Viola Essen

Viola Essen (August 11, 1925 – January 16, 1970) was an American ballet dancer and stage performer whose career spanned concert dance, Broadway, film, and television. Born Violeta Colchagoff in Saint Louis, Missouri, she was raised in New York City and Los Angeles. Her parents, Asen Hristov Colchagoff and Maria Vasileva Essen, were Bulgarian-born immigrants who became naturalized United States citizens in 1923; her father worked as a furrier. Essen began performing at a young age, initially after winning a baby contest. She attended the Birch Wathen School in New York, where she studied piano under Vladimir Drozdoff and dance under Mikhail Mordkin.

Her training with Mordkin led directly to early professional engagements. She performed in his productions of The Sleeping Beauty in 1936, The Goldfish in 1937, and Giselle in 1937, all featuring Lucia Chase in the lead roles. In 1940, Essen danced in the inaugural productions of the Ballet Theatre, the company that would later become the American Ballet Theatre, making her one of its original members. Her work continued to draw critical attention; in 1944, New York Times critic John Martin praised her performance as the Queen in a production of Swan Lake, writing that she danced with a fresh and ingratiating young competence. In 1955, she returned to the Ballet Theatre to reprise her role in Jardin aux lilas alongside Hugh Laing at the company's fifteenth anniversary celebration, held at the Metropolitan Opera House.

Essen's Broadway career extended from 1942 to 1949 and included appearances in The New Moon, Hollywood Pinafore, and Along Fifth Avenue. Her role in the 1945 production of Hollywood Pinafore earned her a caricature by the celebrated illustrator Al Hirschfeld. Beyond the stage, she appeared in the 1946 ballet-themed thriller film Specter of the Rose and in a 1955 televised adaptation of the operetta The Desert Song. In 1956, she operated a dance studio in New York City; Marlon Brando was reported to have played bongos for her students on one occasion. By 1963, columnist Walter Winchell noted she was seeking work in television commercials, and in 1965 he reported that she had experienced both an armed burglary and a fire while running a florist shop in New York City.

Essen's personal life included at least five marriages, all of brief duration. Her first husband was actor Richard Deane, from whom she was divorced in 1944. In 1946 she married Polish-born violinist Werner Ludwig Gebauer; that marriage ended in 1948. Peter Cadeby became her third husband in 1949, the same year she declared bankruptcy. She married Herbert Crane in 1953. Her fifth marriage, in 1956, was to actor Gabriel Dell, with whom she had a son named Beau. Essen died in January 1970 at the age of forty-four.