would seem to be a justifiable criticism.

    The original poster for the UK release of The Red Shoes, 1948

    She continued by characterizing the depiction of the fictitious ballet company in the film as superficial and Michael Powell’s direction as chaotic. She said that she found the entire experience to be “miserable” and exhausting. She concluded by asking herself the question, why did I make the film? Her answer was, ‘perhaps I didn’t realise there would be so much to fight against’.

       By way of comparison to Shearer’s evaluation of her experiences it might be instructive to review some unusual behind-the-scenes insights into the production of The Red Shoes that are provided by Leonard Boucher in a diary he kept between June and September 1947. Boucher was a young dancer who danced in the early 40s in companies like the Anglo-Russian Ballet and International Ballet and was hired by Powell & Pressburger to dance in the corps de ballet to be used in performing the ballet sequences in the film. He was involved in the scenes that were filmed in England, primarily at the Pinewood Studios. Boucher kept an informal record of activities “on stage”. As he was primarily a dancer his commentary inevitably reflect this frame of reference.

       Filming of The Red Shoes began in Paris, on June 5th, 1947, at Jacques Fath’s studio and at the Gare de Lyon and then, later in the month moved to Monte Carlo. Powell & Pressburger and their production team arrived there around June 11th, and Moira Shearer and Leonide Massine arrived on June 22nd. Filming for Shearer began the next day. Once filming was completed in France, the film crew set up at Pinewood Studios just outside London in the second week of July.

       Boucher’s diary begins on July 9th. He notes, “8 o’clock class; Tcherina, Moira Shearer, Joan Harris, Helpmann and Massine”. He may not have seen Shearer dance before as he writes, “(she) is the nicest little thing I’ve seen since (Irina) Baranova… Helpmann is camp; Massine looks tired”. Boucher is obviously already focused on Shearer as he writes, “if Shearer is used well she should develop into a ‘big star’”.

       Reflecting Shearer’s comments to RADA, Boucher’s July 10th entry already expresses grave doubts about Michael Powell’s ability as a director.

       On July 19th, a Saturday, Boucher records that half the cast, including Mme. Rambert gathered at Pinewood to shoot the scenes that were to take place at the Mercury Theatre. Apart from Mme. Rambert, Shearer and Anton Walbrook were the major protagonists in these scenes so, although Boucher doesn’t mention them, they may have been present.

       The July 30th entry reads, “Pinewood for shooting “Heart of Fire” .. the star of this film is Michael Powell”.

       On July 31st filming at the Pinewood studio represented the stage at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Boucher writes, ‘the action is Tcherina’s late arrival for rehearsal … Massine’s wrath, remarks from Robert Helpmann and another leg display … rather like a male Dietrich! And then some words to Shearer (by Massine)…. Most of us (including all the principals) merely stand around in groups’.

    Shearer, Helpmann and Massine at Pinewood Studios in a break from filming. Photo by William Sumits, 1947.

    Boucher’s August 1st entry reads, ‘does Robert Helpmann have the artistry and creative power of (Hein) Heckroth? I fear not’.

       On August 2nd Boucher continues his criticism of Helpmann. Comparing him to the brooding, aloof yet fascinating Walbrook, Boucher writes ‘one sees Robert Helpmann at a glance – typically theatrical in the non-artistic sense – in comparison’.

       The entry for August 5th opens with, ‘Pinewood for 9. Talk with Moira who is very sweet and charming. She told me that (for her) the film began with her “death” and how terrified she was when the train advanced on her!!’

       On August 6th Boucher writes, ‘Leonard Massine tends to overact and Robert Helpmann is too effeminate!’

       Boucher is obviously enchanted by Shearer and writes, ‘Moira Shearer appears to be an extremely promising actress with a beautifully soft, gentle and attractive voice’. He concludes by saying, ‘Not too soon to say Hollywood’.

       On August 7th Boucher continues his attack on Helpmann. He writes, ‘Rehearse Red Shoes Ballet – once more much of it altered but not for improvement. I am now forced to keep my first impression of Helpmann. Selfish, full of self-importance, poor choreographer and ham artist – to say nothing of effeminate! Massine and Helpmann do not get on well together’.

       On August 20th, rehearsals for the ‘Dance of Exhaustion’ were at the Stoll Theatre in London’s West End. Shearer was the centrepiece and Boucher notes, ‘Moira is the one who suffers in this’.

       August 22nd. ‘Rehearse the first part of “Monsters”….. Moira is working wonderfully well. Helpmann’s choreography is very limited’.

       Boucher writes that Moira Shearer was absent from August 28th to September 8th because she developed an abscess in her side. Rehearsals continue without her although Boucher notes that he thinks her absence has impacted the schedule.

       The September 5th entry indicates that, in Shearer’s absence Massine is forced to work with her understudies.

       September 9th, Boucher notes Massine and Shearer resume work together at Pinewood.

       September 12th. ‘After lunch Moira and Massine do their pieces. Moira dances beautifully. Massine is quite grotesque as the shoemaker’.

       September 19th. ‘Pinewood for 9. Clowns …. Moira dances beautifully…. Expect Red Shoes to finish at the end of next week’.

       September 22nd, ‘Pinewood for 9…. Dance of Exhaustion. Moira very bruised and tired.’

    Shearer, Massine and Helpmann rehearse the “dance of exhaustion” on the sound stage at Pinewood, 1947. Photographer unknown.

    September 24th, ‘Finish Dance of Exhaustion…. Moira by now is made to look tattered and worn. How wonderful she is. No one would work so hard with such excellent results and so little complaint. In fact, in spite of all, I’ve never seen or heard her complain of anything.’

       September 25th, ‘The end of The Red Shoes Ballet for us but not for Moira who goes on and on. Poor dear, very tired but still dancing excellently.’ This entry is the last.

    Notes:

    In the diary entry for July 9th, Boucher makes reference to Irina Baranova who danced with Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo when the company appeared a number of times in London in the 1930s. Boucher had direct contact with her in 1946 when they appeared together in Leonide Massine’s production of the play/ballet called “Bullet in the Ballet”.

    Boucher notes that Massine looked tired. In 1947 Massine was 51 years old and had just completed a season at Sadler’s Wells where he danced with Danilova, Shearer and Beryl Grey.

    Joan Harris, a ballerina trained by de Valois, acted as Shearer’s stand-in during production of The Red Shoes. For the week in early September when Shearer was confined to hospital due to an injury, Harris was kept very busy.

    The exterior scenes of the Mercury Theatre were filmed there. Boucher’s comments for July 19th indicate that the sound stage at Pinewood was used to represent the interior of the theatre and stage. Because of the demands of the Technicolor camera filming of the onstage performance by Shearer would have been impossible in the actual theatre. The same was true of scenes in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

    The July 31st entry describes the scene where Victoria (Vicky) Page, played by Moira Shearer, arrives on stage for her first rehearsal. She is confronted by the ballet master, Grischa Ljobov, played by Leonide Massine, who tells her to go to stand at the edge of the stage while he deals with the prima ballerina, Irina Boronskaya, played by Ludmilla Tcherina, and Ivan Boleslawsky, played by Robert Helpmann.

    Hein Heckroth was the production designer for the entire film. He won an Oscar for his work.

    The August 5th entry refers to Shearer’s first day of work in Monte Carlo when she was filmed jumping from the balcony to her death. The scene where she was, apparently, struck by the train, was omitted from the final print. Instead, we see her on-stage husband, Julian, played by Marius Goring, running down the platform toward her inert body lying on the tracks. There a doctor tells him that there is nothing that can be done for her.

    August 7th. Helpmann was responsible for the overall choreography and Massine for the scene in the shoemaker’s shop.

    The August 20th entry focuses on the ‘Dance of Exhaustion’ in which Shearer portrays a young woman who dances to her death because she is in the grasp of the red shoes. However, much she tries, she cannot take them off.

    Boucher makes reference to the Stoll Theatre being used for rehearsals, but there is no record of any filming taking place there. The theatre may have been more convenient for the 50+ corps de ballet dancers than Pinewood which required a difficult and time-consuming journey.

    The August 22nd entry references the powerful scenes in which Shearer dances amid a large group of “monsters” from whom she is attempting to escape. As a member of the male corps de ballet it is likely that Boucher danced as one of these bizarrely clad ogres.

    The September 19th entry makes reference to completing the Red Shoes Ballet at the “end of next week” and, in fact, Boucher’s work is completed on September 25th. Shearer continued to work with Massine and Helpmann for another month.

    The September 22nd entry again refers to Shearer’s dance when the red shoes, which she cannot remove, cause her to dance to the point of exhaustion and, eventually death. Before she dies, she asks her lover, played by Helpmann, to remove them. As this occurs in a ballet, her request is communicated in mime. Her lover removes the shoes, returns them to the shoemaker, lifts her up in his arms and carries her away.

    In the final analysis Boucher’s comments represent the opinions of a young dancer appearing in his first film. Emeric Pressburger, the co-director and author of the script of The Red Shoes, on reading Shearer’s comments made by her at RADA said, ‘Miss Shearer has the right to criticize, like anyone else’ but adding that she knew nothing of film-making. As she was a 23 year-old dancer and ingenue actress, Pressburger’s comments would be seem to be a fair appraisal. The same might be said of Boucher’s commentary.

    Sources.

    Daily Express, January 17th, 1949, ‘Red Shoes’ Star kicks out at her Film’.

    freepages.rootsweb.com/-lind/genealogy/people

  • Shake hands with Moira Shearer.

    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.

    Minneapolis Courier Journal, March 23rd, 1973

    Minneapolis Star-Tribune, March 29th, 1973

    Newark Advocate, March 13th, 1973

  • Moira Shearer sits for a portrait.

    (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.

  • A Soldier’s Tale.

       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.

    Sources.

    The Stage, September 30th , 1954.

  • And now for a word from our sponsors.

       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 reflects.

    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

  • Moira King Dances

       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.

  • The Ballerina and her Critics

       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.

    The Times, March 21st, 1950.

    Audrey Williamson, The Tribune, April 14th, 1950.

  • Moira Shearer in colour

       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.