Biographical Note
Cincinnati native Vera-Ellen was one of America's leading dance stars of the 1940s and 1950s. She was born Vera Ellen Rohe on February 16, 1921, the only child of Alma Westmeier and Martin Rohe. (The hyphen was not used in her name until the early 1940s.) Shortly after her birth, the family moved to the Cincinnati suburb of Norwood. Fearing their daughter was undersize and lacking in physical activity, her parents enrolled her in dance lessons at the Hessler Dance Studios, beginning around 1930 when she was 9 years old. Rapidly establishing herself as an excellent student, Vera-Ellen's experiences at the Hessler Studios kindled her ambition to become a professional dancer.
In October 1936, she departed Norwood with her mother to study at the Segovia School of Dance in New York City. Established as a protegé of tap master Jack Dayton, Vera-Ellen won first prize on the January 21, 1937, broadcast of the Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour, one of the most popular radio programs in the United States. Not yet 16, Vera-Ellen was immediately signed to tour with one of the Major Bowes "units" then popular in vaudeville. Additional vaudeville training came in 1937 when she toured with the Ted Lewis Orchestra. Lewis was renowned at that time for his top-selling recording of "Me and My Shadow" and the catch phrase "Is Everybody Happy?"
At age 18, Vera-Ellen's first professional engagement as an adult performer occurred in April 1939 when she danced at Billy Rose's Casa Mañana nightclub in New York. Additional club appearances and chorus work in several Broadway musicals followed; some of these casts included dancer Robert Hightower, to whom she was married from 1941-1948. Vera-Ellen achieved a major success on Broadway in November 1943 with The Connecticut Yankee, a revival of the Rodgers and Hart musical originally produced in 1927. This engagement led to contract offers from several Hollywood studios. Vera-Ellen signed with independent producer Samuel Goldwyn.
Newly arrived in Hollywood in mid-1944, Vera-Ellen made her film debut in Wonder Man, a Danny Kaye musical comedy released by Sam Goldwyn in 1945. She starred in another Kaye vehicle titled The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), and was loaned to 20th Century Fox for two musicals, Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), which garnered her Arthur Murray's "year's most versatile dancer" award, and Carnival in Costa Rica (1947). In late 1946, Goldwyn turned down entreaties from 20th Century Fox to either buy out or share in Vera-Ellen's contract. This along with Goldwyn's declining interest in producing musicals brought Vera-Ellen's film career close to a standstill.
Once free of her contract with Goldwyn, Vera-Ellen considered a return to Broadway when MGM procured her services as Gene Kelly's dance partner in the "Slaughter on 10th Avenue" ballet from Words and Music (1948). Her success in this film led to a long-term contract with MGM, the period of her greatest fame. Among the musicals in this period were On the Town (1949), Three Little Words (1950), The Belle of New York (1952), Call Me Madam (1953), and White Christmas (1954). In addition to Gene Kelly, her dance partners in this period included Fred Astaire and Donald O'Connor.
With the movie musical waning as a genre in the mid-1950s, Vera-Ellen turned to stage and television to close out her career. Her final professional appearance was on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show (NBC television) in February 1959. Having earlier married Victor Bennet Rothschild in 1954 (they divorced in 1966), Vera-Ellen retired to her Los Angeles home. Her daughter died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at age 3 months in 1963. Vera-Ellen died of cancer on August 30, 1981, at age 60.
Biographical narrative by Clark Evans, adapted for the finding aid by Libby Smigel in 2018.