Content provided in partnership with
Obituary: Herbert Ross
Independent, The (London), Oct 11, 2001 by Tom Vallance
HERBERT ROSS was a former dancer-choreographer who became a director of major Hollywood movies, enjoying particular success with his collaborations with the writer Neil Simon, who called him "a wonderful director". The Simon scripts he directed included the great hit The Goodbye Girl, The Sunshine Boys and California Suite. Other films include Play It Again, Sam, the Barbra Streisand musical Funny Lady, the musical version of Goodbye Mr Chips and the ballet film The Turning Point.
Broadway musicals he choreographed include House of Flowers and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and films for which he staged dances range from Carmen Jones to the best of the Cliff Richard musicals. He won many awards for his achievements in the world of ballet.
- Most Popular Articles in News
- The Ten Best Laptop bags
- Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market
- GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD
- Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...
- THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY
- More »
The son of a postal clerk, Ross was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1927. When he was nine, his mother died and his father opened a luncheonette or diner in Miami, where Ross made his stage debut at the age of 15 in a walk-on role with a touring company of Ballet Theatre. His artistic ambitions fired, he studied ballet with Madame Anderson-Ivantsova, Caird Leslie and Helene Platova, modern dance with Doris Humphrey, acting with Herbert Berghof and painting with Hubert Landau.
While still in his teens, he toured as an actor with a Shakespearean company, then danced on Broadway in the chorus lines of the musicals Follow the Girls (1944), Laughing Room Only (1944), Something for the Boys (1945), Beggar's Holiday (1946), Bloomer Girl (1947), Look Ma, I'm Dancin' (1948) and Inside USA (1948).
His first ballet, Caprichos, was sponsored by the New York Choreographer's Workshop in 1949, and won the Dance Magazine Award - the journal called it "sheer theatre magic". The enormous success of Caprichos prompted American Ballet to hire him as a resident choreographer. Among his other ballet works were The Thief Who Loved a Ghost, Pierrot and the Moon, Ovid Metamorphosis, Angel Head and The Dybbuk.
The first Broadway show he choreographed was the Arthur Schwartz- Dorothy Fields musical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951), based on the book by Betty Smith and directed by George Abbott. By 1954 his reputation was such that when the Harold Arlen-Truman Capote musical House of Flowers was in trouble out of town, Ross was brought in to replace George Balanchine as choreographer, also taking over the direction, uncredited.
Later he was to assume direction of another troubled Broadway musical, The Gay Life (1961), an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's The Affairs of Anatol which, though a failure, remains memorable for its gorgeous score (by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz) and the singing of its female star Barbara Cook. The show's brief run is generally attributed to a miscast leading man and a poor libretto. Cook said,
When Herbert Ross took over the direction, he had what I naturally felt was a great idea: he felt that with some rewriting it could be worked out so that I could play all of the women in Anatol's life. The moments I was in were working very well, and Herbert thought we could make it a tour de force, and that might give the show a better run. But there were protests about giving me all that responsibility, and the producers were afraid to try it.
The first film Ross choreographed was Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954), and on stage his dances enlivened such Broadway shows as Take Me Along (1959) and I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962), the first Broadway musical of Barbra Streisand, who admired Ross's contributions and would work with him frequently.
In 1960 he directed his first Broadway show, a revival of Finian's Rainbow, and formed his own company, Ballet of Two Worlds, which toured Europe. In England his spirited choreography for the Cliff Richard musicals The Young Ones (1962) and Summer Holiday (1963) contributed to their great success.
For an otherwise mediocre Broadway musical, Tovarich (1963), he provided a Charleston-style dance routine for its star Vivien Leigh which stopped the show nightly, and the following year he won a Tony nomination (the first of several) for choreographing Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Anyone Can Whistle. Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965) were other major Broadway musicals with dances staged by Ross. In 1966 Ross and his assistant, the late Howard Jeffrey, staged the dances for Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover and the drunken burlesque- style dance of Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The first film directed by Ross was the ambitious but heavily criticised musical version of Goodbye Mr Chips (1969) starring Peter O'Toole, who later stated, "I'm a hoofer manque, actually, but every time I've been in a musical it's been disastrous." Despite a disappointing score, the film is very touching, and its reputation has improved over the years.
Ross had unquestioned triumphs with two comedies adapted from Broadway hits, The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), a raunchy farce starring Barbra Streisand as a call-girl who becomes involved with an intellectual (George Segal), and Play It Again, Sam (1972), a felicitous and delightful transcription of Woody Allen's play about a Bogart fantasist.
