Partner
Charles Walters
Queer Places:
Park Lawn Cemetery
Bennington, Bennington County, Vermont, USA
Robert Alton (January 28, 1897/1906 – June 12, 1957) was an American dancer
and
choreographer, a major figure in dance choreography of
Broadway and
Hollywood
musicals from the 1930s through to the early 1950s.[1]
He was linked with another musical comedy choreographer/director,
Charles Walters, with whom he
enjoyed a long-standing affair. Alton was a trendsetter, in some ways the
herald of the new movement in dance. Among the first to style himself as
"choreographer," he revolutionized choral dancing by breaking up the old
chorus line into smaller groups, filling the stage with fluid movement and
color. That Bob Alton was gay had been affirmed by several who knew him,
including Broadway designer Miles White.
That he took a particular shine to the young, tall, blue-eyed, handsome Chuck
Walters (who Dorothy Kilgallen said looked like "a brunette Duke of Windsor")
has been merely guessed at. But the two would remain lifelong friends, and
their career paths would continue to intersect.
Producer Arthur Freed, who was not gay, never had as his purpose the creation of a team of gay artists
for MGM, nor were all the
members of the Arthur Freed unit gay. Freed did want a first-rate team, however, and hired without regard
to sexual orientation. A large number of the gifted people on it turned out to be gay, including composers
Cole Porter,
Frederick Loewe,
Robert Wright, and
Chet Forrest, choreographers
Robert Alton and
Jack Cole,
and directors Charles Walters and the closeted
Vincente Minnelli.
Born Robert Alton Hart in
Bennington, Vermont, United States,[1]
Alton studied dance with
Ralph McKernan in
Springfield, Massachusetts and spent his summers in New York studying with
Bert French and
Mikhail Mordkin, formerly of the Bolshoi Ballet and
Sergey Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes.[2]
His Broadway stage dancing début was with Mordkin's company in Take It from
Me (1919), followed by Greenwich Follies (1924) and Same Day
(1925) which failed to make it to Broadway.
With his wife Marjorie Fielding, whom he had married in 1926, Alton created a dance act and subsequently
managed a line of chorus girls in vaudeville. When his wife took a sabbatical
to have a baby, Robert Jr., he took over dance direction at
St. Louis movie theatres while teaching at Clark's Dance School in St.
Louis. There his students included
Donn
Arden and
Betty Grable. They divorced in 1929.
After a series of successful stagings at New York's
Paramount Theatre in 1933, he began a choreographic career which
encompassed many of the most successful Broadway hits of the 1930s and 1940s,
collaborating with
Cole
Porter,
Rodgers and Hart and
Rodgers and Hammerstein on
Me
and Juliet in 1953. He learned
stage direction from
John Murray Anderson and during his Broadway career he was instrumental in
furthering the careers of
Ray
Bolger,
John
Brascia,
Don Crichton,
Betty Grable,
Gene
Kelly,
Sheree North,
Vera-Ellen and
Charles Walters, among others.
Charles Walters moved to New
York in 1933. There he landed a dancing gig in the Broadway revue "New Faces,"
twirling Imogene Coca across the stage. He put together a nightclub dance act
with Dorothy Fox, and was noticed by Robert Alton, then a top Broadway
choreographer. Alton was influential in securing Walters the part of the
prince in Cole Porter's "Jubilee," as well as offering the inspiration for
Walters' own dancing style. "I learned so much from that man," Chuck would
say. "Style and fluidity, and so amenable."
Alton is credited with transforming Broadway choreography by breaking up the
chorus (which until then was a precision line) into featured soloists and
small groups, and his musical staging was celebrated for its elegance and
attention to detail. His theatre credits included
Life Begins at 8:40,
The Vamp,
Anything Goes,
Du Barry Was a Lady,
Panama Hattie,
Pal Joey, and
Hazel
Flagg.[1]
Alton choreographed his first Hollywood film,
Strike Me Pink, in 1936, and became one of the leading choreographers
during the golden age of the Hollywood musical film, serving as dance director
for
MGM from 1944-1951. He continued to work on Broadway during this period
and, in 1952 won a
Tony
Award for his revival of
Pal Joey which he had originally choreographed in 1940, catapulting
the young Gene Kelly to stardom. He also directed the films
Merton of the Movies (1947) and
Pagan Love Song (1950) for MGM.[1]
Alton is principally remembered today as the discoverer of
Gene
Kelly, for his
collaborations with Fred Astaire, and for choreographic sequences he
designed for Hollywood musicals such as
The Harvey Girls (1946),
Till the Clouds Roll By (1946),
Show Boat (1951), and
White Christmas (1954).
During this time period. Alton staged and choreographed the dynamic
nightclub act, "Kay
Thompson and
the Williams Brothers", which successfully toured the world from 1947 to
1952.
In 1947, Walters was given the assignment to direct his first picture, Good
News, after proclaiming to Freed that he'd directed and choreographed it in
high school. Wisely, Walters had concentrated his energies on the nonmusical
parts of the film, learning the job of director, while turning over the
picture's two big production numbers, the now-famous "Pass That Peace Pipe"
and "The Varsity Drag", to his old friend and mentor, Robert Alton. Alton
fulfilled Walters' hopes: the numbers are energetic, creative, and beautifully
staged. Together they crafted one of the top MGM musicals, assuring Walters'
future as a director.
Alton had been choreographing for Arthur Freed at MGM since 1945, and made
his own step up to full direction with Pagan Love Song in 1950,
starring Esther Williams and filmed partly in Hawaii. After seven months of
shooting, Alton knew he'd never direct another picture. Although a financial
success, Pagan Love Song was generally panned by the critics.
In 1957, he was working on the film version of
Pal Joey when he collapsed and died, his place was taken by
Fred
Astaire's principal collaborator,
Hermes Pan. Alton died in
Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, in
Los Angeles, California, of a
kidney ailment at age 51.
He was buried in the family plot in
Bennington, Vermont.
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alton