We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
86
Marion Morgan dancers in the prologue to "Manhattan
Cocktail."
Wken tke
Special training is required by players to perform dance where they go for such coaching, together with hundreds
ballets in the
A. L
When this night class should finally be dismissed, it would seem that Ernest Belcher never would want to see a dancer
Colleen Moore was coached by Ernest Belcher for her dances in "Twinkletoes."
Georgia Graves, once a Belcher student, now dances in Paris.
A ROOMFUL of legs, arms, and perspiring bodies — tired blondes — weary brunettes— a battered piano hammering — "Oh, for a breath of fresh air!" — "But it's only a quarter to nine — -fifteen minutes yet" — "Come on! Once more!" — Thumpf da-thump ! thump-t' da-thump ! — "Stop that twinkling your fingers over there ! This is a dance, not a piano lesson" — Thumpt' da-thump ! thump-t' dathump! thump-t; 'dathump ! — "Heavens, will it never cease?" — "Now everybody with the castanets !"
For an hour and a half the class had been taking its ballet lesson from Ernest Belcher, the dance director of movieland. The girls had been coming and going since nine a. m. — twelve hours, and the maestro was tired. At eight o'clock next morning Colleen Moore was to be tutored for the dance she would do in "Synthetic Sin."
I had stopped at his school in Los Angeles to watch him working with his raw recruits, and later with his maturing pupils. I knew that to him had come, from time to time, Marie Prevost, Phyllis Haver, Laura La Plante, Marian Nixon, Lois Moran, Kathryn McGuire, Louise Fazenda, Gertrude Olmsted, Edna Murphy, and many others of movie fame. I knew that he had taught Pola Negri her steps for a picture ; that he had tutored Colleen Moore for her role in "Twinkletoes," and trained May McAvoy for "The Jazz Singer," with Al Jolson. I knew that he had schooled Lina Basquette, his stepdaughter, until she was competent to dance in the "Follies." I knew, furthermore, that he had supplied ballet girls in droves for all manner of stage and movie presentations.
Where did he get them ?
Ernest Belcher had been a celebrated dancer in Paris, London, and Berlin before he came to America, at the outbreak of the war. Fortyseven years old now, he looks not older than thirty, and is more supple and agile than fifty per cent of the girls in their teens who come to him for training. Since 1922, when he established his school, more than five thousand girls and women ranging from four to fifty years, together with a goodly number of young men,