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24
SCREENLAND
SINCE Ruby Keeler broke the ice and blazed the tap-trail in "42nd Street" three years ago — no mean feat ; try it yourself sometime — other dancers have been cashing in on Ruby's line. Ginger Rogers, Eleanor Powell. Eleanor Whitney. Others, too. How did the first, original tap-dancer of them all feel about this invasion ? Was she hurt, resentful ? I wanted to know.
I found her in a little dressing-room off the "Colleen" set, where she retired between scenes because her velvet skirt had to be adjusted when she sat down so it would not wrinkle. She had on a perfectly respectable slip underneath, but the little Keeler does not like to have her slip show in public, even the small public of a picture set.
When she was asked about the other tap-dancers, she sighed clear down to the cellar and looked at me helplessly, as if to say, "So it's come to that, has it?" What she really said was "Oh dear, I do hope they are not trying to start a rivalry between us ! It would be so difficult and I couldn't live up to it. I don't feel that way.
"Eleanor Powell is so far superior to me as a dancer that it's even silly to mention my name in the same breath, and I have a great admiration for Ginger Rogers.
"In this picture we are now working on, we are so lucky to have Paul Draper, who was so marvellous in 'Thumbs Up' and other New York shows. He is a grand dancer. Paul and I are not trying to out-do or copy anyone. We are just doing the best we can. If it turns out to be good, it's all due to him. He is figuring out the routines, with Bobby Connolly, and teaching me the steps. I just hope I won't hurt him by being his partner !"
She said it very earnestly with a look of real concern on her sensitive face, nothing mock-modest or put-on about it. Such modesty, and genuine modesty, is the rarest thing to find in this town.
"You see," Ruby went on with that grave little-girl air, so charming, "I have never worked with anyone before, any partner, and neither has Paul. An awful lot depends on it. When I was first dancing in pictures, in '42nd Street,' the big thing then was the chorus — the geometrical formations, the girls sliding into pools, the whole background. I never was allowed to do more than eight bars at a time — that's just a few steps — and I didn't have to study at all, for that. The idea was that the camera couldn't hold on any one person for a longer time or the audience would tire of them. So the principals became almost the background, the chorus was the