Robert Alton

Infobox actor
name = Robert Alton


birthname = Robert Alton Hart
birthdate = birth date|1906|01|28
birthplace = Bennington, Vermont, USA
deathdate = death date and age|1957|06|12|1906|01|28
deathplace = Los Angeles, California, USA
occupation = Choreographer, dancer
spouse = Marjorie Fielding (1926-1929)
yearsactive =
tonyawards = Best Choreograph
1952 "Pal Joey"

Robert Alton January 28, 1906 –, June 12, 1957) was a dancer and choreographer, a major figure in dance choreography of Broadway and Hollywood musicals from the 1930s through to the early 1950s. He is principally remembered today as the discoverer of Gene Kelly, for his choreographic collaborations with Fred Astaire, and for choreographic sequences he designed for Hollywood musicals such as "Show Boat" (1951) and "The Harvey Girls" (1942).

Biography

Born Robert Alton Hart in Bennington, Vermont, Alton studied dance with Ralph McKernan in Springfield, Massachusetts and spent his summers in New York studying with Bert French and Mikhail Mordkin. His Broadway stage dancing debut was with Mordkin's company in "Take It from Me" (1919), followed by "Greenwich Follies" (1924) and "Same Day" (1925) which failed to make it to Broadway.

With his wife Marjorie Fielding he created a dance act and subsequently managed a line of chorus girls in vaudeville. When his wife took a sabbatical to have a baby, he took over dance direction at St. Louis movie theatres while teaching at Clark's Dance School in St. Louis. There his students included Donn Arden and Betty Grable.

After a series of successful stagings at New York's Paramount Theatre in 1933, he began a choreographic career which encompassed many of the most successful Broadway hits of the 1930s and 1940s, collaborating with Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart and Rogers and Hammerstein. He learned stage direction from John Murray Anderson and during his Broadway career he was instrumental in furthering the careers of Ray Bolger, John Brascia, Don Crichton, Betty Grable, Gene Kelly, Sheree North, Vera-Ellen and Charles Walters, among others.

He is credited with transforming Broadway choreography by breaking up the chorus (which until then was a precision line) into featured soloists and small groups, and his musical staging was celebrated for its elegance and attention to detail.

He choreographed his first Hollywood film in 1936 "Strike Me Pink" and became one of its leading choreographers during the golden age of the Hollywood musical film, serving as dance director for MGM from 1944-1951. He continued to work on Broadway during this period and, in 1952 won a Tony Award for his revival of "Pal Joey" which he had originally choreographed in 1940, catapulting the young Gene Kelly to stardom. In 1957 he was working on the film version of "Pal Joey" when he collapsed and died, his place was taken by Fred Astaire's principal collaborator, Hermes Pan.

Alton died in Los Angeles, California at age 51.

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