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Notices |  |
| Actors and Actresses For discussion on screen stars. |
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01-02-2006, 06:03 PM
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samkydd
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Quote:
Hollywood movie? |
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01-02-2006, 06:10 PM
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Steve Crook
is cheeky
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Steve |
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01-02-2006, 06:14 PM
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Fellwanderer
is just waiting for Jenny to...
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Quote:
Moira Shearer. FELL FELL A signature is no substitute for a life |
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01-02-2006, 06:27 PM
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smudge
is back at work now, but it pays for the weekends!
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Sad news indeed.
A talented and beautiful lady ; may she rest in peace. Respect, SMUDGE |
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01-02-2006, 08:05 PM
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samkydd
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01-02-2006, 11:31 PM
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deckard
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How saddened I am to hear of the death of Moira Shearer, such a beautiful, delightfully energetic talent......another sad loss....... Decks.
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02-02-2006, 08:54 AM
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julian_craster
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From Julian Craster
Very Sad news.. BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4671424.stm Obituary: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2280620.stm Some UK Obituaries: The Times, London Moira Shearer January 17, 1926 - January 31, 2006 Dazzling ballerina who moved beyond the confines of dance to take up directing, acting and authorship IT SAYS something significant about Moira Shearer’s career that, having become at only 22 one of the most famous ballerinas in the world, she chose in later years to define her occupation in her Who’s Who entry simply as “writer”. That is at least partly because, she said later, she loathed her most celebrated role, as the ballerina in the film The Red Shoes (1948). “I was forced into it”, she said, and found afterwards what she called a solid wall of prejudice against her ballet career, from audiences, critics and even other dancers. Born in Dunfermline, Fife, in 1926, her full name was Moira Shearer King. Her first dancing lessons were received in Northern Rhodesia, where the family had temporarily moved during her childhood, but her main professional training was in London, first with Flora Fairbairn and then at the Legat and Sadler’s Wells schools. She made her stage debut in 1941 with the newly formed International Ballet and joined Sadler’s Wells Ballet the following year. During her first season with that company she danced her first leading role, in Les Sylphides. In 1943 she attracted much attention when Frederick Ashton, on leave from the RAF to create The Quest (based on Spenser’s The Fairy Queen), cast her as Pride in the Seven Deadly Sins episode. Other roles were created for her during the war by Ninette de Valois in Promenade, Robert Helpmann in Miracle in the Gorbals, and Andrée Howard in The Spider’s Banquet. She also took other parts as varied as a very smooth White Skater in Les Patineurs and a witty Polka in Façade. When the Sadler’s Wells Ballet moved to Covent Garden in February 1946 and reopened the Opera House with a season of The Sleeping Beauty, Moira Shearer was given her first ballerina role as Princess Aurora, at first in matinee performances, but soon alternating with Fonteyn. She was also chosen by Ashton that same year as one of the three women in his creation of Symphonic Variations, the pure-dance work which set the seal on his inventive genius. From an early age, Shearer had wanted to make her mark entirely by her ability as a dancer, and was unhappy at being singled out often for her exceptionally beautiful face and striking red hair. She was therefore somewhat doubtful about accepting an invitation to star in The Red Shoes, but was persuaded by de Valois that any success she achieved in this would be to the benefit of the company as a whole. In the event, the film achieved a fame beyond all expectations and her performance as the ballerina, acting as well as dancing, brought her international renown. Her ballet roles, of course, had already involved the physical elements of acting, and luckily she had a good speaking voice. De Valois had been right in predicting that the film would make ballet more widely popular than ever. Directly after completing it, however, Shearer returned to Covent Garden where, in 1948, she danced in two more creations by Ashton, as the Young Wife in Don Juan and in the title part of Cinderella, taking over the first performance of the latter from Fonteyn, who had suffered an injury. By this time Shearer was already dancing also the ballerina roles in Coppelia and Swan Lake, and soon afterwards she danced her first Giselle. Leonide Massine chose to partner her when he mounted La Boutique Fantasque for the company, gave her another lead in Mam’zelle Angot and created a role for her in Clock Symphony. Her other leading parts included Julia in A Wedding Bouquet and the central roles in Sc ènes de Ballet, both by Ashton, and George Balanchine’s Ballet Imperial. She reported that Balanchine preferred her crisp, technical assurance in this to Fonteyn’s lyricism. In 1950 she appeared in Paris as guest star in Roland Petit’s Carmen. Her next film was The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), in which she again had a dancing role. She was, however, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with her dancing career, probably because of a feeling that she was not taken seriously but tolerated for her looks and prestige. In 1952 she left the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (although she subsequently made a few guest appearances) and later danced for a short time with Festival Ballet. She turned to acting, in the films The Story of Three Loves (1953) and The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955), then as Titania in a spectacular Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream which was mounted for the 1954 Edinburgh Festival and later toured Canada and the US. She and Helpmann, who was playing Oberon, also performed Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale at Edinburgh. There followed a season with the Bristol Old Vic, where her roles included Shaw’s Major Barbara, and a tour as Sally Bowles in I Am A Camera. She also made two further films in 1960: dramatic in Peeping Tom and a dancing comeback as Roxanne in Petit’s Cyrano de Bergerac in the three-ballet film Black Tights. However, she soon withdrew into private life. She had married Ludovic Kennedy in 1950 and now devoted herself to the duties of a wife and mother. There were, however, occasional lecture tours, individually or with her husband. She served on the Scottish Arts Council, 1971-73, and regularly reviewed books for The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. Later she wrote two books: Balletmaster: A Dancer’s View of George Balanchine (1986), and a biography of Ellen Terry (1998). During 1978, Shearer appeared in two further plays, nicely contrasted roles in The Cherry Orchard and Hay Fever, and in 1987 she played the mother of the painter L. S. Lowry in Gillian Lynne’s creation A Simple Man with Northern Ballet Theatre for BBC Television. Her farewell appearance on stage was not until 1994, in a production of The Aspern Papers. Her last dancing role had been created specially for her by Peter Darrell, director of the Scottish Ballet, in Gold Diggers, for a Glasgow gala in 1980, leading all the men of the company in a high-kicking routine to an arrangement of Tea for Two. Although she remained active in so many categories, it is as a dancer that Shearer will be remembered, especially as The Red Shoes still appears frequently on television. Her early success in ballet did indeed arise partly from her looks. Even before she took leading roles, nobody could help noticing her. Once she had established herself, however, her glamour made a positive contribution to the works in which she appeared, and it was supported by an assured professionalism. She gave no evidence of great emotional depth in her performances, but in roles demanding a lyrical or classical purity she danced with exceptional facility and flair, which led several choreographers to make interesting use of her talents in new works. She cut short her dancing career when she could have been expected to be approaching the peak of her abilities. By that time, however, she had already made a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the national and international standing of ballet. She is survived by her husband, and by a son and three daughters. Moira Shearer, ballet dancer and actress, was born on January 17, 1926. She died on January 31, 2006, aged 80. ------------------------------------------------------------- The Guardian Moira Shearer Gifted ballerina whose fame as a stage and screen actor helped popularise her art By Mary Clarke Thursday February 2, 2006 Moira Shearer, who has died at the age of 80, was a ballerina of the Sadler's Wells (now Royal) Ballet in its first years at Covent Garden over whom only Margot Fonteyn took precedence. By starring in the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film The Red Shoes (1948), she became, for a while, the best known dancer in Britain, and certainly in the United States. As a result, she was able to popularise ballet at that time more than any of her colleagues, Fonteyn included. Even today, people of all ages admit being drawn to the ballet "because I saw The Red Shoes". The success and enduring popularity of that film should not, however, overshadow a career that encompassed a comparatively brief, yet distinguished, sojourn in the world of classical ballet, as well as fine achievements as an actor, film star, lecturer, writer and speaker of poetry. Her other films were Powell and Pressburger's The Tales Of Hoffmann (1950) in which the quality of her dancing, as the doll Olympia, is probably best preserved; The Story Of Three Loves (1952); The Man Who Loved Redheads (1954); Michael Powell's controversial Peeping Tom (1960); and Terence Young's ballet film 1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs (Black Tights, 1961) with choreography by Roland Petit. Born Moira Shearer King in Dunfermline, Fife, she was educated at Dunfermline high school, in Ndola, in what was then Northern Rhodesia, and at Bearsden Academy, in East Dunbartonshire. Although she had her first ballet lessons in Ndola, her training was essentially in Britain, first with Flora Fairbairn, then with the great pedagogue Nicholas Legat and, after his death in 1937, with his widow Nadine Nicolayeva. She joined the Sadler's Well School in 1940, and a year later made her professional debut with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet. She was immediately noticed for her classic style and exceptional beauty - features of porcelain delicacy and flame-coloured hair. By 1942 she had joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet (then, during wartime, based at the New, now Albery, Theatre) and promotion came quickly. Frederick Ashton cast her as Pride in his 1943 ballet The Quest, and Ninette de Valois chose her to create the role of the girl in the sparkling pas de trois, a small gem in the ballet Promenade, the same year. By 1944 she was a principal of the company, dancing a wide variety of roles, both classic and demi-caractère But it was the move of the company to the Royal Opera House in 1946 that set the seal on Shearer's right to the ballerina title. In the opening production of The Sleeping Beauty, in the famous Oliver Messel designs, she followed Fonteyn and Pamela May in the role of Princess Aurora, and immediately won a huge following of her own. Among her admirers was Sacheverell Sitwell - her beauty and his unrequited passion is said to have inspired some of his Selected Poems of 1948. Shearer's first Aurora came early in March 1946, and in April she was to create, alongside Fonteyn and May, one of the three ballerina roles in Ashton's sublime Symphonic Variations, that plotless masterpiece for six dancers which is a celebration of the English style of classic dance. She also created the role of Cinderella in Ashton's version of the Prokofiev ballet, being chosen to replace the injured Fonteyn and thereby playing no small part in ensuring the success of Ashton's first full-evening work. In addition to dancing Ashton ballets and in the classics, Shearer also experienced the challenge of working with Léonide Massine, when he came to Sadler's Wells in 1947 to stage or revive his most famous works. She was a can-can dancer with him in La Boutique Fantasque, a Jota dancer in The Three-cornered Hat, and created the role of the Aristocrat in his new version of Mam'zelle Angot. An experience which left an even greater mark was working with George Balanchine when his Ballet Imperial, with the beautiful Eugene Berman designs, entered the Sadler's Wells repertory in 1950. Fonteyn was cast first for the ballerina role but it was Shearer, who followed her, whose speed of footwork came nearest to capturing Balanchine's virtuoso choreography. The short period of working with the choreographer left such lasting memories that, more than 30 years later, Shearer wrote Balletmaster: a Dancer's View of George Balanchine (1986). In 1952, at the absurdly young age of 26, she became a guest artist with the Sadler's Wells Ballet, a prelude to her (almost) complete retirement from dancing. By now married to Ludovic Kennedy, and with a young child, she wanted to make a new career as an actor. She toured as Sally Bowles in I Am A Camera and appeared as Titania (to Robert Helpmann's Oberon) in an Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, first at the 1954 Edinburgh festival and then on tour in north America. In 1955 she joined the Bristol Old Vic, where she appeared, notably, as Shaw's Major Barbara. At the 1957 Edinburgh festival, and in a subsequent tour, she played opposite Anton Walbrook in Walter Hasenclever's A Man of Distinction, a collaboration remembered in theatrical memoirs for the total lack of sympathy, even of communication, between those two stars. In 1977 she was back in the theatre as Madame Ranevskaya, in The Cherry Orchard at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh, and a year later was Judith Bliss in Hay Fever. In 1994 she played Juliana Bordereau in The Aspern Papers at the Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow. In 1987 she had returned to the ballet to create the role of Lowry's mother in Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man, made for BBC television to mark the centenary of the artist (played by Christopher Gable), which subsequently entered the repertory of Northern Ballet Theatre. In 1973 she lectured on ballet history and Sergei Diaghilev in the US, as she also did regularly in England and Wales - and three times on the Queen Elizabeth II liner - and gave poetry and prose recitals, often with her husband. During the last years of her life, Shearer wrote book reviews (not just of dance books) for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, which were immensely readable though not celebrated for their generosity towards authors. In 1998 she published a biography of Ellen Terry. She is survived by her husband, three daughters and a son. Moira Shearer King (Lady Kennedy), ballerina and actor, born January 17 1926; died January 31 2006 ------------------------------------------- Daily Telegraph London Moira Shearer 02/02/2006 Moira Shearer , who died on Tuesday aged 80, was a strikingly beautiful leading ballerina with the Sadler's Wells (later the Royal) Ballet; she was best known for her performance in the film The Red Shoes, which won her the heart of the writer and broadcaster Ludovic (now Sir Ludovic) Kennedy, whom she married in 1950. At one time in the mid-1940s Moira Shearer was compared to the great Margot Fonteyn; in such roles as Cinderella, Odette in Swan Lake and Mam'zelle Angot, she enthralled audiences with her flawless technique, light elegance of style and copper-coloured hair: "No other leading dancer, not even Fonteyn or Markova," wrote the poet James Kirkup, "demonstrated such intelligence in her dancing and such profound musicality as did Moira Shearer, at least among British dancers." There was, he observed, "something intensely warm and human in her dancing", reminiscent of the style of the "classic ballerina assoluta". In 1947, when she was 21, she was persuaded to take the lead role in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film The Red Shoes, and was enchanting as Victoria Page, the young ballerina torn between a struggling composer and a powerful impresario. Released in 1948, it won four Oscar nominations and made Moira Shearer one of the most widely-known ballerinas in history. Her success led to leading roles in other films, such as The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955) and Black Tights (1960). But her absence from regular stage performances caused her dancing to suffer, and she never regained the form she had shown in her early career. Instead she devoted herself wholeheartedly to being a wife to Ludovic Kennedy and mother to their four children, though she continued to appear at Covent Garden and later became a competent stage actress, as well as a writer, broadcaster and lecturer. The daughter of a civil engineer, Moira Shearer King was born at Dunfermline, Fife, on January 17 1926. It was her mother who pushed her into ballet; she had her first dancing lessons in Northern Rhodesia where her family moved when she was a child. The family returned to Scotland when she was 10, and Moira was educated at Dunfermline High School and Bearsden Academy, near Glasgow. At 14 she entered the Sadler's Wells School. But, as she admitted later: "I never wanted to be a dancer. When you're 10 you don't have much say in the matter. I suppose I did enjoy it in a way - I don't blame Mama at all - but I think what one does should be one's own choice." Moira Shearer was launched by Mona Inglesby's new International Ballet in 1941, but a year later she rejoined the Sadler's Wells organisation and, until 1945, was one of that band of young dancers which helped to sustain the ballet on its wartime tours. Moira Shearer was first in the corps de ballet of Ninette de Valois's Orpheus and Eurydice in 1943. Within two years she was dancing major classic roles. The next year she appeared in Robert Helpmann's Miracle in the Gorbals and as Odette in Swan Lake, a performance that, according to one critic, "made the audience gasp". At Covent Garden in 1946 she appeared with Margot Fonteyn and Pamela May in Frederick Ashton's Symphonic Variations. When his three-act Cinderella was launched in December 1948, she was the first to dance the title role, with Michael Somes as the Prince and Ashton and Helpmann as the Ugly Sisters. She also danced the cancan with Leonide Massine in his Boutique Fantasque during the 1948-49 season. By that time she had made her film debut in The Red Shoes. In later life she sometimes declared that she had been ill-advised to take the part, feeling that it had lost her the interest of the professional ballet world. At other times, though, she said that she much preferred to be out of ballet and enjoying family life: "I used to feel that there was so much more in life than dancing - so much ordinary living to do." It is possible, of course, that she forgot that it was through the film that she captured the heart of Ludovic Kennedy, who was persuaded to see it by his mother, even though he had no interest in ballet. As he recalled, "here was this apparition with the reddest of red hair, a figure like an hour-glass, blue-green eyes the size of saucers, the prettiest of noses and a most pleasing voice. And as if that weren't enough, she danced with a grace and lightness that were breathtaking; and her death under the wheels of a train in Monte Carlo station was almost more than one could bear." Ludovic Kennedy fell deeply in love. By good fortune, some time later he was given two complimentary tickets to the Sadler's Wells-Old Vic Ball. When he arrived he found that Moira Shearer and Ralph Richardson were presenting the prizes. Though they had not been formally introduced, Kennedy eventually plucked up courage to approach her. "I walked boldly up, gabbled my name and said, in a rush, 'Would you like to dance?' " By the time they reached the dance floor, he was beginning to wish he was anywhere else: "I put one hand in hers and the other round her waist (Oh, boy!). Then she said, 'before we start, I must tell you something.' What could it be? 'I don't dance very well.' We set off, and within a step or two it was clear she couldn't dance for toffee." So began a courtship which ended in their marriage in 1950. After their marriage, Moira Shearer danced occasionally at Covent Garden, toured America with the ballet in 1950 and also appeared with other companies. Her last scheduled Covent Garden appearance was as Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty in 1953. The following year she danced at the Edinburgh Festival in Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale, with Robert Helpmann, and played Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Films still occupied her. She appeared in The Story of Three Loves in 1953, and was the star of The Man Who Loved Redheads, a Terence Rattigan comedy, in 1955. She then returned to the stage as an actress and toured for six months as Sally Bowles (replacing Dorothy Tutin) in Isherwood's I Am a Camera. After this she joined the Bristol Old Vic for a year and played in A Man of Distinction at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957. Moira Shearer was on the BBC's General Advisory Council from 1970 to 1977 and the Scottish Arts Council from 1971 to 1973. She also served as a director of Border Television. She was, however, vetoed for appointment as BBC Governor for the Arts by Margaret Thatcher, a decision which Ludovic Kennedy assumed had been taken for reasons of "petty partisanship" (he had stood as a candidate for the Liberal Party) and which he could not find it in his heart to forgive. During the 1970s she lectured widely. In 1972 she compered the Eurovision Song Contest in Edinburgh. She was, for a short time in 1973, an announcer on BBC Radio 3, and was a reader on the BBC's Book at Bedtime. She and Ludovic Kennedy read Scottish love poems at the Edinburgh Festival in 1975. In 1977 she played Madame Ranevsky in Chekhov's Cherry Orchard at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and, in 1978, was Judith Bliss in Coward's Hay Fever. She made occasional appearances as a ballet dancer in later life - at Christmas 1967 she returned to the stage at Covent Garden to dance, with Ashton, the comic tango from his ballet Façade at a gala performance for the Friends of Covent Garden. Earlier that year she was the Mother in Gillian Lynne's ballet about the life of the painter LS Lowry, appearing alongside Christopher Gable as Lowry. In later years she became a reviewer of books on ballet and other theatrical subjects in The Daily Telegraph and wrote biographies of the choreographer George Balanchine (who had been a great admirer) and the actress Ellen Terry. Moira Shearer enjoyed listening to music and watching rugby and boxing, a sport which she claimed had much in common with the ballet, "though we never bashed each other quite so much!" Even in old age, Moira Shearer kept her good looks, youthful appearance, slight figure and auburn hair. She always looked elegant, despite the fact that she claimed to be uninterested in fashion. In later life, she and her husband left Scotland and settled in Wiltshire. Ludovic Kennedy survives her with their son and three daughters. |
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02-02-2006, 10:40 AM
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ShirlGirl
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I was asking about her just two weeks ago in the forum. This has happened to me so many times, that I've been thinking about someone famous who I might not have thought of for a long time and shortly after they die.
It's sad news, she was very special. |
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03-02-2006, 09:39 AM
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julian_craster
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Senior Member
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Moira Shearer : From The Independent
3 February 2006 Moira Shearer 'Born ballerina' whose radiant performance in 'The Red Shoes' she said blighted her career Moira King (Moira Shearer), dancer, actress and writer: born Dunfermline, Fife 17 January 1926; married 1950 Ludovic Kennedy (Kt 1994; one son, three daughters); died Oxford 31 January 2006. Exceptionally beautiful and talented, famous yet elusive, Moira Shearer was ballet's answer to Greta Garbo - even if the details and reasons differed. In 1948, aged just 22, she achieved lasting worldwide celebrity as the ballerina heroine of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes, a film which brought ballet to an enormous new public. As a principal dancer with the Sadler's Wells Ballet (now Royal Ballet), she danced leading roles at the Royal Opera House and was talked of as a successor to Margot Fonteyn. Yet she always said that The Red Shoes had irreversibly compromised her career as a dancer. And in 1953, at 27, she virtually abandoned dancing. She did return briefly as a guest artist with London Festival Ballet in 1954. Much later, in 1987, she created the role of Elizabeth Lowry in Gillian Lynne's A Simple Man, premiered on BBC TV for L.S. Lowry's centenary - and this was to be her last dance appearance. Meanwhile, she had turned to other activities, as an actress, a mother of four children, a lecturer and a writer. (She gave her profession as just "writer" in her Who's Who entry.) But mostly she dropped out of the limelight, maintaining a low profile even when returning to public view. There are few interviews, few articles. Her husband, the writer and broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy, has been working on her biography, but this has yet to be published. She was born in January 1926, in Dunfermline, Fife, a flame-haired girl whose father, Harold King, was a civil engineer. The family home was Barum House, built in 1880 for her maternal grandfather, James Shearer; but, when she was six, she moved with her parents to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. There, pushed by her mother, she started dance classes with a former member of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Two years later, in 1934, they returned to Britain, first to Scotland, where Moira attended Bearsden Academy, then to London, where she studied ballet with Flora Fairbairn and Nadine Nicolaeva Legat. In 1940 she entered the Sadler's Wells School and made her stage début, as a student, with the company the same year. In 1941, after a short interlude in Scotland to escape the wartime blitz, she joined Mona Inglesby's new International Ballet. Leo Kersley, a fellow dancer, remembers her as spectacularly eye-catching even then. He and other company members would make a special effort to watch her perform the opening Swallow solo in Mona Inglesby's Planetomania. "She glided, dreamy and gorgeous." She had, he says, a natural talent, which meant that dancing came easily to her: She was a born ballerina, willowy, with fabulous red hair. Yet she was also a nice, ordinary girl with no illusions of grandeur. She was incredibly beautiful, but down-to-earth. In 1942, aged 16, she was invited by Ninette de Valois into the Sadler's Wells Ballet and became part of a band touring the length and breadth of the country during the wartime years. They shared damp, cold digs and danced, sustained only by food rations. First appearing in the corps de ballet of de Valois's Orpheus and Eurydice, she went on to perform many of the important roles in the established repertoire. She danced the ballets of Mikhail Fokine: all the solos in his Sylphides, the young girl in Le Spectre de la rose, Columbine in Carnaval. She performed other de Valois works, as well as ballets by Frederick Ashton, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine. In 1943 she was given her first created role as Pride in Ashton's The Quest, based on Spenser's The Faerie Queene. This was followed by other Ashton premieres: in 1946 she was cast in Symphonic Variations, forming a trio with Margot Fonteyn and Pamela May in a ballet which epitomised a post-war classical purity and serenity; in 1948 she was the original Young Wife in Don Juan; and the same year she took the title role of the three-act Cinderella, replacing an injured Fonteyn at the first performance. She created roles in other ballets such as de Valois's Promenade, Robert Helpmann's Miracle in the Gorbals and Andrée Howard's Le Festin de l'araignée. Massine chose to partner her in the cancan when he staged his La Boutique fantasque for the company; he gave her a lead role in the company premiere of his Mam'zelle Angot; and he cast her in his new ballet Clock Symphony (1948). Margot Fonteyn wrote that Shearer always had star quality, brightening "the company like a jewel". She was "fair and fragile-looking, her dancing as light and airy as an autumn leaf". Professional critics were not always so enthusiastic. But she was praised for her secure balances and deft pirouettes, as well as her slender beauty. The references to her good looks probably frustrated her, when she longed to be recognised for the quality of her dancing. She also performed the iconic roles of the classical repertoire - The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Giselle. The young Clive Barnes, soon to become an important critic, remembered her matinée début in The Sleeping Beauty. It was 1946, the company had just moved into the Royal Opera House and Margot Fonteyn was already riveting audiences with her own performances in this lavish, inaugural production. But Moira Shearer had a special quality as well. "This Aurora was dazzling in its promise," he wrote. "It combined enormous gusto with a fragile delicacy in a manner that was peculiarly affecting." The writer Sacheverell Sitwell saw her at another matinée and was completely smitten. He wrote her a fan letter and they became friends. She was a strictly brought-up girl living with her parents in Kensington and the romantic infatuation was all on his side. As an intelligent, down-to-earth Scot with a literary bent, she was often irritated that his idealisation of her disregarded her intellect. But she inspired some of his poetry and their friendship was to last until his death more than 30 years later. Then came the 1948 ballet film The Red Shoes, based on Hans Christian Andersen's story of a young girl forced to dance to death by the shoes on her feet. When the directors Powell and Pressburger approached Shearer, she was reluctant because she worried that she'd lose her roles in the Sadler's Wells company. But Ninette de Valois persuaded her that the exposure would benefit the whole company. And so it was: after a slow start, the film was a huge hit - beyond all expectations. It imprinted itself in the memories of movie-goers who would never have otherwise watched ballet. Moira Shearer, as the ballerina made to sacrifice her love for a composer in favour of her career, entranced audiences everywhere. As an actress, she not only had radiance, but a fine voice and dramatic nuance. By the end of the film, she had so captivated spectators that her death under the wheels of a train, was - in the words of her future husband Ludovic Kennedy - "almost more than one could bear". When the following year the Sadler's Wells Ballet made their American début, Shearer was better known than Fonteyn. She made a second Powell and Pressburger film - The Tales of Hoffmann - in 1950, but continued to dance with the Sadler's Wells Ballet. Later she was to express regret about The Red Shoes. "I was forced into it and was very ill advised at the time," she said: Apart from that, it did a great deal of harm to my career as a dancer. After The Red Shoes and later films, whenever I returned to ballet I was met with a solid wall of prejudice - from the ballet audience, from the ballet critics, eventually even from the dancers. Happier experiences were her guest performances in Paris, in Roland Petit's ballet Carmen, and the arrival of George Balanchine at Covent Garden to stage Ballet Imperial - both in 1950. (In 1986 she was to write a book, Balletmaster: a dancer's view of George Balanchine.) Although Fonteyn danced the first night, Balanchine had wanted Shearer's tauter technical assurance. His confidence in her was a tremendous boost, at a time when she imagined herself accepted in the company only because of her looks and renown. She might well have joined Balanchine's New York City Ballet, were it not for a change in her private life. She had become involved with the future broadcaster and human rights campaigner Ludovic Kennedy - then employed as a librarian in order to finish his second book, Nelson's Band of Brothers (on 14 of Nelson's captains, published in 1951) - and they were married in February 1950. They had met at a ball where she was judging a fancy dress competition. Kennedy, who had been so overwhelmed by The Red Shoes, recognised her and plucked up the courage to invite her to dance. She had accepted, but added, to his astonishment, "I don't dance very well." She then showed him she wasn't exaggerating. She trod on his feet and nearly tripped him up, explaining that she rarely attempted ballroom dancing. Shearer's retirement from dancing was provoked by injury and an ambition to become an actress. She made several other films: The Story of Three Loves (1952); The Man Who Loved Redheads (1954); Peeping Tom (1960); and Black Tights (1961). On stage she played Titania (opposite Robert Helpmann's Oberon) in an Old Vic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for the 1954 Edinburgh Festival, which then toured Canada and the United States. She toured for another six months as Sally Bowles (replacing Dorothy Tutin) in Christopher Isherwood's I Am a Camera. She joined the Bristol Old Vic, where she appeared in Shaw's Major Barbara (1956) and other plays. After a gap, she resumed stage acting, playing Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard (1977) and Judith Bliss in Hay Fever (1978) at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh. Still later, she was Juliana Bordereau in The Aspern Papers at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow (1994). She had meanwhile reinvented herself as a lecturer, writer and broadcaster. She was a reader on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime, she lectured widely on Diaghilev and the history of the ballet, she gave public recitals of poetry and prose with her husband. She served on the Scottish Arts Council (1971-73) and the BBC General Advisory Council (1970-77), and was a director of Border Television (1977-82). She wrote a biography, Ellen Terry (1998), as well as her book about Balanchine. She was a regular book reviewer for The Daily and The Sunday Telegraph, and wrote perceptive entries on Ashton and Helpmann for the DNB. In 2000, Shearer fell ill with viral encephalitis, which left her with an impaired memory. She and her husband had left Scotland to live in Avebury, Wiltshire, but in 2002 they sold their house to move to Oxford. Nadine Meisner Moira Shearer was made my godmother in 1951, having married my uncle Ludovic Kennedy, writes Richard Calvocoressi. I am not a ballet historian and I am too young ever to have seen her dance, so short was her career. But I was brought up on stories of her grace and intelligence as a dancer, as well as of her beauty and mesmerising stage presence. I watched The Red Shoes on television and last year I saw Peeping Tom for the first time in the Michael Powell retrospective at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Moira told me she did not really care for Powell, though it is an extraordinary film, way ahead of its time. I also witnessed her stage comeback in Edinburgh in the late 1970s, when she and Ludovic were living in a Georgian terraced house overlooking the Water of Leith, and was moved by her performance in The Aspern Papers in Glasgow 12 years ago. When playing Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera in the Fifties, she said she dreaded every night having to mix and swallow in full view of the audience a "prairie oyster" - a concoction of raw egg and Worcester sauce - with which Sally tries to cure her hangover. She never completely shed her dancer's training; whether acting or in ordinary life she always stood and moved like a ballerina, even on the tennis court. Moira was an imaginative and generous godparent, remembering my birthday long after custom dictated. For my 21st she gave me a complete set of Proust. She loved French culture. She would have been blissful living in a farmhouse in the Provençal sun but had to make do with holidays in the Highlands instead. When I was a child our two families would combine to rent a remote house in Inverness-shire belonging to the historian John Grigg, where Ludovic could indulge his love of fishing and shooting and teach these sports to his children and nephews. It wasn't exactly Moira's cup of tea, but she entered into it with enthusiasm and her customary good-humour and sense of the absurd. She had an attractive, deep voice and an infectious laugh, and was a good mimic. She also held strong views on politics and other subjects and I can remember some heated discussions between the grown-ups at dinner. I think she enjoyed teasing people - she had a mischievous side. In some respects she was more radical in her opinions than Ludovic, although she did not subscribe to his atheism and his criticisms of the Christian Church, leaving open, in a conversation I clearly recall, the possibility that there might be something in religion. She occasionally confided that she hadn't really wanted to be a dancer, that the discipline and commitment ruled out any other kind of life, and that she had been pushed into it by her mother. I often wondered whether her passion for literature, music and the visual arts, which she largely developed after her ballet career ended - and which had a big influence on me - wasn't in some way making up for lost time and her lack of higher education. At home, she listened to classical music all day long and at one point trained with the BBC to become a Radio 3 announcer. But she gave up because she could not manage the split-second timing and occasional requirement to "fill in". She was a perfectionist in whatever she did, but not in a frigid sense: everything, even producing a meal, was done effortlessly with a supreme lightness of touch. She had a great sense of style without ever being a slave to fashion. In fact, there was something timeless about her dress: skirt or slacks, wide belt encircling minuscule waist, and full blouse - the New Look might have been designed specially for her. She kept her legendary pile of golden red hair well into old age. Her mother's family, the Shearers, must have been quite artistic. It's not widely known that Moira's uncle James Shearer was a distinguished architect, partner in the firm of Shearer and Annan, responsible for some stylish public buildings, monuments and interiors in and around Dunfermline as well as various dams and power stations in the Highlands. Moira's own innate artistic sense was inherited by all three of her daughters, two of whom studied at art college and became practising artists, while the third founded her own design business. Moira definitely had star quality. There was something alluring and mysterious about her morning ritual of black coffee and a cigarette in her dressing-gown before she could start the day - and starting the day meant spending a considerable length of time in her bedroom carefully preparing face and hair. She would emerge, prancing and radiating energy, ready to turn heads wherever she went. But she was modest and self-effacing about her own achievements. She once tried to write her memoirs but dropped the idea after about a fortnight, complaining of boredom. She didn't like looking back and couldn't imagine that anyone would want to read about her life. Her performances were what counted and those could not be recreated. One of her daughters recently told me that when she and Ludovic moved house for the last time she threw away a couple of sacks of photographs and other memorabilia, claiming they were of no interest to anyone. |
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03-02-2006, 04:31 PM
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Clinton Morgan
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Red Shoes is my favourite film. I will admit to harbouring a desire that I would bump into Moira Shearer and (if I was to be carrying it) ask her to autograph my VHS copy of the film.
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13-02-2006, 06:42 PM
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theuofc
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Quote:
Another fine article on Moira from The Independent, this one by David Thomson, who has interesting comments on her relationship with Michael Powell. Moria Shearer was a beautiful, talented woman whom I respect for also carving out a second career as a writer and lecturer in addition to her long marriage to the writer/broadcaster and gutsy activist Ludovic Kennedy. Barbara http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/fe...ticle344666.ece Film Studies: What made Moira a star? Poise and charm? Suspicion and fear, actually By David Thomson Published: 12 February 2006 When Moira Shearer died a couple of weeks ago, every newspaper ran a picture of the lady in The Red Shoes, the 1948 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, that wilful fable on facing the choice between death and art, and the obituary tag that Ms Shearer must have realised was waiting for her. And it is still possible to paint a pretty picture of the ardent, flame-haired ballerina who got the lead in the most famous ballet movie of all time, the hysterical romance that has driven so many young girls (apparently) to the dream of having their feet and their blood-red shoes cut off so that they can die in peace. But there is a funnier and more human story, too. In Million Dollar Movie, the second volume of his autobiography, published in 1992, Michael Powell wrote, "Moira and I have had the most perfect relationship that can be imagined between two creative artists: it is based not upon love, but upon suspicion an d fear." The facts suggest that this was a modest verdict. When Powell and Pressburger first thought of The Red Shoes, Moira King was a 20-year-old from Dunfermline who had joined Sadler's Wells Ballet at the age of 16 and had just had a hit in the ballet, Miracle in the Gorbals, choreographed by Robert Helpmann (who was already intended for a role in The Red Shoes). Powell was warned by Helpmann that Shearer was totally obedient to Ninette de Valois and entirely set on being a ballerina. Motion pictures might seem alien to her. Nevertheless, Powell asked to see Shearer: "She was tall, about Frankie's height [Frankie was Powell's wife], with the most glorious hair of Titian red that I had ever seen on a woman. "And I've seen some. She had a cheeky face, well-bred and full of spirit. She had a magnificent body. She wasn't slim, she just didn't have one ounce of superfluous flesh. Her eyes were blue. Her hands - what's the use of describing her, you all know her." There and then you have a lot of the reasons for reading, as well as watching, Michael Powell: the eye for detail, the easy surrender to love (redheads were a steady dream and reality in Michael's life), as well as the lordly impatience with which a visionary is resigned to sharing his vision with proles. Anyway, he offered her the part of Victoria Page in The Red Shoes. He offered her £1,000, a retainer and expenses. "I see," she said. "I would have to get Miss de Valois's permission, of course." Thus began what |
