One of the most versatile dancers on stage and screen, Vera-Ellen Rohe was born Feb. 16, 1921, in Norwood, Ohio, where she began dancing at age 9. Four years later, she won the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, which sent her on tour in its All Girls Unit, accompanied by her mother. After the tour, she landed a dancing gig with the Ted Lewis band, a specialty dance spot in Billy Rose’s nightclub, and a place on the Rockettes, who reportedly fired her because she showed too much individuality.
Just after her 18th birthday, Vera-Ellen made her Broadway debut in Very Warm for May. The following year, she appeared as a specialty dancer in Higher and Higher and in the chorus of Panama Hattie. In 1941, she married fellow dancer Robert Hightower, with whom she danced in By Jupiter (1942). Her final Broadway musical was A Connecticut Yankee (1943), where she was spotted by Samuel Goldwyn, who took her to Hollywood to costar with Danny Kaye in Wonder Man (1945) and The Kid from Brooklyn (1946).
She followed those films with Three Little Girls in Blue (1946) and Carnival in Costa Rica (1947), before being paired with Gene Kelly in Words and Music (1948) and On the Town (1949). In 1949, she also appeared in Love Happy, the Marx Brothers’ final feature. Below are Vera-Ellen and Kelly in “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” from Words and Music and in the title song of On the Town, with Frank Sinatra and Betty Garrett (yellow), Jules Munshin and Ann Miller (red).
Vera-Ellen was next paired with Fred Astaire in Three Little Words (1950) and The Belle of New York (1952), becoming only one of six women to partner both Kelly and Astaire on screen. Her other Hollywood musicals in the early 1950s include Happy Go Lovely with David Niven, Call Me Madam with Donald O’Connor, and White Christmas (1954) with Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, and Rosemary Clooney. Below is Vera-Ellen with Astaire in “Thinking of You” from Three Little Words and with John Brascia in “Abraham” from White Christmas.
After she married her second husband, millionaire Victor Rothschild, Vera-Ellen turned from film to TV anthology series like Lux Video Theatre and The Ford Television Theatre and to variety programs like The Colgate Variety Hour and Washington Square, in addition to the shows hosted by Ed Sullivan, Perry Como, and Dinah Shore. Below is Vera-Ellen and Louis DaPron on the Feb. 18, 1956, broadcast of Como’s show.
Vera-Ellen’s final film appearance was in the British production Let’s Be Happy (1957) with Tony Martin. In 1963, her three-month-old daughter died, and she withdrew from public life. “I stopped when I was ahead. I don’t need my work anymore, and I don’t need the applause,” she told a reporter. For the next two decades, she spent her retirement in her Hollywood Hills home, dying Aug. 30, 1981, of ovarian cancer.