October 4, 2025 • 33 mins
Eleanor Powell starred in some of MGM’s most dazzling musicals, like Broadway Melody of 1936, Born to Dance, Rosalie, Honolulu, and Broadway Melody of 1940 — where she matched Fred Astaire step for step in the legendary ‘Begin the Beguine.’
Dubbed the Queen of Tap, Gene Kelly called her the best dancer ever put on film. Critics hailed her “eloquent feet.” And yet, at the height of her fame, she stunned Hollywood by walking away.
In this episode of The Rest of the Story on the Hey, Dancer! podcast, I trace Powell’s rise from a painfully shy child in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Broadway prodigy, MGM headliner, and Vegas comeback star. Along the way, you’ll hear how she trained, what set her apart, and why her artistry remains unmatched.
History may have pushed her name to the margins. But let’s be clear: Eleanor Powell belongs in the same breath as Astaire and Kelly. She was the pinnacle of screen (and stage) tap — and this is the rest of her story.
Special thanks to authors Paula Broussard & Lisa Royére and their book: Eleanor Powell, Born to Dance. It proved a monumental resource in my research for this ep. I highly recommend checking it out! You can grab it here!
Check out my Return to Dance docuseries!
Support my Instagram — where I post daily dance inspo, insights and fun! @backtogreat
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[Music]
(00:02):
Fred Astaire had 29 dance partners, but only with her, did he say,
"I met my match. Welcome to my podcast, Hey, dancer, and my weekly series, The Rest of the Story."
My name is Miller Daurey. I'm your host, Editor, Biographer, Researcher, Writer, and All the Above.
If you're enjoying this series where I spot light dance legends,
(00:24):
please take a moment to follow or subscribe wherever you're watching or listening.
Give it a like or rating or a review. Leave a comment, share with your dance fam.
It all goes a long way into telling whichever platform you're on
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And that would just make my heart test so happy.
(00:46):
Okay, let's get into it.
She was born two months premature on November 21, 1912.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, tiny, fragile, and cocooned in an incubator for the first weeks of her life.
Her father, Clarence, had been a high school athlete.
Her mother, Blanche, was still in her teens when she gave birth.
(01:08):
By the child's first birthday, the marriage had ended and the father was gone.
She grew up in a crowded house on Allen Street, packed with extended family.
As the years passed, her mother did whatever work she could to keep the household afloat.
Bankteller, waitress, chambermaid, and during the war, she even took a job at the armory,
(01:28):
loading bullets onto belts for soldiers overseas.
And this little girl, she was cripplingly shy, too shy to greet visitors,
too shy to step into a room full of adults.
She clung to her mother's skirts, unable to speak.
Someone suggested dance lessons, not to create a dancer,
(01:49):
but to coax the child out of her shell.
So at six years old, she entered a beginner's dance class.
Brought by her grandmother on that first day, the bashful little girl stood in the doorway,
eyes brimming with tears, fear and doubt taking hold,
but she joined the other little girls eventually,
the teacher nodded to the pianist,
(02:11):
and the delicate strains of Edward McDowell's, too a water lily, filled the room.
For the entire class, the children did nothing more than practice
basic ballet arm positions, never even moving their feet.
Yet for her, it was transformative,
something glorious stirred inside,
(02:31):
as if the music had unlocked a hidden world.
Her grandmother sensed it, too, and from then on,
the family scraped together one dollar a week for lessons,
hoping these classes might give the shy child some confidence.
By the time she was eight, life was already unsettled.
She had been moved through seven different schools in just four years,
(02:54):
never in one place long enough to build study friendships.
Awkward and self-conscious with her crooked teeth and knobby knees,
she clung to the one thing that gave her purpose.
Dance.
At the HP Lane School of Dance in Springfield,
she performed in recitals at the Court Square Theatre
and the Springfield Auditorium,
(03:14):
a little snowflake wobbling on borrowed point shoes.
Soon she found the teacher who would shape her, Ralph McCurnen,
whose studio on Worthington Street became her second home.
At first she was just another eager student,
but he noticed her quickly.
She had a limber back, a knack for both ballet and acrobatics,
(03:36):
and a hunger to learn.
To help cover tuition, she began assisting the younger students,
first just as a helper, then entrusted with the baby class.
And by eleven, unbelievably, she was running an entire class on her own
when McCurnen was ill.
A child still, but already teaching.
(03:57):
Dance wasn't just building her confidence,
it was giving her authority.
At home, her family cleared a room and nailed up a ballet bar.
She practiced endlessly the thuds of her leaps echoing through the house.
When her mother's work took them to Atlantic City,
she trained on the beach.
Cartwheels and flips in the sand, drawing crowds of onlookers.
(04:20):
That's where songwriter Gus Edwards spotted her.
He was known for launching child talent,
and now he wanted her.
But her mother was cautious.
A nightclub wasn't the place for a young girl.
The daughter begged for the chance,
and her mother hesitated until she saw the modest dinner show
at the Ambassador Hotel's Pompeian Grill.
(04:42):
It felt safe enough, so she agreed.
At just eleven years old, she was paid seven dollars a night,
more than her mother was making.
In a velvet costume sewn by her grandmother,
she performed Japanese Sandman, then joined a duo act.
By 13, she was trying something new, the black bottom.
(05:02):
But instead of the frantic style that had made it famous,
she slowed it down, made it hot.
Audiences roared. She added an ostrich feather fan,
wore stage makeup for the first time,
and saw her photo in the paper.
Her local fame grew.
She was hired at the Swinkier Cafe Martin,
where stars like Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor told her,
(05:26):
"You don't belong here.
You belong in New York, and they were right."
There was only so much a young dancer could do in Atlantic City.
So at 14, a choice had to be made.
School or Broadway, she didn't hesitate.
As she would later put it, "Dancing was in my blood,
(05:46):
and I would rather starve at it than flourish at something else."
End quote.
That fall, she and her mother boarded the train to New York,
armed with a few homemade costumes,
a tiny savings and absolute determination.
When she first arrived in New York,
she managed a few small breaks,
acrobatics in a Vodville review in Newark,
(06:07):
then a three-week run at the brand-new nightclub
of band leader Ben Bernie,
one of the most popular radio personalities of the day.
But it didn't take long to realize the truth.
Work here wasn't steady,
and the hustle, it never stopped.
So she did the boldest thing she could imagine.
She marched straight into the offices
(06:29):
of the William Morris Agency,
already the top talent agency in the country,
and announced that she wanted to be in a Broadway show.
And somehow, against all odds, they signed her.
Her first job came very quickly, apart in the optimists.
A sprawling musical comedy staged at the Casino de Paris,
atop the Century Roof in January 1928,
(06:53):
making this her Broadway debut at only 15 years old.
But the reality hit fast,
at audition after audition,
she kept hearing the same words.
"We'll call you,"
and they never did.
The reason was simple.
She didn't tap.
Tap dance was the rage of Broadway.
Without it, you were out.
(07:13):
Out of desperation, she tried faking it,
slipping scraps of tap into her act,
just enough to book a week in Washington, DC,
where, for the first time,
a review actually called her a tap dancer.
But she knew the truth.
She wasn't one, not yet.
So, with her agents urging,
she did what she dreaded most.
(07:34):
She enrolled in the brand new,
Donahue Boyle School of Stage Dancing,
a place buzzing with chorus girls
and Broadway hopefuls.
She paid $35,
an enormous sum at the time for 10 lessons,
and in her very first class, it all fell apart.
Boyle started the group on a simple tap combination,
(07:56):
but she fell behind almost immediately,
unable to master even the very first step humiliated,
she left in tears.
She told her mother, she hated it,
loathed it, that it was the first thing
that had ever beaten her,
and she wasn't going back.
But, Jack Donahue saw something.
He called her, convinced her to try again.
(08:17):
And this time, he didn't just watch, he intervened.
He sat on the floor, took hold of her ankles,
and guided her through the rhythm of basic tap steps.
Then, he strapped a war surplus belt,
weighed down with sandbags around her waist,
anchoring a body that had been trained to soar in ballet.
(08:38):
The contraption forced her closer to the ground,
and suddenly, it clicked.
"I was riveted," she later said.
"That's why I danced so close to the ground,
why I can tap without raising my foot."
From that moment on, she was hooked.
Within weeks, she was moved to the front of the class,
demonstrating routines for the others.
Donahue gave her practice space in return
(09:01):
for helping with lessons.
She rehearsed eight, sometimes 10 hours a day,
what had begun in failure turned into obsession.
Tap became her love.
Still, the waiting was brutal.
For months, her agent held out for the right opportunity.
She and her mother barely scraped by,
sometimes living on hotel soup and baskets of rolls,
(09:23):
but the gamble paid off.
In December, 1928, she auditioned for "Follow Through,"
a Broadway golf-themed musical comedy.
For her audition, she used the very routine she had learned
in Donahue's beginner tap class,
"Button up your overcoat."
At just 16, she was cast in a small part.
The show's choreographer, Bobby Connelly,
(09:45):
staged all dances except for her solo tap dance number.
And an opening night, her solo stopped the show.
The review was called her "sintillating,"
and she earned "On Cores" night after night.
During the run, she practiced relentlessly.
Between Mattenay's, she would haul her "Victrola"
onto the empty stage,
(10:07):
drop the needle on a fat swallow record
and workshop new steps.
This became her ritual.
Between shows, she was back on the empty stage,
inventing, refining, and expanding her tap vocabulary.
By the following summer,
the dance world took notice.
At the dancing masters of America convention,
(10:27):
she was named "Best Female Tap Dancer of 1929,"
standing alongside none other than Bill Robinson,
the most famous tap dancer of the era.
Her rise from total novice to the best in her field
in under a year is simply unheard of,
a testament to her gift and grit.
(10:49):
And Robinson paid her the ultimate compliment
teaching her his signature stair dance,
something he never shared with anyone else,
except Shirley Temple.
Her first film appearance came not long after,
thanks to the producers of follow-through,
who slipped her into the movie "Queen High."
It was shot at Paramount's Long Island studio
(11:12):
in Astoria, New York.
Her part was fleeting,
an uncredited dancer who bursts onto a table
beside Ginger Rogers,
tapping to "Brother just laugh it off."
Watching the clip today, you can already see it.
Her taps are fast and grounded,
and then that quick head thrown back smile.
It was a fleeting part,
(11:32):
but for the first time, she was on film.
She finally got her first real break on Broadway
in "Fine and Dandy."
She played the secretary to comedian Joe Cook,
Cook noticed something right away.
There's a kid here who practices all day every day.
He told his friend Fred Stone.
(11:54):
Stone didn't hesitate.
She'll be something.
And she was.
By then, her style was already different
from the chorus girls around her.
Crisp footwork, syncopated rhythms,
a buoyancy shaped by years of ballet and acrobatics.
Critics were starting to notice, too.
One review called her a "boi-ishly-bobbed"
(12:15):
stepper of notable skill and vigor, something new to offer.
But her real turning point came backstage
during a Vodville run at the Paramount theaters
in New York and Brooklyn.
The headliners rotated.
Being Crosby one week, Ross Colombo the next.
And she even joined Crosby on stage
for a duet of "Goodnight Sweetheart."
(12:37):
She was billed alongside ballroom stars,
vellos and yolanda,
the mills brothers and others.
But what transfixed her most was another act.
Buck and Bubbles.
Ford Lee Buck Washington played piano
while dancing in his own eccentric style.
John W. Bubbles' sublet tapped beside him,
(12:57):
reshaping what tap could be.
He was credited with inventing rhythm tap,
dropping his heels, stretching the beat,
cutting the tempo in half to carve out whole new patterns.
She was spellbound, obsessed so much so
that when Bubbles would perform,
she'd watch from the wing,
sprawled flat on her stomach
(13:19):
and analyze every flick of his heels.
She wanted to absorb it.
She studied him from the wings so intently
that as she recalled, quote,
"It got so that he was playing to me,
not to the audience," end quote.
And when the curtain fell,
they took it downstairs,
jamming in the theater basement,
(13:39):
trading steps and rhythms.
Soon after, she landed a slot in the Zigfeld Follies of 1931.
The legendary Broadway review,
famous for its spectacle and showgirls,
her billing couldn't have been smaller.
Her part meant as a novelty transition,
a palette cleanser between scenes,
but instead, every night she stopped the show cold.
(14:02):
One reviewer wrote that her tapping
tore the audience wide open
and her arsenal kept growing.
She spent years perfecting a move she called
"the topspin tap,"
a multiple pirouette punctuated by tap accents.
She could whirl in place and stop on a dime.
So clean, it looked impossible.
(14:24):
She toured endlessly
through Vodville Houses' six or seven shows a day,
critics raved.
Variety even said her performance showed audiences, quote,
"What tap dancing is really all about," end quote.
But the grind was relentless.
The big opportunities never came
and by late 1934, she felt stuck.
(14:46):
So in George White offered her a role
in his 1935 scandals film, she accepted.
If the stage wasn't opening doors,
maybe the screen would.
On the eve of her 22nd birthday,
she boarded the train west with her mother.
Her trunk was packed with a Vectrola stacks of Fats Waller records,
(15:06):
a portable tap mat and an assortment of tap shoes.
After she arrived nearly a month past
before she was even called for a screen test,
and when she finally appeared in scandals,
her role was tiny, barely five minutes of screen time.
Lowered onto the nightclub floor on a seat held
by giant bows,
(15:27):
she launched into her dance halfway through the picture.
It was brief but unmistakable.
Her turns were sharp.
Her energy alive, her style,
unlike anything the screen had seen.
Still, the experience left her cold.
Her part was small, her dialogue,
fleeting and Hollywood felt impersonal
compared to the stage.
(15:48):
After filming, she and her mother
headed straight back to New York.
When the film was finally screened in New York,
she and a few friends slipped into a midnight sneak preview
at the Paramount Theater in Times Square.
Instead of a thrill, she got a shock.
The soundtrack was a frame out of sync.
(16:08):
Her taps clattering hopelessly off the beat.
Mortified, she left the theater more certain than ever
that she had been right to walk away from Hollywood.
But soon after, MGM came calling.
She wanted nothing to do with it.
So she tried the boldest tactic she could imagine.
She priced herself out $1,000 a week,
(16:32):
more than her Broadway peers, Hal Leroy
or Mitsy Mayfair had ever seen for film work.
Surely they'd laugh and move on.
Instead, MGM said yes.
Shocked, she raised it again,
$12.50 a week plus a real role this time,
not just a novelty dance.
To her astonishment, they still agreed.
(16:53):
Suddenly, she was on a train back to California,
contract in hand.
At MGM's lot, she walked into a rehearsal hall
to find Louis B. Mayfair himself waiting.
He asked her to show him what she could do.
She gave him ballet, point acrobatics,
impressed, Mayfair announced,
I wanna test you for the lead.
(17:14):
And here is where her humility nearly cost her everything.
She actually tried to talk him out of it.
Mr. Mayfair, you can't do that, she said,
I don't know a thing about the camera,
but Mayfair wasn't asking.
He was telling her,
my dear child, if I want to make a test, I'll make a test.
What began as a tactic to get rid of MGM
(17:35):
had turned into not only a contract,
but a screen test and her first real chance at movie start 'em.
By the next year, she was their new discovery,
cast in Broadway Melody of 1936.
The story was forgettable, but she wasn't.
Across four different numbers,
the camera finally caught what Broadway already knew.
(17:59):
Her whip fast turns, her high kicks,
her grounded precision tap.
In Sing Before Breakfast,
she bounded across a boarding house rooftop
with buddy and Vilma Epsen,
athletic playful, completely at ease.
In You Are My Lucky Star,
she drifted into a dream sequence, dancing on point,
delicate where she was usually bold,
(18:21):
and then came the finale.
No longer the unknown kid of Broadway,
she was unveiled as MGM's new star.
Critics raved,
the New York Times marveled
that she had the most eloquent feet in show business.
MGM's gamble had paid off.
In a single film,
she leapt from Broadway talent to bonafide a movie star.
(18:44):
A dancer critics now said could rival a stare himself.
Her next big showcase came in Born to Dance,
where she fought for something rare at the time,
full creative control.
Unlike most MGM stars,
she didn't rely on staff choreographers.
She built her own numbers from start to finish,
(19:04):
just as she had on Broadway.
And by now, she was guarding them
just as fiercely in the editing room.
Too often she'd seen intricate steps cut away,
so she began sitting beside MGM's veteran cutter,
Blanche Soel,
making sure her choreography kept its continuity.
It was the first sign she wanted to shape more
(19:26):
than just the dancing.
She wanted to shape the filmmaking itself,
then came Broadway Melody of 1938.
For the first time,
she was paired with a real partner on screen,
George Murphy,
showing off lifts, spins,
and her ballet training in full force,
but what she cherished most was the finale.
(19:48):
Over five minutes,
she ran the gamut of styles,
soft shoe, acrobatics, drum solos, and crisp tap breaks,
all capped by a neon sign rising behind her.
It became her personal favorite,
the number that showed just how wide
her dance vocabulary had grown.
Her next challenge came in Rosalie,
(20:10):
in the colossal Drung Dance,
the set towered with giant drums,
stacked like a staircase to the heavens.
For the finale, she was hoisted onto the tallest one.
No rails, no edges,
her skirt blocking her own view of her feet.
To descend, she had to turn and hop from drum to drum,
(20:31):
placing each step from memory,
never quite sure what was beneath her,
from the audience, her mother watched in terror.
Yet on screen, it looked effortless.
She turned one of MGM's biggest,
gaudiest production numbers
into something delicate even intimate.
Every tap ringing with precision,
it was the most dangerous dance of her career
(20:53):
and the one that stole the picture.
Two years later, in the movie, "Hanalu Lu,"
she showed a different kind of daring.
On the deck of a mock ocean liner,
she tapped while jumping rope,
darting across the set in a blur of rhythm and athleticism.
A childhood gain transformed into spectacle.
It was playful, impossible, and entirely her own.
(21:17):
But audiences wanted more.
For years, critics had hailed her as the female austere.
The question lingered, "What would happen
if the two actually shared the screen?"
Well, by 1940, MGM decided to find out,
finally delivering the dream match.
But behind closed doors, it was far from easy.
(21:40):
Their styles couldn't have been more different.
He was aerial, sweeping across space with long lines and elegance.
She was grounded.
Every rhythm hammered close to the floor
and both were perfectionists.
Security was posted outside their rehearsal hall
to keep out intruders.
Inside, it was stiff at first, neither dared to take the lead.
(22:03):
They even addressed each other formally.
Mr. and Mrs. No First Names, hours ticked by.
Silence stretched.
Finally, she broke the ice with a step Jack Donahue
had once taught her.
He jumped in, asked her to show him more.
Then he offered one of his own.
Back and forth, they began to swap steps.
(22:24):
Tentative at first, then with mounting energy.
The walls broke.
The partnership began.
What came out of those weeks would become
one of the most celebrated numbers in movie history.
The 10-minute finale of Broadway Melody of 1940.
Cole Porter's begin the begin.
The two move through a Latin-tinged reverie.
(22:46):
Smooth, lyrical, almost dreamlike.
Then the music shifts.
The beat quickens.
It gets fast and the swing takes over.
The orchestra drops out and suddenly it's a duel.
Nothing but taps.
Traded back and forth, two masters challenging each other
in perfect time.
The result was electric, even in an era of great musicals,
(23:11):
critics and audiences knew they were seeing something historic.
Dance historians would call the finale
one of the finest tap sequences ever captured on film.
Decades later, Gregory Hines placed it
among his top two tap numbers of all time.
Even a stare himself admitted, "I had 29 partners,
(23:31):
but I met my match with her."
Begin the begin isn't just a dance, it's immortality, etched in taps.
If that was the pinnacle, what was to come
showed just how much range she really had.
In Lady Be Good, she tried something playful and new,
a tap routine with a dog.
(23:53):
At first, they brought in a seasoned theatrical dog named Wing.
But two weeks in, it just wasn't working.
He didn't have the spark she wanted,
so she kept auditioning dogs, big ones, small ones,
none of them clicked.
Finally, a prompt boy told her about his daughter's clever little fox
terrier buttons.
(24:13):
She took him home, trained him for weeks,
teaching him to weave through her legs as she tapped,
jumped through her arms, even leap clean over her extended leg.
He had to get used to the sound of her taps right by his ears,
but he learned fast.
By the time the cameras rolled, buttons wasn't just ready, he was eager.
(24:36):
She later said his little body would quiver in rehearsals,
just waiting for his cue.
And when the number wrapped, he bounded across the room,
straight into her arms.
It wasn't just a novelty.
It was inventive, charming and unforgettable.
Then came the other extreme.
Busby Berkeley staged fascinating rhythm
(24:58):
as one of his most elaborate set pieces, seven pianos,
swirling curtains and a camera that never stopped moving.
For her, it meant multiple 16-hour days,
dozens of takes, and rehearsing until she ran a fever.
Yet on screen, none of that shows.
Her taps are sharp, her performance precise,
(25:20):
next up, ship a hoi, where she surprised critics
with her warmth and comedic spark opposite, red skeleton.
She wasn't just the queen of taps anymore.
Reviewers praised her chemistry and even her flair for comedy.
By the time of I Doodit, she had nothing left to prove.
In one number, she tossed eight lassoes in succession,
(25:43):
a feat she mastered after six punishing weeks of training.
It was dazzling, athletic and completely hers.
By the early 1940s, the tides were shifting.
Tap was losing its central place in musicals,
giving way to the new language of jazz dance.
MGM no longer saw a future for big budget vehicles
(26:05):
built around a solo female tap dancer.
But instead of waiting to be edged out,
she made the decision herself.
Less than two weeks before production was to begin
on Broadway rhythm in 1943, she announced she was done.
I have worked for 17 years.
She told columnist, Luwela Parsons,
"And I have promised myself and my mother
(26:27):
when I marry, I will retire."
She requested a release from her contract,
walking away with $39,000 still owed her.
After eight years at MGM, she left the studio at the very top
on her own terms.
After leaving MGM, she accepted one last film,
"Sensations of 1945."
(26:49):
It wasn't the kind of lavish musical she'd once headlined,
but it gave her new challenges.
She trained rigorously with Russian ballet dancer
and choreographer David Lachin.
Returning to six hour rehearsal days and on screen,
she played a dancer turned press agent.
The film itself was modest,
but it let her stretch into comedy and character work
(27:10):
before stepping away from Hollywood.
From there, she shifted to the stage.
She readied a nightclub act and launched it
at the last frontier in Las Vegas.
It wasn't about costumes or sets.
It was her, her taps and the stamina to carry a show alone.
She drove herself with her hustle and diet
and when the act was ready, she took it
(27:32):
to the London palladium in 1949.
For her, this was the dream she chased since her teens, Europe.
Night after night, she held audiences spellbound
for nearly 40 minutes straight.
Rumba, boogie-wogie, Waltz, tap.
Reviewers marveled not just at her technique,
but at her endurance, calling it terrifying in its demands.
(27:55):
Yet she made it look effortless, unruffled, even radiant.
Hollywood soon came calling again,
producer Joe Pasternack coaxed her back for a cameo
in Duchess of Idaho.
It was her first MGM appearance in seven years.
It was only a few minutes introduced as herself,
a brief ballroom passage that gave way to a boogie-wogie tap,
(28:18):
but she rehearsed it as if it were a full-length starring role.
When Esther Williams, the film star,
asked why she was working until her feet bled,
she answered simply, "If they're filming it,
it has to be better than good.
It must be perfect."
The cameo reminded audiences what they'd missed.
MGM even offered her another contract, but she turned it down.
(28:43):
By then, her focus was shifting to faith,
to raising her son Peter, and to new ways of teaching.
She poured her energy into Sunday school, the PTA, even Cubscouts.
And when television opened its doors,
she saw it as a platform not for herself, but for children.
In 1954, she created Faith of Our Children,
(29:03):
the first religious TV program for kids.
She wrote scripts, staged Bible Story skits,
invited celebrity guests and insisted on diversity,
welcoming children of all races at a time
when that sparked angry calls and letters.
When a minister complained, she responded, not by backing down,
(29:23):
but by inviting gospel legend, Mahalia Jackson,
to the very next taping.
She would go on to win five Emmy Awards for this show.
For a woman once known as the Queen of Tap,
it was an unexpected second act.
Yet in her mind, it was simply the same calling,
sharing joy, rhythm and spirit,
(29:45):
whether through dance or through faith.
But life had another test waiting.
Away from the stage lights, her marriage unraveled,
leaving her reeling 30 pounds over her old dancing weight,
her stamina gone, her confidence shaken.
And then came a spark.
One night in Las Vegas, Pearl Bailey spotted her
(30:05):
in the audience of her show and wouldn't let her hide
in the shadows.
She pulled her on stage, handed her the spotlight
and reminded her the world hadn't forgotten.
The ovation lit something inside.
After years away, she realized the audience hadn't forgotten her.
(30:25):
And maybe she didn't have to forget dance either.
She went back to basics training under David Lachine
with the same ferocity she'd had at MGM.
Six hours a day of ballet bar and tap trills
until as she put it, tears ran down my cheeks.
By January 1961, she was ready.
(30:48):
At a press conference, she unveiled her comeback,
proudly announcing her age 48.
And when she stepped onto the Sahara stage in Las Vegas,
the reception was electric.
Three standing ovation's opening night.
Anne Miller waiting backstage with a hug.
Her son Peter cheering from the front row,
(31:09):
what was meant to be a one week engagement stretched
to a month.
She was back.
The comeback rolled on.
At the Latin Quarter in New York audiences
roared so loudly a ringsciter through a diamond bracelet
onto the stage.
The dance educators of America honored her.
Gwen Verden accepting on her behalf
(31:30):
via live phone call patched into her show.
She appeared on live television too.
From Perry Como's craft music hall to variety specials,
always balancing performance with motherhood.
When offers came for long international tours,
she turned them down.
Peter, her son, came first.
And then in 1974, a film changed everything.
(31:53):
That's entertainment.
MGM's retrospective introduced her drum dance
from Rosalie and begin the begin to a whole new generation.
Letters poured in, tributes mounted.
She was stunned, humbled, grateful.
In 1981, she walked onto the stage of the AFI tribute
(32:13):
to Fred Astaire.
Nervous after years away from the camera.
As soon as the audience spotted her,
they rose to their feet in a long heartfelt ovation.
It was a homecoming.
Her legacy endures not just in the films,
but in the way she carried herself.
Original, tireless and true.
(32:35):
Gene Kelly once called her the best tap dancer ever put on film.
And the proof is right there on screen.
On film, no one made tap dance look more powerful,
more precise, more utterly their own.
She elevated tap into poetry, as Frank Sinatra said
when speaking of her.
(32:56):
You can wait around in hope,
but you'll never see the likes of that again.
The truth is, we haven't her name, Eleanor Powell.
And now you know the rest of the story.
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
(33:21):
(light music)
[Music]
(00:02):
Fred Astaire had 29 dance partners, but only with her, did he say,
"I met my match. Welcome to my podcast, Hey, dancer, and my weekly series, The Rest of the Story."
My name is Miller Daurey. I'm your host, Editor, Biographer, Researcher, Writer, and All the Above.
If you're enjoying this series where I spot light dance legends,
(00:24):
please take a moment to follow or subscribe wherever you're watching or listening.
Give it a like or rating or a review. Leave a comment, share with your dance fam.
It all goes a long way into telling whichever platform you're on
that they should share it and spread the word with more lovers of dance.
And that would just make my heart test so happy.
(00:46):
Okay, let's get into it.
She was born two months premature on November 21, 1912.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, tiny, fragile, and cocooned in an incubator for the first weeks of her life.
Her father, Clarence, had been a high school athlete.
Her mother, Blanche, was still in her teens when she gave birth.
(01:08):
By the child's first birthday, the marriage had ended and the father was gone.
She grew up in a crowded house on Allen Street, packed with extended family.
As the years passed, her mother did whatever work she could to keep the household afloat.
Bankteller, waitress, chambermaid, and during the war, she even took a job at the armory,
(01:28):
loading bullets onto belts for soldiers overseas.
And this little girl, she was cripplingly shy, too shy to greet visitors,
too shy to step into a room full of adults.
She clung to her mother's skirts, unable to speak.
Someone suggested dance lessons, not to create a dancer,
(01:49):
but to coax the child out of her shell.
So at six years old, she entered a beginner's dance class.
Brought by her grandmother on that first day, the bashful little girl stood in the doorway,
eyes brimming with tears, fear and doubt taking hold,
but she joined the other little girls eventually,
the teacher nodded to the pianist,
(02:11):
and the delicate strains of Edward McDowell's, too a water lily, filled the room.
For the entire class, the children did nothing more than practice
basic ballet arm positions, never even moving their feet.
Yet for her, it was transformative,
something glorious stirred inside,
(02:31):
as if the music had unlocked a hidden world.
Her grandmother sensed it, too, and from then on,
the family scraped together one dollar a week for lessons,
hoping these classes might give the shy child some confidence.
By the time she was eight, life was already unsettled.
She had been moved through seven different schools in just four years,
(02:54):
never in one place long enough to build study friendships.
Awkward and self-conscious with her crooked teeth and knobby knees,
she clung to the one thing that gave her purpose.
Dance.
At the HP Lane School of Dance in Springfield,
she performed in recitals at the Court Square Theatre
and the Springfield Auditorium,
(03:14):
a little snowflake wobbling on borrowed point shoes.
Soon she found the teacher who would shape her, Ralph McCurnen,
whose studio on Worthington Street became her second home.
At first she was just another eager student,
but he noticed her quickly.
She had a limber back, a knack for both ballet and acrobatics,
(03:36):
and a hunger to learn.
To help cover tuition, she began assisting the younger students,
first just as a helper, then entrusted with the baby class.
And by eleven, unbelievably, she was running an entire class on her own
when McCurnen was ill.
A child still, but already teaching.
(03:57):
Dance wasn't just building her confidence,
it was giving her authority.
At home, her family cleared a room and nailed up a ballet bar.
She practiced endlessly the thuds of her leaps echoing through the house.
When her mother's work took them to Atlantic City,
she trained on the beach.
Cartwheels and flips in the sand, drawing crowds of onlookers.
(04:20):
That's where songwriter Gus Edwards spotted her.
He was known for launching child talent,
and now he wanted her.
But her mother was cautious.
A nightclub wasn't the place for a young girl.
The daughter begged for the chance,
and her mother hesitated until she saw the modest dinner show
at the Ambassador Hotel's Pompeian Grill.
(04:42):
It felt safe enough, so she agreed.
At just eleven years old, she was paid seven dollars a night,
more than her mother was making.
In a velvet costume sewn by her grandmother,
she performed Japanese Sandman, then joined a duo act.
By 13, she was trying something new, the black bottom.
(05:02):
But instead of the frantic style that had made it famous,
she slowed it down, made it hot.
Audiences roared. She added an ostrich feather fan,
wore stage makeup for the first time,
and saw her photo in the paper.
Her local fame grew.
She was hired at the Swinkier Cafe Martin,
where stars like Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor told her,
(05:26):
"You don't belong here.
You belong in New York, and they were right."
There was only so much a young dancer could do in Atlantic City.
So at 14, a choice had to be made.
School or Broadway, she didn't hesitate.
As she would later put it, "Dancing was in my blood,
(05:46):
and I would rather starve at it than flourish at something else."
End quote.
That fall, she and her mother boarded the train to New York,
armed with a few homemade costumes,
a tiny savings and absolute determination.
When she first arrived in New York,
she managed a few small breaks,
acrobatics in a Vodville review in Newark,
(06:07):
then a three-week run at the brand-new nightclub
of band leader Ben Bernie,
one of the most popular radio personalities of the day.
But it didn't take long to realize the truth.
Work here wasn't steady,
and the hustle, it never stopped.
So she did the boldest thing she could imagine.
She marched straight into the offices
(06:29):
of the William Morris Agency,
already the top talent agency in the country,
and announced that she wanted to be in a Broadway show.
And somehow, against all odds, they signed her.
Her first job came very quickly, apart in the optimists.
A sprawling musical comedy staged at the Casino de Paris,
atop the Century Roof in January 1928,
(06:53):
making this her Broadway debut at only 15 years old.
But the reality hit fast,
at audition after audition,
she kept hearing the same words.
"We'll call you,"
and they never did.
The reason was simple.
She didn't tap.
Tap dance was the rage of Broadway.
Without it, you were out.
(07:13):
Out of desperation, she tried faking it,
slipping scraps of tap into her act,
just enough to book a week in Washington, DC,
where, for the first time,
a review actually called her a tap dancer.
But she knew the truth.
She wasn't one, not yet.
So, with her agents urging,
she did what she dreaded most.
(07:34):
She enrolled in the brand new,
Donahue Boyle School of Stage Dancing,
a place buzzing with chorus girls
and Broadway hopefuls.
She paid $35,
an enormous sum at the time for 10 lessons,
and in her very first class, it all fell apart.
Boyle started the group on a simple tap combination,
(07:56):
but she fell behind almost immediately,
unable to master even the very first step humiliated,
she left in tears.
She told her mother, she hated it,
loathed it, that it was the first thing
that had ever beaten her,
and she wasn't going back.
But, Jack Donahue saw something.
He called her, convinced her to try again.
(08:17):
And this time, he didn't just watch, he intervened.
He sat on the floor, took hold of her ankles,
and guided her through the rhythm of basic tap steps.
Then, he strapped a war surplus belt,
weighed down with sandbags around her waist,
anchoring a body that had been trained to soar in ballet.
(08:38):
The contraption forced her closer to the ground,
and suddenly, it clicked.
"I was riveted," she later said.
"That's why I danced so close to the ground,
why I can tap without raising my foot."
From that moment on, she was hooked.
Within weeks, she was moved to the front of the class,
demonstrating routines for the others.
Donahue gave her practice space in return
(09:01):
for helping with lessons.
She rehearsed eight, sometimes 10 hours a day,
what had begun in failure turned into obsession.
Tap became her love.
Still, the waiting was brutal.
For months, her agent held out for the right opportunity.
She and her mother barely scraped by,
sometimes living on hotel soup and baskets of rolls,
(09:23):
but the gamble paid off.
In December, 1928, she auditioned for "Follow Through,"
a Broadway golf-themed musical comedy.
For her audition, she used the very routine she had learned
in Donahue's beginner tap class,
"Button up your overcoat."
At just 16, she was cast in a small part.
The show's choreographer, Bobby Connelly,
(09:45):
staged all dances except for her solo tap dance number.
And an opening night, her solo stopped the show.
The review was called her "sintillating,"
and she earned "On Cores" night after night.
During the run, she practiced relentlessly.
Between Mattenay's, she would haul her "Victrola"
onto the empty stage,
(10:07):
drop the needle on a fat swallow record
and workshop new steps.
This became her ritual.
Between shows, she was back on the empty stage,
inventing, refining, and expanding her tap vocabulary.
By the following summer,
the dance world took notice.
At the dancing masters of America convention,
(10:27):
she was named "Best Female Tap Dancer of 1929,"
standing alongside none other than Bill Robinson,
the most famous tap dancer of the era.
Her rise from total novice to the best in her field
in under a year is simply unheard of,
a testament to her gift and grit.
(10:49):
And Robinson paid her the ultimate compliment
teaching her his signature stair dance,
something he never shared with anyone else,
except Shirley Temple.
Her first film appearance came not long after,
thanks to the producers of follow-through,
who slipped her into the movie "Queen High."
It was shot at Paramount's Long Island studio
(11:12):
in Astoria, New York.
Her part was fleeting,
an uncredited dancer who bursts onto a table
beside Ginger Rogers,
tapping to "Brother just laugh it off."
Watching the clip today, you can already see it.
Her taps are fast and grounded,
and then that quick head thrown back smile.
It was a fleeting part,
(11:32):
but for the first time, she was on film.
She finally got her first real break on Broadway
in "Fine and Dandy."
She played the secretary to comedian Joe Cook,
Cook noticed something right away.
There's a kid here who practices all day every day.
He told his friend Fred Stone.
(11:54):
Stone didn't hesitate.
She'll be something.
And she was.
By then, her style was already different
from the chorus girls around her.
Crisp footwork, syncopated rhythms,
a buoyancy shaped by years of ballet and acrobatics.
Critics were starting to notice, too.
One review called her a "boi-ishly-bobbed"
(12:15):
stepper of notable skill and vigor, something new to offer.
But her real turning point came backstage
during a Vodville run at the Paramount theaters
in New York and Brooklyn.
The headliners rotated.
Being Crosby one week, Ross Colombo the next.
And she even joined Crosby on stage
for a duet of "Goodnight Sweetheart."
(12:37):
She was billed alongside ballroom stars,
vellos and yolanda,
the mills brothers and others.
But what transfixed her most was another act.
Buck and Bubbles.
Ford Lee Buck Washington played piano
while dancing in his own eccentric style.
John W. Bubbles' sublet tapped beside him,
(12:57):
reshaping what tap could be.
He was credited with inventing rhythm tap,
dropping his heels, stretching the beat,
cutting the tempo in half to carve out whole new patterns.
She was spellbound, obsessed so much so
that when Bubbles would perform,
she'd watch from the wing,
sprawled flat on her stomach
(13:19):
and analyze every flick of his heels.
She wanted to absorb it.
She studied him from the wings so intently
that as she recalled, quote,
"It got so that he was playing to me,
not to the audience," end quote.
And when the curtain fell,
they took it downstairs,
jamming in the theater basement,
(13:39):
trading steps and rhythms.
Soon after, she landed a slot in the Zigfeld Follies of 1931.
The legendary Broadway review,
famous for its spectacle and showgirls,
her billing couldn't have been smaller.
Her part meant as a novelty transition,
a palette cleanser between scenes,
but instead, every night she stopped the show cold.
(14:02):
One reviewer wrote that her tapping
tore the audience wide open
and her arsenal kept growing.
She spent years perfecting a move she called
"the topspin tap,"
a multiple pirouette punctuated by tap accents.
She could whirl in place and stop on a dime.
So clean, it looked impossible.
(14:24):
She toured endlessly
through Vodville Houses' six or seven shows a day,
critics raved.
Variety even said her performance showed audiences, quote,
"What tap dancing is really all about," end quote.
But the grind was relentless.
The big opportunities never came
and by late 1934, she felt stuck.
(14:46):
So in George White offered her a role
in his 1935 scandals film, she accepted.
If the stage wasn't opening doors,
maybe the screen would.
On the eve of her 22nd birthday,
she boarded the train west with her mother.
Her trunk was packed with a Vectrola stacks of Fats Waller records,
(15:06):
a portable tap mat and an assortment of tap shoes.
After she arrived nearly a month past
before she was even called for a screen test,
and when she finally appeared in scandals,
her role was tiny, barely five minutes of screen time.
Lowered onto the nightclub floor on a seat held
by giant bows,
(15:27):
she launched into her dance halfway through the picture.
It was brief but unmistakable.
Her turns were sharp.
Her energy alive, her style,
unlike anything the screen had seen.
Still, the experience left her cold.
Her part was small, her dialogue,
fleeting and Hollywood felt impersonal
compared to the stage.
(15:48):
After filming, she and her mother
headed straight back to New York.
When the film was finally screened in New York,
she and a few friends slipped into a midnight sneak preview
at the Paramount Theater in Times Square.
Instead of a thrill, she got a shock.
The soundtrack was a frame out of sync.
(16:08):
Her taps clattering hopelessly off the beat.
Mortified, she left the theater more certain than ever
that she had been right to walk away from Hollywood.
But soon after, MGM came calling.
She wanted nothing to do with it.
So she tried the boldest tactic she could imagine.
She priced herself out $1,000 a week,
(16:32):
more than her Broadway peers, Hal Leroy
or Mitsy Mayfair had ever seen for film work.
Surely they'd laugh and move on.
Instead, MGM said yes.
Shocked, she raised it again,
$12.50 a week plus a real role this time,
not just a novelty dance.
To her astonishment, they still agreed.
(16:53):
Suddenly, she was on a train back to California,
contract in hand.
At MGM's lot, she walked into a rehearsal hall
to find Louis B. Mayfair himself waiting.
He asked her to show him what she could do.
She gave him ballet, point acrobatics,
impressed, Mayfair announced,
I wanna test you for the lead.
(17:14):
And here is where her humility nearly cost her everything.
She actually tried to talk him out of it.
Mr. Mayfair, you can't do that, she said,
I don't know a thing about the camera,
but Mayfair wasn't asking.
He was telling her,
my dear child, if I want to make a test, I'll make a test.
What began as a tactic to get rid of MGM
(17:35):
had turned into not only a contract,
but a screen test and her first real chance at movie start 'em.
By the next year, she was their new discovery,
cast in Broadway Melody of 1936.
The story was forgettable, but she wasn't.
Across four different numbers,
the camera finally caught what Broadway already knew.
(17:59):
Her whip fast turns, her high kicks,
her grounded precision tap.
In Sing Before Breakfast,
she bounded across a boarding house rooftop
with buddy and Vilma Epsen,
athletic playful, completely at ease.
In You Are My Lucky Star,
she drifted into a dream sequence, dancing on point,
delicate where she was usually bold,
(18:21):
and then came the finale.
No longer the unknown kid of Broadway,
she was unveiled as MGM's new star.
Critics raved,
the New York Times marveled
that she had the most eloquent feet in show business.
MGM's gamble had paid off.
In a single film,
she leapt from Broadway talent to bonafide a movie star.
(18:44):
A dancer critics now said could rival a stare himself.
Her next big showcase came in Born to Dance,
where she fought for something rare at the time,
full creative control.
Unlike most MGM stars,
she didn't rely on staff choreographers.
She built her own numbers from start to finish,
(19:04):
just as she had on Broadway.
And by now, she was guarding them
just as fiercely in the editing room.
Too often she'd seen intricate steps cut away,
so she began sitting beside MGM's veteran cutter,
Blanche Soel,
making sure her choreography kept its continuity.
It was the first sign she wanted to shape more
(19:26):
than just the dancing.
She wanted to shape the filmmaking itself,
then came Broadway Melody of 1938.
For the first time,
she was paired with a real partner on screen,
George Murphy,
showing off lifts, spins,
and her ballet training in full force,
but what she cherished most was the finale.
(19:48):
Over five minutes,
she ran the gamut of styles,
soft shoe, acrobatics, drum solos, and crisp tap breaks,
all capped by a neon sign rising behind her.
It became her personal favorite,
the number that showed just how wide
her dance vocabulary had grown.
Her next challenge came in Rosalie,
(20:10):
in the colossal Drung Dance,
the set towered with giant drums,
stacked like a staircase to the heavens.
For the finale, she was hoisted onto the tallest one.
No rails, no edges,
her skirt blocking her own view of her feet.
To descend, she had to turn and hop from drum to drum,
(20:31):
placing each step from memory,
never quite sure what was beneath her,
from the audience, her mother watched in terror.
Yet on screen, it looked effortless.
She turned one of MGM's biggest,
gaudiest production numbers
into something delicate even intimate.
Every tap ringing with precision,
it was the most dangerous dance of her career
(20:53):
and the one that stole the picture.
Two years later, in the movie, "Hanalu Lu,"
she showed a different kind of daring.
On the deck of a mock ocean liner,
she tapped while jumping rope,
darting across the set in a blur of rhythm and athleticism.
A childhood gain transformed into spectacle.
It was playful, impossible, and entirely her own.
(21:17):
But audiences wanted more.
For years, critics had hailed her as the female austere.
The question lingered, "What would happen
if the two actually shared the screen?"
Well, by 1940, MGM decided to find out,
finally delivering the dream match.
But behind closed doors, it was far from easy.
(21:40):
Their styles couldn't have been more different.
He was aerial, sweeping across space with long lines and elegance.
She was grounded.
Every rhythm hammered close to the floor
and both were perfectionists.
Security was posted outside their rehearsal hall
to keep out intruders.
Inside, it was stiff at first, neither dared to take the lead.
(22:03):
They even addressed each other formally.
Mr. and Mrs. No First Names, hours ticked by.
Silence stretched.
Finally, she broke the ice with a step Jack Donahue
had once taught her.
He jumped in, asked her to show him more.
Then he offered one of his own.
Back and forth, they began to swap steps.
(22:24):
Tentative at first, then with mounting energy.
The walls broke.
The partnership began.
What came out of those weeks would become
one of the most celebrated numbers in movie history.
The 10-minute finale of Broadway Melody of 1940.
Cole Porter's begin the begin.
The two move through a Latin-tinged reverie.
(22:46):
Smooth, lyrical, almost dreamlike.
Then the music shifts.
The beat quickens.
It gets fast and the swing takes over.
The orchestra drops out and suddenly it's a duel.
Nothing but taps.
Traded back and forth, two masters challenging each other
in perfect time.
The result was electric, even in an era of great musicals,
(23:11):
critics and audiences knew they were seeing something historic.
Dance historians would call the finale
one of the finest tap sequences ever captured on film.
Decades later, Gregory Hines placed it
among his top two tap numbers of all time.
Even a stare himself admitted, "I had 29 partners,
(23:31):
but I met my match with her."
Begin the begin isn't just a dance, it's immortality, etched in taps.
If that was the pinnacle, what was to come
showed just how much range she really had.
In Lady Be Good, she tried something playful and new,
a tap routine with a dog.
(23:53):
At first, they brought in a seasoned theatrical dog named Wing.
But two weeks in, it just wasn't working.
He didn't have the spark she wanted,
so she kept auditioning dogs, big ones, small ones,
none of them clicked.
Finally, a prompt boy told her about his daughter's clever little fox
terrier buttons.
(24:13):
She took him home, trained him for weeks,
teaching him to weave through her legs as she tapped,
jumped through her arms, even leap clean over her extended leg.
He had to get used to the sound of her taps right by his ears,
but he learned fast.
By the time the cameras rolled, buttons wasn't just ready, he was eager.
(24:36):
She later said his little body would quiver in rehearsals,
just waiting for his cue.
And when the number wrapped, he bounded across the room,
straight into her arms.
It wasn't just a novelty.
It was inventive, charming and unforgettable.
Then came the other extreme.
Busby Berkeley staged fascinating rhythm
(24:58):
as one of his most elaborate set pieces, seven pianos,
swirling curtains and a camera that never stopped moving.
For her, it meant multiple 16-hour days,
dozens of takes, and rehearsing until she ran a fever.
Yet on screen, none of that shows.
Her taps are sharp, her performance precise,
(25:20):
next up, ship a hoi, where she surprised critics
with her warmth and comedic spark opposite, red skeleton.
She wasn't just the queen of taps anymore.
Reviewers praised her chemistry and even her flair for comedy.
By the time of I Doodit, she had nothing left to prove.
In one number, she tossed eight lassoes in succession,
(25:43):
a feat she mastered after six punishing weeks of training.
It was dazzling, athletic and completely hers.
By the early 1940s, the tides were shifting.
Tap was losing its central place in musicals,
giving way to the new language of jazz dance.
MGM no longer saw a future for big budget vehicles
(26:05):
built around a solo female tap dancer.
But instead of waiting to be edged out,
she made the decision herself.
Less than two weeks before production was to begin
on Broadway rhythm in 1943, she announced she was done.
I have worked for 17 years.
She told columnist, Luwela Parsons,
"And I have promised myself and my mother
(26:27):
when I marry, I will retire."
She requested a release from her contract,
walking away with $39,000 still owed her.
After eight years at MGM, she left the studio at the very top
on her own terms.
After leaving MGM, she accepted one last film,
"Sensations of 1945."
(26:49):
It wasn't the kind of lavish musical she'd once headlined,
but it gave her new challenges.
She trained rigorously with Russian ballet dancer
and choreographer David Lachin.
Returning to six hour rehearsal days and on screen,
she played a dancer turned press agent.
The film itself was modest,
but it let her stretch into comedy and character work
(27:10):
before stepping away from Hollywood.
From there, she shifted to the stage.
She readied a nightclub act and launched it
at the last frontier in Las Vegas.
It wasn't about costumes or sets.
It was her, her taps and the stamina to carry a show alone.
She drove herself with her hustle and diet
and when the act was ready, she took it
(27:32):
to the London palladium in 1949.
For her, this was the dream she chased since her teens, Europe.
Night after night, she held audiences spellbound
for nearly 40 minutes straight.
Rumba, boogie-wogie, Waltz, tap.
Reviewers marveled not just at her technique,
but at her endurance, calling it terrifying in its demands.
(27:55):
Yet she made it look effortless, unruffled, even radiant.
Hollywood soon came calling again,
producer Joe Pasternack coaxed her back for a cameo
in Duchess of Idaho.
It was her first MGM appearance in seven years.
It was only a few minutes introduced as herself,
a brief ballroom passage that gave way to a boogie-wogie tap,
(28:18):
but she rehearsed it as if it were a full-length starring role.
When Esther Williams, the film star,
asked why she was working until her feet bled,
she answered simply, "If they're filming it,
it has to be better than good.
It must be perfect."
The cameo reminded audiences what they'd missed.
MGM even offered her another contract, but she turned it down.
(28:43):
By then, her focus was shifting to faith,
to raising her son Peter, and to new ways of teaching.
She poured her energy into Sunday school, the PTA, even Cubscouts.
And when television opened its doors,
she saw it as a platform not for herself, but for children.
In 1954, she created Faith of Our Children,
(29:03):
the first religious TV program for kids.
She wrote scripts, staged Bible Story skits,
invited celebrity guests and insisted on diversity,
welcoming children of all races at a time
when that sparked angry calls and letters.
When a minister complained, she responded, not by backing down,
(29:23):
but by inviting gospel legend, Mahalia Jackson,
to the very next taping.
She would go on to win five Emmy Awards for this show.
For a woman once known as the Queen of Tap,
it was an unexpected second act.
Yet in her mind, it was simply the same calling,
sharing joy, rhythm and spirit,
(29:45):
whether through dance or through faith.
But life had another test waiting.
Away from the stage lights, her marriage unraveled,
leaving her reeling 30 pounds over her old dancing weight,
her stamina gone, her confidence shaken.
And then came a spark.
One night in Las Vegas, Pearl Bailey spotted her
(30:05):
in the audience of her show and wouldn't let her hide
in the shadows.
She pulled her on stage, handed her the spotlight
and reminded her the world hadn't forgotten.
The ovation lit something inside.
After years away, she realized the audience hadn't forgotten her.
(30:25):
And maybe she didn't have to forget dance either.
She went back to basics training under David Lachine
with the same ferocity she'd had at MGM.
Six hours a day of ballet bar and tap trills
until as she put it, tears ran down my cheeks.
By January 1961, she was ready.
(30:48):
At a press conference, she unveiled her comeback,
proudly announcing her age 48.
And when she stepped onto the Sahara stage in Las Vegas,
the reception was electric.
Three standing ovation's opening night.
Anne Miller waiting backstage with a hug.
Her son Peter cheering from the front row,
(31:09):
what was meant to be a one week engagement stretched
to a month.
She was back.
The comeback rolled on.
At the Latin Quarter in New York audiences
roared so loudly a ringsciter through a diamond bracelet
onto the stage.
The dance educators of America honored her.
Gwen Verden accepting on her behalf
(31:30):
via live phone call patched into her show.
She appeared on live television too.
From Perry Como's craft music hall to variety specials,
always balancing performance with motherhood.
When offers came for long international tours,
she turned them down.
Peter, her son, came first.
And then in 1974, a film changed everything.
(31:53):
That's entertainment.
MGM's retrospective introduced her drum dance
from Rosalie and begin the begin to a whole new generation.
Letters poured in, tributes mounted.
She was stunned, humbled, grateful.
In 1981, she walked onto the stage of the AFI tribute
(32:13):
to Fred Astaire.
Nervous after years away from the camera.
As soon as the audience spotted her,
they rose to their feet in a long heartfelt ovation.
It was a homecoming.
Her legacy endures not just in the films,
but in the way she carried herself.
Original, tireless and true.
(32:35):
Gene Kelly once called her the best tap dancer ever put on film.
And the proof is right there on screen.
On film, no one made tap dance look more powerful,
more precise, more utterly their own.
She elevated tap into poetry, as Frank Sinatra said
when speaking of her.
(32:56):
You can wait around in hope,
but you'll never see the likes of that again.
The truth is, we haven't her name, Eleanor Powell.
And now you know the rest of the story.
(gentle music)
(gentle music)
(33:21):
(light music)
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