'Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance' by Debra Levine
Marilyn Monroe was already a rising star before Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (1953), but the song-and-dance scene from that movie, “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” put her over the top. Audiences, even film critics, see it as Monroe’s scene. She pulled off “Diamonds” with aplomb after relentless sessions with choreographer Jack Cole, who designed the scene down to lighting, editing and costumes. According to his biographer, Debra Levine, Cole “initiated” what became Monroe’s characteristic mannerisms. “She copied him,” walking as well as dancing.
The new biography Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance is Levine’s effort to raise the sunken profile of an artist whose style resonates in more recent productions, including set pieces by Christina Aguilera, Madonna and Lady Gaga. Although her book covers the entirety of a career that spanned nightclubs and Broadway, Cole’s indelible mark was left on film.
Cole came to Hollywood in 1943 to work on Kismet, one of those kitschy MGM musicals. Trained in a New York dance school-troupe that melded the modern with the exotic, Cole choreographed a pair of Orientalist numbers. He had the folly to say what he thought, calling Busy Berkeley’s patented choreography ridiculous, branding it as wallpaper. Cole offended MGM’s management and found more receptive ears at the lower budget Columbia, whose tyrannical chief, Harry Cohn, enjoyed the mishigos of his outbursts and allowed him to direct entire song-and-dance scenes within films.
For Cole, dance on stage or screen wasn’t just a drill team exercise (a la Berkeley) but was essential to moving the plot forward—notably in Rita Hayworth’s star turn in Gilda (1946). As Levin writes, Cole “introduced a new archetype: the dancing femme fatale.”
Sliding over to 20th Century-Fox, Cole was given a big budget and full license for Gentlemen Prefer Blonds. The musical, a hit on Broadway, was updated and studded with stars, including Jane Russel and Marilyn Monroe. Neither actress could dance, not really. Unperturbed, Cole brought long experience as a demanding dance coach to the sound stage. He endowed both with a “sensual but powerful gait” and surrounded them with color, glittering gowns and a gaggle of good-looking guys. Cole was gay, and no one seemed to make anything of it.
Cole earned 30 movie credits over 20 years, despite deriding most Hollywood choreography a “hilariously stupid” and “pretentious and dull.” “I had the camera in mind when I was choreographing,” he once said. He harbored no illusions. As Levine writes, “Cole forged a new dancer prototype: equal parts working man, business guy, and sensitive artist.”
Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth-Century American Dance is published by University Press of Kentucky.
