Vera-Ellen

Vera-Ellen, born Vera-Ellen Rohe on February 16, 1921, in Norwood, Ohio, was an American dancer, actress, and singer whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television. Her father, Martin F. Rohe, worked as a piano dealer, and her mother, Alma C. Westmeier, chose the hyphenated name Vera-Ellen before her daughter was born. Both parents were descended from German immigrants.

Rohe began dancing at age ten, training at the Hessler Studio of Dancing, where fellow student Doris Day was among her classmates. At thirteen, she won a competition on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, launching her professional career. She subsequently became one of the youngest performers to dance as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall, an engagement that positioned her for work on Broadway.

Her Broadway debut came in 1939 with the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical Very Warm for May. She went on to appear in Higher and Higher, Panama Hattie, By Jupiter, and A Connecticut Yankee, the last of which was a 1943 revival. On the Decca Broadway cast recording of that revival, Vera-Ellen recorded two vocal duets with Chester Stratton: "I Feel at Home with You" and "You Always Love the Same Girl," performed in the style of a comic soubrette. It was during the run of A Connecticut Yankee that producer Samuel Goldwyn noticed her and cast her opposite Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in the 1945 film Wonder Man.

Beginning with Wonder Man, her singing in films was dubbed. Her screen career nonetheless proved substantial. She danced with Gene Kelly in Words and Music and On the Town, the latter released in 1949. She appeared in Love Happy, the final Marx Brothers film, and received top billing alongside Fred Astaire in Three Little Words and The Belle of New York. She co-starred with Donald O'Connor in the Ethel Merman vehicle Call Me Madam and appeared with David Niven and Cesar Romero in the 1951 musical comedy Happy Go Lovely. Her penultimate film role was in the 1954 blockbuster White Christmas, alongside Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney. Her final film appearance was in the 1957 British production Let's Be Happy.

During the mid-to-late 1950s, Vera-Ellen appeared frequently on American television variety programs. Her last two recorded performances were on The Perry Como Show on November 22, 1958, and The Dinah Shore Show on February 14, 1959, after which she retired from performing.

Vera-Ellen married twice. Her first husband was fellow dancer Robert Hightower; they were married from February 1941 to November 1946. In 1954 she married oilman Victor Bennett Rothschild. During that marriage she gave birth to a daughter, Victoria Ellen, who died in 1963 at three months of age from SIDS. Vera-Ellen and Rothschild divorced in 1966. Her niece by marriage, Ileana Rothschild, born in 1967, recalled that Vera-Ellen never stopped taking dance classes and was also an avid swimmer, using a swimming regimen to recover from a mild stroke late in her life.

Vera-Ellen died on August 30, 1981, at Los Angeles County General Hospital from ovarian cancer. She was sixty years old.