Slim Tinsel Goes Dancing

Slim Tinsel enjoys many things about the holidays, but chief among them is this: Vera-Ellen’s waist in White Christmas. Hypnotic. We can’t look away.

Vera-Ellen¹ gets lost in the golden age of Hollywood musicals of the 40s and 50s, but she could match dance steps with anyone in any style. Frail and sick as a child, she started dancing to regain her health. She has no problem keeping up with Gene Kelly in On the Town (1949), where she appears graceful and fit, but in White Christmas (1954), her waist has shrunk to 17 inches or so.  Ellen gets to shine in several solo dance numbers as only Danny Kaye and the sublime yet criminally unknown Johnny Brascia can even remotely prove a worthy partner to her. Watching poor Rosemary Clooney trying to execute even the simplest of steps with Ellen, a vague look of terror on her face, gives the movie even more entertainment value.

And speaking of entertainment value, let us digress to note the weirdness quotient of White Christmas being through the roof. While the age difference between love interests Rosemary Clooney (26) and Bing Crosby (51) was nothing new in a Hollywood movie, the fact they often appear to be roughly the same age can prove unnerving. And speaking of love interests, the cross-dressing of Crosby and Danny Kaye grows more amusing with each passing year.² Fun to know they could now land in jail in several states for putting on a drag show.

And then we arrive at the crown jewel, the dance number “Choreography.” Dressed as beatniks, the troupe (including Kaye) decry the fact that no one is dancing in theater, “They’re doin’ choreography.” An obvious dis to Modern Dance as embodied in Martha Graham, the number is such an inside joke placed in the middle of a big-budget holiday musical that it warrants nothing but admiration.³

We always feel for performers like Vera-Ellen. Born at the right moment to make use of her transcendent dancing, she was born at the wrong moment to achieve greater acclaim among an abundance of transcendent dancing in movie musicals of her era. Haunted by anorexia and crippling arthritis (common among dancers), Vera-Ellen also lost a child to SIDS and died early at age 60.

Even with social media tracking a celebrity’s every move and utterance, Slim Tinsel believes we still want to think of those performers we admire existing within the confines of the frame, the edges of the screen, the measures of the song. In that world, Vera-Ellen is forever spinning in perfect rhythm, the cadences of her tragic life not even an echo to us now. We wonder if she would embrace that as a gift or a curse.

1. For those strange readers that seem to enjoy proofreading The Rant, Vera-Ellen always hyphenated her name. So settle down. You’re causing low self-esteem among our fact-checking department. Notice all the hyphens we used there? The Rant is way ahead of you, Strunk and White fanboys.
2. Go thee to the intertubes if you are confused. Really, must we do everything?
3. Not worthy of admiration is the insistence of the movie to recycle tropes and songs from its sister movie, Holiday Inn. That movie (1942), starring Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and Marjorie Reynolds, introduced the song “White Christmas” and the inn was remodeled for the movie. Holiday Inn contains the most disgusting use of blackface every put on film. In the song “Abraham,” Crosby appears in blackface as Abraham Lincoln. If you have the courage, watch the disaster for yourself (Marjorie Reynolds may require long hours of therapy). Knowing times had changed (possibly), “Abraham” only makes an appearance as a high octane instrumental for a Vera-Ellen tap dance sequence. But the movie can’t let it go. There is a long number extolling the virtues of the minstrel show and segueing into the song “Mandy.” The message appears to be, “So sad we can’t all don blackface anymore, but let’s get as close as possible with this cringy homage.” Strange times indeed.