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[0:00] David Armstrong: Welcome to another episode of Broadway Nation, the podcast that tells the remarkable story of how immigrant, Jewish, queer, and Black artists invented the Broadway musical. Debra Levine, thank you so much for joining me today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, Jazzed, JACK COLE and 20th Century American Dance.

[0:17] Debra Levine: Thank you, David. I had the great pleasure of writing about the great JACK COLE in my book, Broadway Nation. But of course, only briefly, I only had space to touch on his amazing career in the briefest of terms. And I actually started my career as a dancer and then a choreographer. And Cole has always loomed as a legendary figure in the world of theatrical dance. He was always out there as this idol, this icon, even though we had very little tangible connection to his work. So I found it to be an amazing pleasure to dive into this comprehensive and brilliantly researched account of Cole's life and work on Broadway, in nightclubs, and in Hollywood. So I'm going to start by doing something I don't usually do, but you'll see why I'm doing it in a moment.

The bio on your book jacket reads, Debra Levine is a Hollywood-fascinated dance critic whose discovery of JACK COLE turned her aesthetic world on its head. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Dance Magazine, Huffington Post, and other outlets. She is the founder of Arts Meme, a fine arts blog. So I have to start by asking, how did you discover JACK COLE? And how exactly did that turn your aesthetic world on its head?

[1:37] Debra Levine: I was at a Hollywood classic film event at a place that we lovingly call The Barn in Los Angeles, which is the Hollywood Heritage Barn, and was introduced before the event began to Kenneth Anger. Kenneth Anger, the notorious director of notoriously homoerotic cinema and quite an experimental filmmaker, he has since passed away. But I was introduced to Kenneth and I told him I was a dance writer and he locked eyes with me and said, with great seriousness, someone needs to write about JACK COLE. And just with a big pregnant pause, that was it. Someone needs to write about JACK COLE. Now I knew the name JACK COLE. I mean, there was a real crossover. I was just starting my life as a modern dancer in the like, 72, 73, 74 zone.

Cole died here in Los Angeles in 1974. So I knew JACK COLE's name, but I just kind of went home and started Googling. I found very little about him. But the thing that popped out was the fact that he had choreographed Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend for Marilyn Monroe. And I had just seen the film on a huge screen at the Los Angeles Theater downtown Los Angeles, and I was blown away by it. I'm not sure really what hooked me. It did not take long for me to uncover other of his film material. In fact, if we did not have JACK COLE's film material, we would have what we call bupkas. We would have nothing. But we do have the films and I started looking at these numbers. I was jolted as a dance critic when I looked at this material because I recognized a brilliant choreographer.

Eight counts by eight counts of dance movement, he had it going on. The way he strung it together, and we can talk about this later, just the way it flowed and the unusual shapes and his use of time and his use of space, all of the things that a dance critic brings to her mission, I recognized in JACK COLE. I really was hooked. And the further I went, the more fascinated I became.

[3:56] David Armstrong: So overall, how would you describe the book? Is it a biography? What is it?

[4:01] Debra Levine: Yeah, I think there's an expression, which I mean, only at your questioning, I'm going to bring it up. But I think there is this thing called a critical biography. I mean, I'm a critic. I'm a dance critic, a longtime dance critic. The kernel for me is the dance critic's skill of putting verbiage to movement, which is ephemeral, which, except for the camera, cannot be held in memory. And it's hard to describe.

[4:31] Debra Levine: There's a skill set. That is, I would say, a kernel of my book. And in fact, I just read one of these online reviews and someone complained like, oh my God, she even spent like a whole page describing a dance. Yeah. The book attracts so many different audiences. Only a minority of readers will be fascinated to read those kinds of descriptions. But again, that's what I bring to the party, my dance critic's eye and my dance critic's skill with writing. But then there's layers and layers and layers and layers.

[5:07] Debra Levine: So it's not only a biography, it is an assessment of his work as well.

[5:13] Debra Levine: That's right. If I thought that I fell short on that front, it would be a failure for me. And I do not feel that I fell short. The criticism of his actual work. But then there is his story. As I was chatting with you before, I do think that the book, in a lot of ways, is a story of New York and Los Angeles, with all due respect to Seattle, are two great art centers of our nation. And the other dichotomy between the world of high art, or in my art form, concert dance, and commercial art, or Hollywood dance, or Broadway dance, the use of dance to enhance a for-profit product. That's a kind of fancy way of saying, yeah, dancers who take the road of making a buck. Cole is a fascinating story in terms of those two worlds sort of coming together, sort of starting in one and moving to the other, but never leaving the other one behind.

[6:15] David Armstrong: Thank you. He's a poster child. There are others. I mean, he inspired others. For example, I'm going to use this expression, high art. It's out of fashion. I think we know it's short code for artistic dance, ballet, modern dance, as such. Charles Weidman, who was a mentor to JACK COLE and who was one of the first generation or post-Denishon dancers, he also went into nightclub.

[6:42] Debra Levine: And Broadway. That's right. And Cole, I think, opened that door and select dancers went through. In my research, I found Doris Humphrey, who was Charles Weidman's artistic partner, who was a very pure artist. God bless her. I mean, she was a genius. And she's one of our great heroes of modern dance. One of her girls came up to her and kind of proudly said that she had gotten a gig on Broadway. The response she got from Humphrey was like, how can you do that? And the book is peppered with those reactions. I would quote from Ted Shawn, saying the temple has been defiled when JACK COLE was practicing his jitterbugging in one of the dance studios. And I personally have lived that life. And that brings me to how Cole has kind of turned me upside down.

Because your focus previous to this was mostly on concert dance, on serious dance, as we might say. So it's interesting that your first book is about somebody who is the epitome of, I hate the word commercial, because I think it's just artistic dance in a different form. It might be working in a commercial venue. But having spent my whole life working in the theater and in the nonprofit theater, for the most part of it, whatever that means, today, all theater is nonprofit. The artistic ambitions of the people involved are exactly the same, in my mind. The labeling is really sticky. They're tough, and they're wrong. But just so we can have these, however crude these conversations, we're going to glom onto these labels. And I think they're really important conversations.

[8:30] Debra Levine: You can't avoid them, absolutely.

[8:32] David Armstrong: You mentioned your research. I just wanted to say the depth of the research is so impressive in the book. You mentioned that it took you seven years to write the book. Plus, how did you go about uncovering so many aspects of his life, his work, his career, and especially for any figure whose primary work is in the mid part of the 20th century?

[8:54] Debra Levine: Yes. So many people are gone. Your ability to get to them is limited. How did you do that?

[8:59] Debra Levine: Really, I could have gone on forever. Don't tell anyone. I mean, in particular, because we now have tools. This is the last epoch of my working. We have tools now to dig into newspaper clippings from everywhere and for all time. Unbelievable. That was the joy of all joys, that I could tie down dates to reconstruct the timeline because he was bicoastal, number one. Number two, because he did movies. And movies are made in one year, and they're released in the next. So it's like, where was he? You can't say, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953, when he started working on it in the prior year and all of that. At a certain point, I did give in and I started a timeline. But my timeline, which is as long as my arms, is almost as much of a point of pride for me as the book is because I reconstructed. He was like a furious overachiever. I mean, he was tough on himself, and he was a gigging choreographer. Multiple projects overlapping at the same time.

[10:04] Debra Levine: That's right. And if he had a two-week gap, he called his agent, get me something. He was an early practitioner of the red eye, going back and forth, going from L.A. to New York. And by the way, I'll cite the fact that in the trade publications that I was just praising my access, one of their little standard columns was travel. They would literally have data to New York and then on the second column from New York, Clark Gable, Gene Harlow, directors, everyone. It's unbelievable the richness of our journalistic heritage and the comparable poverty of it today. I mean, I'll just name names, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Billboard or Billboard, other trade pubs, because especially for his nightclub act, he was covered assiduously.

[10:58] David Armstrong: Well, and talk about an ephemeral world, the nightclub world, which is so lost to us today, because this is a primary aspect of his work, is he is a star of the nightclub world at a time when the nightclub world meant something.

[11:18] Debra Levine: Yes. I mean, it was nightclub that brought him to Hollywood, because you had to go see JACK COLE and his dancers. It was a must-see. Your very first chapter is titled Barefoot Beginnings. Where does JACK COLE begin? How does he get to be JACK COLE?

[11:35] Debra Levine: He had a rather quotidian arrival on planet Earth that could not predict the very bizarre figure he would become. He was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, came into a family of new immigrants, more or less. On one side, Irish people, on his father's side, German people. But the real defining fact of his early life was the divorce of his parents, which was unusual in the time. His mother, in fact, was a practicing Irish Catholic girl. I spent a lot of time looking into divorces for people in the year 1910 or so, but his parents did break up. He was raised in his mother's clan, a big Irish brood, in a really daunting-looking, kind of scary-looking house in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His mother, rather than, of course, explain to a young kid the divorce, basically said, Oh, your father? Oh, he died. And he was sued.

[12:38] Debra Levine: On stage and screen.

[13:09] Debra Levine: And I do have it documented that what gave him joy was movie magazines. Which is interesting because his early affection is toward the movies, toward Hollywood. So that's in his head from childhood. But I don't think that that would differentiate him from millions of other Americans.

[13:26] David Armstrong: Of course not. Of course not. Or even today, of course.

[13:29] Debra Levine: And so then how does he start to dance? Dance is not in his family, is not in his life, he's not in a showbiz family by any means.

[13:36] Debra Levine: He's not. He's not in an artistic family. I mean, his family was pretty blue-collar. A few of his uncles had white-collar jobs. But this was a climb of the ladder starting in the beginning of the 20th century. I don't know. It just seems it was random. I just could not tie down his attachment to dance. He did go to a dance concert to see Denison, our first American modern dance company. It is the root of the American modern dance tree. And Cole went to a concert about 1928-29. He was an undergraduate at the time at university, which didn't last long. And he went to a concert and, I don't know, he was gobsmacked. He clipped with it. On the one hand, he admitted, I wanted to be one, I mean, those are my words, that he wanted to be one of the beautiful people. Okay, fine. But he saw something that he wanted, and he pursued it doggedly his entire life.

[14:37] Debra Levine: And then he will become a member of the Denison company very shortly after that, right? With no dance training prior to this.

[14:44] Debra Levine: That's right. But you gotta really factor in the fact that a red-blooded guy who wants to dance with all the girlies who are in their tunics would get a lot of attention. And he was athletic. He was very nicely built. I mean, again, I emphasize he was a short guy, which is problematic if you're partnering a lady. But it's not problematic if you're a solo man, and that was very much his direction. And he not only performed with Denison, he was in the closest relationship with both Ruth St. Denis, who we call, and he called Miss Ruth, and Ted Shawn, who was a kind of early role model for him. And all of this he did without the support of his family, and he did it in rebellion. But many dancers dance in rebellion to their parents.

[15:35] Debra Levine: He will maintain this relationship with Miss Ruth throughout her entire life, which goes into the 1960s at least, doesn't it?

[15:43] Debra Levine: Yes. I think she died in '68, I'm pretty sure.

[15:47] Debra Levine: And Ted Shawn, he will also maintain that relationship.

[15:49] Debra Levine: Yes, a bumpier path.

[15:51] Debra Levine: A bumpier, yes. Not the warm relationship that he had with Miss Ruth.

[15:55] Debra Levine: That's right. That's right. Yes, she was a surrogate mother to him. She saw him. He was difficult from the get-go, you know. He was a rebel. He was mischievous in a not always very endearing way. Like he famously, he had a real close friend, Anna Austin, who was a big source in my book. I did not speak to her, but she wrote a memoir about working with Jack, and she loved Jack. But for example, Cole would be dancing behind her on stage, and he would try to pull her off balance. And he thought he was so clever, but there were critics that wrote, how was that young man who seemed to think the whole thing was a big joke? He was impossible. And he and Shawn really butted heads. But in the end of their days, they made peace, and that's part of my narrative. And it's a beautiful fact of his life, of Cole's life, that he could make peace with Papa Shawn.

[16:52] Debra Levine: So he's immersed in the beginnings of the world of modern dance with the progenitors of that, and he then works with the Humphrey Weidman group. But his interests quickly start to go beyond modern dance, and in a way that the modern dance world maybe starts to influence Ted Shawn would also delve into a lot of, quote, ethnic dance styles, but not to the level that Cole would do.

[17:17] Debra Levine: That's right. I think the biggest instigator above and beyond Cole's scrappy childhood, where he was essentially on his own, was the fact that he hit the streets of New York to pursue a career in modern dance in 1931, 32. Not a good time to do anything in New York, really. So we're talking about the Depression. He scrambled and he got by and he made friends and he made enemies. He lived the life. But in 1933, in December, something happened in our nation, which is that Prohibition was rescinded. And in response, up sprang many, many nightclubs. So the nightclubs of post-Prohibition, unlike the speakeasies of the Prohibition era, they went for more glam. And part of the glam was entertainment.

So Cole just, it sparked for him that he could make a buck dancing in nightclubs, but he would do it his way. He would bring artistic dance into nightclubs. And boy, that had a rocky start, you know, because people complained in one case that like the noise of his bare feet on the nightclub floor were like annoying them, annoying the customers, which is really weird. But that was the case. So he started building a network in often mafia owned and operated nightclubs in New York City, and he developed an act. It really took off like fire when he got his ultimate gig, which is that he opened the Rainbow Room in Radio City Musical.

[18:53] Debra Levine: Which would become his home for five years, right? He would continue to work other places, but had this artistic home, I guess, is the way to think of it, which is odd to say about a nightclub. But Jack Cole and his dancers become a sensation at the Rainbow Room.

[19:11] Debra Levine: That's right. And catapulting that sensation was the fact that he developed a very quirky proprietary act, which fused the fact that in the 1930s, he was seriously pursuing mastery of Bharatanatyam, classical Indian dance. And separately, he was a habituate of the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. I mean, this gives a taste of this man's appetite for a full range of dance genres. So he was doing all this separately. Cole was doing Indian movement to a record of swing jazz. Certain qualities in the Indian dance were percussive and kind of fit with the jangly, driven sound of swing music of the era. And he codified this and he made a shtick out of it. I call it Hindu swing in the book. Some people say Hindu jazz.

But that became his brand and that launched him. People went insane. It must have been unbelievable. The Jack Cole dancers were a trio. It was Cole and two ladies. They were white folk in Indian garb, often with body paint, the whole regalia. The fact that they were not authentic Indians did not disturb the who is who in the audience at the Rainbow Room, which is, of course, the richest people in the New York community. The whole question of authenticity is a thread through my book, and I do address it in my own humble way. I stand by JACK COLE's deep dive into cultural dance forms, which are very authentic in their own way. They are. They are. And of course, the upside of his putting this before audiences is he was giving exposure to a very cloistered, whites-only audience of other forms of movement and other cultures. And by the way, he dressed in authentic, gorgeous silk costume and he wore jewelry. He wore a bauble in his ear. He pushed the envelope with courage.

[21:28] Debra Levine: I love that you tell us about this nightclub world and that you describe it in so many ways, including how many shows a night there would be at the Rainbow Room. You say there was an 8:30 show and a 12:15 show. And it's so hard for us to wrap our heads around that today, the idea that you would go to a Broadway show and then go to the Rainbow Room to have dinner at 10 o'clock and see a show at 12:15 and leave at two in the morning every night of the week. I think you say on Sundays.

[21:56] Debra Levine: I did. And believe me, I found that incredible. I'm sure you had to look it up twice ago.

[22:01] David Armstrong: I did. I really did. And I stand by that. I mean, the first thing that comes into my mind when you talk about that is that's just the gateway to drug use.

[22:10] Debra Levine: Yeah.

[22:11] Debra Levine: And Cole did fall into that trap. And many, many dancers who were working those hours, you know, would take a downer to get to sleep and then the next day something else to get going. The thing about Cole is, you know, that many, many people who worked with him said that he barely did a warm-up before he performed. You know, he was so lithe. I mean, it's like if an opera singer is just, like, sitting around and they just stand up and do, like, this incredible aria. It was like he was a dancer of a caliber. And we do have little glimpses of it, but boy, it's the nightclub stuff that I really wish we could see.

[22:49] Debra Levine: During this period, he also establishes Chez Paris in Chicago as sort of a second home.

[22:54] David Armstrong: Yes. If we were able to go back in time to either the Rainbow Room or Chez Paris or the Persian Room or any of the places that he performed, what would we see? What are the dances we would see there?

[23:05] Debra Levine: Yeah. Well, he mixed it up. He mixed it up. He would do an Indian number, a Hindu swing. He would do a Balinese number. He would do something from the Caribbean, a Latin number. And he was very early on the Latin trend that really kicked in when you think about all the Latin-tinged Hollywood movies that became so hot in the 1940s. He's preceding that. And he just stuck to his guns that he was doing artistic dance in a nightclub setting. Of course, he demanded quiet. People would naturally stop their eating and chatting and smoking, but you couldn't fully control it. And there is a story that Cole would get so crazy if people were talking while he was on the nightclub stage that a maitre d' would put a salt shaker into a napkin and reach over and hit someone on the head if they wouldn't stop talking.

[24:02] Debra Levine: But I want to segue into really what I consider, what I am labeling the first kind of formal work of theatrical jazz dance, which was a number he developed called The Wedding of a Solid Sender. And this was in 1942.

[24:21] David Armstrong: And you call this a foundational work in theatrical dance?

[24:25] Debra Levine: I haven't seen it. I've seen still photography of it, but it was a smash hit. He did it at the Shapery in Chicago. He brought it into a Broadway review, which was the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943, and it brought him to Hollywood. So it's a very important work for him, Solid Sender. And he plays a hipster. He plays a hipster. He's wearing a zoot suit, big shoulders, vertical stripes, watch chain at his waist, essentially an uptown black look. He was not in face paint, but he was a white man playing this kind of character. It was a dance with a kind of scenario behind it that this man, played by JACK COLE, was being dragged to the altar by a young lady. I've just read descriptions of it. It's got all kinds of

[25:17] Debra Levine: Things that can be interpreted from it, because, of course, JACK COLE was a gay man. That wasn't the first thing people saw. They did not see, here's a man who doesn't want to get married to a pretty girl. Oh, he must be gay. And frustratingly, we think that number was filmed, but is lost to us. I must say, David, this is breaking news for your podcast. That is incorrect. It was not filmed. It was shown to the who is who at MGM, including Arthur Freed, great producer of movie musicals at MGM. Cole rehearsed it. He cast Jean Porter, who was a bit actress at MGM, a marvelous actress. He cast her as the bride. They rehearsed it, and they performed it. It was not taken into the movie. And to quote Jean Porter, Jack did not take that very well.

I'm sure he didn't. But I thought it was filmed. In some ways, that's even more frustrating. Of course, we want to go back and see it. We want to be there. I am living in hopes. Cole has family somewhere. I'm jumping ahead to his end of days, but he died saying he had no family. And his significant other of many, many decades swore to the court that JACK COLE had no family. I think when my book comes out, family will come out of the woodwork. And what I'm praying for much more than that is that home movies of his nightclub act, particularly in Chicago. I just picture that one of those great Chicago people brought a Super 8 camera and filmed it. I'm dying to see it. The other dance that we do get to see to a certain extent, but is certainly seminal in a way that I think is on a par with Wedding of a Solid Sender, is Sing, Sing, Sing.

Again, becomes a sensation. You can't go to New York and not see JACK COLE perform Sing, Sing, Sing. I'm working on a book about the world of Broadway beyond the Broadway musicals, because for decades, that world of nightclubs, two or three hundred of them in the Times Square area, was really in the public's mind what Broadway was. So Jack Cole is actually a Broadway star when he's at the Rainbow Room, in the popular imagination.

[27:35] David Armstrong: Exactly. The harem, that's where New York first saw Sing, Sing, Sing. The harem that was done up in the Oriental style that Cole was so involved in promulgating. The harem was the whole thing with the band members wore a green fez, the waiters wore a white fez, the maitre d' wore a red fez. I mean, people had fun in this country.

[27:57] Debra Levine: That's so interesting. So you're broadening the cultural definition of Broadway to encompass all of this.

[28:09] David Armstrong: Or sort of returning it to what it used to be, is the way I think of it. So the book would be called The Other Broadway.

[28:16] Debra Levine: That's fascinating. I do have a chapter devoted to Sing, Sing, Sing, which when it was performed, for example, in Miami, in a very special nightclub, which was called the Copa City. Get my book and see a picture of it.

[28:31] David Armstrong: The picture's amazing. It makes you want to just go back in time.

[28:34] Debra Levine: And he would, not literally, but figuratively, blow the roof off this place. Like people were standing on their seats screaming, more, more, more. Sing, Sing, Sing was Cole and three men. He did different versions of it. He would fill it out with a kind of corps de ballet once in a while. They were dressed in street clothes and famously pork pie hats. They were swingers, okay? It's very sexy. It's set to the Benny Goodman, you know, famous, famous music. Cole did his knee slides. He did these incredible leaps where they seemed to be sitting up in the air. I mean, these dancers were so highly trained. And we do have footage of Cole doing it. In 1959, he was not in great shape, which is really hard to see, but we do have it. I Googled it last night and found it. I needed a pusher man, okay, to get a disc. Like, you know, you couldn't, all this stuff was getting out there. And it hurts me a little because, you know, it was just.

[29:38] David Armstrong: Well, I have to say one of the pleasures of reading your book was, and it took me a while to get through it because I would constantly stop and then watch the numbers that you were talking about. And that was a great, great pleasure. And then go back and read your description of it again to make sure I noted everything that you were talking about in the way you described the numbers. So yeah.

[29:58] Debra Levine: In much of today's culture and certainly in the dance world, Sing Sing Sing is very much identified not with JACK COLE, but with Bob Fosse because Bob Fosse did a version of Sing Sing Sing in his stage review, Dancing. He did it as an homage to JACK COLE in my writing. And in my thinking, I call it a failed homage because de facto Fosse's Sing Sing Sing has overwritten JACK COLE's Sing Sing Sing. You know, it's painful to me that that was the upshot of Fosse using that music. He had enough breaks. I mean, you know, I did warn his biographer, Kevin Winkler, before he read the book, I said, Kevin, I have to warn you, I'm rough on Bob Fosse.

[30:39] David Armstrong: You are tough on Fosse.

[30:41] Debra Levine: I'm tough on Fosse. And Kevin Winkler said he can take it.

[30:45] David Armstrong: Kevin Winkler, of course, has been a guest on the show as well. And I encourage anyone to hunt down those episodes with Kevin Winkler talking about several of his books, actually. So how does JACK COLE then get to Hollywood?

[30:58] David Armstrong: Hi, this is David Armstrong. And I'm here to tell you that musical theater happens around the world, which is why I'm thrilled to officially announce this new and exciting initiative. Broadway Nation is teaming up with a very experienced travel company called Like Minds Travel to create unique Broadway and Broadway history-related small group travel experiences designed especially for intrepid lovers of musical theater that are curated and led by me. Our first adventure will take us to two legendary capitals of musical theater, Vienna and Budapest. From May 16 to 27, that's this coming spring in 2027, we will experience the many wonders of those spectacular historic cities, including world-class performances of six musicals and operettas, both classic and new.

Here's just a brief preview of what we have planned. There'll be nine nights of accommodations in four-star hotels, three productions at the acclaimed Vienna Volksoper, including a new production of Hello, Dolly! starring the Austrian stage, TV, and film star Ruth Brower-Quam, and rare opportunities to see two shows that I'm very excited about. First will be The White Horse Inn, which was on Broadway in 1936 and became a hit on Broadway, and even during the Depression became an international sensation. It was literally done in almost every country across Europe and in America. And we'll also have a chance to see Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins. This was their follow-up to Three Penny Opera, and it will be presented on a double bill with Puccini's comic opera Gianna Schicchi.

We'll also see a brand new musical, Maria Theresia the Musical, at Vienna's Rannacher Theater. This epic new musical, billed as a vivid portrait of power, passion, and historical change, probably somewhat like Evita, tells the story of one of the most influential monarchs of the 18th century. Then we'll travel to Budapest, where we'll see two productions at the Budapest Operetta Theater and the Erkel Theater. Now, these renowned companies have not yet released their spring schedules, but based on their repertoires for the season, the possibilities are very, very exciting, and I can't wait for them to announce the season and to select those two musicals that we'll see. Of course, we'll also have time to take in the many wonders of these amazing destinations, including Vienna's Schönbrunn Palace, the Hofburg Imperial Palace, the Mozart House, and Budapest's Jewish Quarter, Parliament Building, and much, much more.

You can find a detailed itinerary and pricing at likemindstravel.com. That's all one word, l-i-k-e-m-i-n-d-s-t-r-a-v-e-l dot com. This is my first venture of this kind, and I would love to have you come along to Europe to see musical theater.

[34:04] Debra Levine: So Cole was, you know, talent scouted. He was brought to, well, first to 20th Century Fox to choreograph a number for a Betty Grable movie. He didn't stick in Hollywood, but I describe it as a pretty funny story of his behavior, his self-centered behavior, in the process of doing that movie at the behest of Hermes Pan. You'd think you'd show some respect to Hermes Pan, right? Because he had gone through all the—

[34:29] David Armstrong: He's only there—basically, Hermes Pan is hiring him to do one number in the movie because Hermes Pan doesn't have time to do it.

[34:36] Debra Levine: That's right. And Jack Cole has an expertise that Hermes Pan—

[34:40] David Armstrong: Yes. So it was to be a cultural number for Seminole Indians, showing Seminole Indians in this Betty Grable movie. And Cole was too sexy, and he got censored. But he didn't stick in Hollywood at that juncture. A few years later, the big dog MGM brought him back out, and he signed an eight-year contract with MGM. Did not make it through a year. He did not click with the very conservative management of MGM. It just did not jibe with Cole. He does have some traction. There are a few movies that he did in that early MGM era. He did a beautiful job on a Marlena Dietrich version of Kismet, which is an important word in JACK COLE's career. That was the first movie that he choreographed, and the work is beautiful. I really recommend that you dig that up and have a look. There's two numbers.

[35:37] David Armstrong: Absolutely. It's a non-musical movie, but there are two dance numbers within the movie.

[35:42] Debra Levine: That's right, because it was MGM and they could. They had all the music people, they had all the dancers, they had this stuff, and it was MGM, and audiences kind of expected it.

[35:51] David Armstrong: Well, and here he also demonstrates an ability to work with big stars, non-dance stars, and make them look like they can dance. First of all, make them look sexy, and secondly, make them look like they can dance and make them look powerful.

[36:06] Debra Levine: Now, Dietrich is such a fabulous woman. He and Dietrich clicked. I picture them just dropping the F-bomb and dropping dry retorts about people and being cynical together. That's just how I picture it. But he did do these workarounds. I won't call her a klutz, but come on. He learned the tricks of the camera. Although he clashed with MGM management, he was filled with admiration for the craftspeople, and he buddied with the craftspeople, which is really, really interesting. He soon realized he did not have a front-of-camera possibility in Hollywood, and he learned moviemaking. The place where he learned moviemaking was when he left MGM to work at Columbia Pictures, which was a B-studio, not an A-studio like MGM, but where, just luck of the draw, he managed to click at the highest level with Harry Cohn, who ran the studio.

The two men really enjoyed each other, and Cohn just gave JACK COLE free reign. Get down on the soundstage, do it all. He would tell his directors, leave JACK COLE alone. Let Jack do what he wanted, and Jack, at that point, became the auteur of his numbers in these really B-minus-minus-minus movies. I've grown to love them. I hate to deprecate them, but come on. Tars and Spars, watch them for the JACK COLE dance numbers, which, again, are like mini music videos.

[37:41] Debra Levine: They have a totality. They're self-contained in a way, yeah.

[37:56] Debra Levine: Yes.

[37:59] Debra Levine: Yes, Anne and Cole got along pretty well too. I'm a great admirer of Ann Miller. Ann Miller does have the ballistic tap technique. Miller dances with her full body. And she is a beautiful figure. And she's a total dancer. Cole did not stage her taps. She did that with the tap choreographer. He intertwined her with his corps de ballet, moving around and enhancing what she was doing. It's really, really hard to do. You'd have like Tommy Tune at the front, you know, tapping away and other things going on. But Cole really interpolated Ann Miller into these numbers. And they're very, they're very sweet. They're very warm. It's the era. It's World War II. It's that loving time in our society when we were so vulnerable, sending the young men abroad.

Well, it's a little before the war. It's just that you feel the vulnerability. This relationship he has with Harry Cone allows him to create something that is unprecedented, that has never happened before or happened again. Talk a little bit about this.

[39:00] David Armstrong: Right.

[39:01] Debra Levine: The Columbia Pictures resident dance company.

[39:04] David Armstrong: Resident dance company, exactly.

[39:05] Debra Levine: Which I, I'm being cheeky, and I'm saying it's the greatest dance company Los Angeles ever had. I have no doubt of that. It's a four-year window. Cone gave allocated budget to JACK COLE to hire staff dancers, 12 of them, earning a salary, getting benefits, being the equal of the actors on contract.

[39:26] David Armstrong: Under contract with Columbia Pictures.

[39:29] Debra Levine: That's correct. Cole could bang it out, and he trained those kids so intensely. He said he could do like three pictures at a time. So they had a lot of time on their hands, and he just trained the hell out of them. And these dancers were, they were spectacular. You know, they were all in his mode, and we already established that he himself was a great dancer. So it was a halcyon moment for dance in the country, but certainly in Los Angeles, that there was this resident company of Columbia Pictures. And those 12 dancers, they are the real McCoy. They are the JACK COLE dancers. Their names are completely unknown, but I do call them out and give them love in my book. And they continue with him throughout his career, many of them.

The key people were a married couple, George and Ethel Martin. They were probably as glamorous as their names. They were not great dancers, but they were the keeper of the flame. They knew his work. They often assisted him. They showed up for him. They crossed the country to dance for him. And they were fabulous, and they were devoted, and they put up with a lot of really crap from him. They were fired, rehired, beat up, criticized. He was very unkind in a way that would bring lawsuits the way he spoke to his dancers and insulted them. But the Martins stuck. There were some other people that really had career.

[40:54] David Armstrong: Oh my God, it's time for the speaking of the word Gwen.

[40:57] Debra Levine: Because in fact, our empress, our triple threat empress of Broadway history, Gwen Verdon, started her professional career with JACK COLE. Although she had danced as a kid and all kinds of kooky things that she did. But Cole really trained Gwen Verdon starting at Columbia Pictures, and they had their six-year arc together. She's sort of almost a co-star in your book, or at least a major character in the story, which is fascinating for Broadway historians to see where Gwen Verdon comes from. She has this whole career, this whole life before Can-Can on Broadway, before she becomes Gwen Verdon. Now I'll be a fangirl. I mean, I love this woman. She was born literally in the shadow of MGM in Culver City.

Her dad was a lighting guy at MGM. So she was born in a trunk. She started dancing early and she arrived to Cole. She was making a buck. There was a living to be made, you know? Anyway, she gigged around. She did all kinds of things. She was a young mother, not a good marriage, and really had to support her son and had to support their family. And, you know, she was working as an extra at Columbia Pictures and caught sight of JACK COLE. It's a repeating theme in the book that dancers saw JACK COLE and their lives changed. Many said the same words. It's almost as though it was stuffed into their mouths. I need to dance like that. I want to dance like that. He blew them away. And it was thus with Gwen. And she assisted him as well as danced for him for many.

[42:35] David Armstrong: That's right.

[42:36] Debra Levine: That's right. And she is the one, and we'll jump slightly ahead here as we talk about Hollywood, but she's the one teaching Marilyn Monroe to do what JACK COLE wants her to do. She's the one working with all these stars to make this happen. I did not have a distinct understanding of the role of a choreographer's assistant. And now I do. It was a job. And Gwen was Cole's assistant at 20th Century Fox. And Cole praised her. So, I mean, everyone praised her. Everyone praised her. Her people skills were unbelievable. Her genius, really, to take his work and really make it fit. She would change things very subtly that were impossible, that only JACK COLE could do, but other people could not do. She was his partner, dancing partner, and she was his muse.

Her moving to New York, becoming the Broadway sensation that she was on the show, Damn Yankees, starting her work with Fosse, was pretty much cataclysmic for JACK COLE. Let's get there. But let's first talk about 20th Century Fox and continue Cole in Hollywood.

[43:49] Debra Levine: After Columbia, he goes on the road. He reconfigures a touring nightclub act. So there's two eras of his nightclub act. It's when he started with his two girls doing Hindu swing, and then there's the real hot, hot, hot time, which is in the late 40s. And Gwen was part of that act. Carol Haney was part of that act. That was a sensational time. That's when Sing, Sing, Sing, he brought it to New York and to South Florida, and they were on the road for almost three years, I think. And then that really was such an arduous lifestyle for him. And it cost him more than it made him. And he did- He's basically producing these acts. He's the producer of the act that then has to go on the road. He's got to pay for everything. And then, you know, he gets paid handsomely. I love to translate figures from what they were then to today. I can't remember. I think for one of those acts, he was making $30,000 a week in today's money.

[44:49] David Armstrong: Oh, really?

[44:50] Debra Levine: Oh, thank you for doing that. Thank you. Think about being on the road, no cell phone, no nothing, going in a phone booth. It's pouring rain outside, calling the agent, book us here, move us here, book our train. And he almost lost his mind at one point in 1948. He scribbled in his scrapbook, which I did see, a time of great emotional distress. So meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, Betty Grable, the great Fox blonde of her era, was hawking Daryl Zanuck, the head of Fox, to hire JACK COLE to work with her. It took Zanuck forever, but he did eventually hire both Cole and Gwen. And that was a glorious period of technicolor movies with extraordinary JACK COLE numbers, among which Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.

[45:43] David Armstrong: So let's jump there. It is a series of numbers for Betty Grable and then for Marilyn Monroe, who becomes the subsequent Fox blonde.

[45:50] Debra Levine: Yes, that's right. And they overlap, of course, and work together. Let's put that all in the package of the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. Why is that number so iconic? And what is JACK COLE's contribution to it? Monroe, whose birth centenary we are celebrating this year, and she was on contract at Fox, not to the pleasure of Daryl Zanuck, who did not care for her. He did not see her potential, but she did have Howard Hawks, the director Howard Hawks, in her corner and was hired for the plum role that Betty Grable had been promised. Monroe was cast as Lorelei Lee, just as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was waning its very successful run on Broadway. And Monroe was cast along with a superstar of the era, Jane Russell, who was brought over to Fox on a loan by her boss, Howard Hughes.

[46:47] Debra Levine: But the fact is, is when the Broadway show of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was brought to the screen, to the dismay of the guy who had to write the screenplay, Charles Lederer, it was like a review. It didn't really have a narrative arc. It didn't have all the elements that a successful movie has. And they knew how to make movies like that at Fox. Lederer goes off and here comes JACK COLE and he meets the blonde bombshell. And Jack Cole is disheartened to see that Monroe, you know, very pretty girl, but she's moving around like a real schlump. Like she, you know, and she had done some ballet and she had done all the nice things that starlets did, but she was not a JACK COLE dancer, okay? And he just took her under wing, both she and Jane Russell, and they rehearsed their backsides off. Each of the ladies had their own proprietary number.

[47:45] Debra Levine: Jane had a number called, "'Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" The motto and the anthem of gay men in perpetuity. And it was a coded number by a gay man, which is-

[47:57] David Armstrong: Not so coded, but yes.

[47:59] Debra Levine: And then for Monroe, this Diamonds number, this fabulous song with incredible lyrics by Leo Robin, funny, funny song in which Lorelei Lee is demonstrating her skill at gold digging. And she's coaching her fellow chorus girls on not getting snookered by a man, but in fact, snookering men. So it's a kind of microcosm of the theme of the entire film. But what makes it kick butt is the production design. Everything screams JACK COLE. The color clash of a hot pink dress to a bright red background. The men around her, which is a Cole trademark, of course. You know, a powerful woman being surrounded by a cluster of men. And famously, these chandeliers, more code dancing. These chandeliers are decorated with chorus girls in black leather, basically.

And with their arms bound behind them, there's so much visual going on in this thing, and yet it's not really a clutter and you're just kind of transfixed. You know, there's no time to really stop and wonder, mostly because Marilyn Monroe is luminescent. She's like a lighting rod.

[49:16] Debra Levine: I think Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend imagined, created, choreographed, designed, and shot because he directed the number. I think Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend is really one of, it's a high point of cinema history. And this is not only true of JACK COLE, but certainly true of the majority of the numbers that JACK COLE created for the movies. The director of the movie is not there. JACK COLE directs, designs, does the camera work. He's the auteur of his numbers. He had a vision for all the angles and for how it would go together. And he had a vision of the whole number. So yes, he was an auteur, but many directors did not turn the car keys over to JACK COLE. In the early days, choreographers won Academy Awards.

The directors didn't want the choreographers getting that much attention. I think Cole is a poster child for a fully loaded choreographer who is capable and often did direct his own numbers, who, you know, hit a ceiling and did not break through as a full director.

[50:22] Debra Levine: So now let's talk about Broadway, which is something that Cole aspires to throughout his career. He appears on Broadway back in the 1930s in reviews.

[50:34] Debra Levine: Debra Levine is sort of like a segment of his nightclub act put into the reviews, is the way I interpreted that. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first show that he choreographs on Broadway is a Cole Porter musical called SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS, although it's almost entirely lost to us today. I mean, the score was recorded, but it's not a famous show, even though it was a giant hit show. In spite of the incredible creative team that was involved with it, and an incredibly gay creative team, if you look at who was there.

[51:05] David Armstrong: Okay. Okay. I'm learning. I'm learning.

[51:07] Debra Levine: It's written by Herbert Fields, one of the most important people in the history of the Broadway musical in terms of writing the book, but is the gay brother of Dorothy Fields. And then it's directed by Hassard Short, who was one of the first great stagers of Broadway musicals, also a very influential gay creator of Broadway. And then it's choreographed by JACK COLE, just those three people, and then Cole Porter is writing the score.

[51:34] David Armstrong: Porter, yes.

[51:35] Debra Levine: The four of those are four of the leading gay artists of Broadway in that period, all together on that show, which I found interesting. The corollary to that, for me, in Cole's film career is Les Girls, all gay men. It's Q Corp, it's again Cole Porter, Ori Kelly, George Heun. Heun was the gay man who did the color consulting on that, and JACK COLE. It was like West Side Story, you know, this kind of...

[52:05] David Armstrong: Totally. I haven't, and I don't think you were able to find out much about the dances in the show because you don't talk about them in the book.

[52:14] Debra Levine: Yeah, no, I think he did a solid job, and I do quote Cole Porter saying that he did a solid job. I think he did some square dance. You know, he then goes on to do dozens of Broadway shows over his career. Talk a little bit about the highlights of that.

[52:31] Debra Levine: Magdalena was an artful pageant about South American culture, about an ore mining town, I think, in Colombia. It is a famous ghost production of Broadway. It was set to Villalobos score, and Cole was said to have done his most magnificent work in Magdalena. It died a really difficult death after maybe a month or so on Broadway. But it connects him with several individuals who will become so important to his career. First of all, Edwin Lester, who is the producer of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, where the show starts, and then Robert Wright and George Forrest. Again, all gay men banding together with JACK COLE.

[53:16] David Armstrong: That's right.

[53:17] Debra Levine: Which will then lead to many, many other shows. Let's skip to really Cole's greatest Broadway hit, which is Kismet, and the same production team and the same creative team for the words and lyric. And again, starting in Los Angeles with Edwin Lester, right?

[53:34] David Armstrong: Yes, that's right. They did start on the West Coast and they made their way, I think, literally by train to the East Coast. Opened to a very chilly reception, Kismet did in New York. Print critics of New York could not get their venom into ink fast enough and bring in television. Here's Ed Sullivan, and three days after the show opened, he featured a JACK COLE number on The Ed Sullivan Show. And the TV critic chimed in, it's great, everyone needs to go. So everybody did go and it had a very long run. Kismet was so close to JACK COLE's heart. You know, he had choreographed the Marlena Dietrich Kismet in Hollywood, the movie. He did this Hindu swing, which he could put into Kismet, the show, and he was working with fantastic, talented, talented people. They had opera voices and they could move because in those days people could sing and dance. Amazing.

[54:34] Debra Levine: So Kismet had a long run and it was a showcase for one particular number, a trio. This is the Princesses Ababu famous dance. So Cole had this trio of supposedly three Persian princesses and he forged through them a new archetype of a really tough chick Asian lady wielding swords and shields and really having an attitude and this really technical, very arduous choreography. It blew people away. I mean, people had never seen anything like this. And he was the auteur of many, many dance trios. And that became a trope that other choreographers, famously Fosse, took on. People actually talk about Fosse trios. It's unbelievable.

[55:27] David Armstrong: Which is OK, except that you need to then say, which started with JACK COLE.

[55:32] Debra Levine: That's right. That's right. It's a simple connection. And, you know, that's what I hope to achieve with the book. As I say in my preface, just say his name. And the reason you brought up Steam Heat is because that's the same year as Kismet and Fosse wins the Tony Award for choreographer that year and JACK COLE for probably his danciest Broadway show. The show where it has the most measure for measure amount of dancing and his most distinctive show in many ways. I must say, and I'm going to use your platform to say, Tony committee. It's not too late for an honorary Tony for Kismet for JACK COLE. His next show on Broadway is Jamaica, which is a show that fascinates me. Again, a big hit for Lena Horne.

Lena Horne is the star of the show. There's a lot of dancing in it. There's so many legacy threads from JACK COLE. But Alvin Ailey is one of the most distinctive ones. We would not have Alvin Ailey the way we revere him. I think Revelations is one of the greatest theatrical dances ever put on a stage. But it is so clearly influenced by JACK COLE.

[56:38] David Armstrong: Yes, he even admitted to it.

[56:40] Debra Levine: Every chance he had, really. He said Cole's name. This goes back to California, I think. It was like California kids bonding together. That's a story that you are telling, which I think needs to be told. In a way, it sort of like goes full circle. JACK COLE starts in modern dance and then ends up very much influencing modern dance, especially through Alvin Ailey. That's a very nice thought. Ailey has this very famous launch of his company at the 92nd Street Y in 1958. It's just like a direct dump of the people who have been working in Jamaica. It's the entire cast of Jamaica, all those dancers trained by JACK COLE.

[57:17] David Armstrong: Exactly. I did find your discussions of two painful flops, Donnie Brook and Keane, to be very, very interesting. Especially because his work on those shows, and the shows themselves, seem to get great reviews. And seem to feel like they were going to be hits. And then they just fizzle. My heartstrings are pulled by JACK COLE back to the 30s when they would go out of town. And these shows would close out of town. Disappointment after disappointment. And then Moon Over Miami. He's going to be in a movie. He gets cut from the movie. What this guy went through, the disappointments. So those two shows, it was his launch in the dual role of director-choreographer. Neither of them really stuck. They were smart shows. I think he would have been absolutely devastated.

[58:11] Debra Levine: The dominoes are falling, right? You do want to get all the way to the end of the book. Not that that's hard to do by any means. Because it does compel you. And he does have several hits. If anything happened on the way to the Forum, that on paper is one of his biggest hit Broadway shows. Most successful. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes there. In addition to the famous story of Robbins redoing the opening number. And there were things there I didn't know. I'll just leave that as a teaser for my audience. His second major, major hit is Man of La Mancha. Unfortunately doesn't leave a legacy of his choreography for us to go and see to a great extent. In a way it's sort of a great show for JACK COLE to become involved with.

Because it's so avant-garde. So the opposite of Broadway in a certain extent. It's a show I would love to go see. I wish we could go back in time. And we sort of saw watered down versions of it over the years. But you see it in that original incarnation where it was drawing on all these sort of avant-garde theater forms. And Jack Cole I think was in tune with all of that as he would be.

[59:21] Debra Levine: Going back to the Keen and Donnybrook. He really came back to New York on a high. He was kind of revered and his reputation was so high. And dance was a big thing on Broadway at that point. It seems like he would enter into this world that he was embracing of dance.

[59:39] David Armstrong: That's right. It's so tragic.

[59:41] Debra Levine: It's so tragic. I mean that would be the happy ending to quote the name of one of his greatest numbers. So let's end with just one little thread that I encourage people to read the book. Is the other major figure or at least central supporting character in your book is Marilyn Monroe. Because they have such an intense relationship. And he's there throughout from when she is functioning very, very well to when she is not functioning hardly at all. And he has to work with her. He has to deal with her. He's got to share that burden with her in a way. You talk very movingly about when she dies and the impact that had on Cole.

[1:00:24] Debra Levine: Yes. From the aspect of cultural history Marilyn Monroe looms gigantic and JACK COLE is right there with her. You can't really talk about without talking about JACK COLE.

[1:00:36] David Armstrong: Yes, but very late in the day. I think like last week because we're having a lot of centenary events about Marilyn. And I just put together that of all the stars of her caliber, Monroe did not have a director. Marilyn bounced from one to the other. But what she had was a choreographer. And as you note in the book, she wrote him into her contracts. She at different points was a ball and chain around his neck. And you see that when they move, when they morph, when they transition into doing Let's Make Love, which was hell for him. You know, there was something between them. Her neurosis I think he understood. It's a mystery and I'm just very proud to kind of lay it out in the book.

[1:01:20] Debra Levine: What you have done for us with this book is bring JACK COLE to the forefront to center him in his own story in a well-deserved assessment of his life and career and impact. Just talk a little bit about the legacy. I know in my book all subsequent Broadway dance is related to JACK COLE.

[1:01:41] David Armstrong: Yeah, it is.

[1:01:44] Debra Levine: And it really takes form. The essence of how dance is passed through generations from student to teacher, from choreographer to dancer, which is a natural process. In this particular case, there's an artistic triangle, which is JACK COLE and Gwen Verdon, his muse, and Bob Fosse. And that triangle is really a structure of my book. It's Ron Fields. It's Michael Bennett. It's Jerry Mitchell. It's really all of them. How did Jerry Robbins become such a great jazz choreographer? He started in ballet and in soft shoe. How did that happen? Who influenced that? With the death of dance criticism, there's very few people who have the moxie to step forward and like, let's look at what happened. Let's look at these people. I see Cole right at the top and even outside the dance silo as an American artist, as being such a brilliant innovator, such a brilliant synthesizer, such a brave artist.

[1:02:53] Debra Levine: We're bringing him back. Jack's back.

[1:02:57] David Armstrong: I think that's the perfect way to end our conversation. Thank you, Levine.

[1:02:59] Debra Levine: Thank you so much for joining me today on Broadway Nation to talk about your new book, Jazzed, JACK COLE and 20th Century American Dance.

[1:03:09] David Armstrong: Thank you, David.