Bullets Over Bolognese

The above title was a riff on the movie and later Broadway musical "Bullets Over Broadway" run by one of the NYC tabloids following the December 22, 2003 fatal shooting of a 37 year-old mobster, Albert Circelli, a made man in the Lucchese crime family at Rao's who doth protesteth waaay too much at the singing of another patron, a Broadway star who can sing, by a 67 year-old mobster known way too alliteratively as Louis "Louie Lump Lump" Barone, who took extreme offense to the younger mobster's audible, profane displeasure at the acapella singing of "Don't Rain On My Parade" by the singer Rena Stroller who starred in "Les Miserables." There are critics everywhere in this town.

Rao's, for anyone who doesn't know, is an exclusive Italian eatery in East Harlem that is nearly impossible to get a table at. There are only 11 tables and the place is sort of on a time share basis with the city's celebrities, meaning those on either side of the law. Needless to say, the Monday night shooting just days before Christmas had all the trappings of a TV movie, only it wasn't.

The headline came to mind when I read the obituary of the deceased ballerina Mary Ellen Moylan. Ms. Moylan passed away a year ago, but just now came to the attention of the obituary desk at the NYT. She was 94, and was a famous ballerina, perhaps the ballerina in the 1940s and '50s, who was described by George Balanchine as his "first ballerina."

I almost didn't read her obituary. I've never seen a ballet, and really have no interest in it. I love the music to 'The Nutcracker,' but can enjoy it without all the dancing.

I don't know when my disinterest in ballet took place, but it might have been when I was with my mother watching the movie musical  'Oklahoma' and they're dancing around the haystacks and then set them on fire. The fire scared me as a little boy. I liked the rest of the dancing in the movie, but that ballet sequence that I later learned was quite famous for being choreographed by Agnes deMille did nothing for me.

Ms. Moylan's obituary attracted me because of the size, nearly a full page in the print edition, and the five photos. one of which shows the master, George Balanchine, teaching a class with Ms. Moylan in the front.

Her fame was widespread in the 1940s and '50s, as she starred in many productions by Balanchine and danced all over the world to high critical acclaim. Interesting in the obituary was to come across the name Maria Tallchief, another ballerina of the era who became Balanchine's second wife. I just referenced her in my posting about the two front page obituaries of Prince Philip and the rapper DMX. Ms. Tallchief was also on a twin front page obituary with the comedian Jonathan Winters.

Five of the six columns of Ms. Moylan's obituary are almost lyrical themselves. The progression of her career from childhood to adulthood to all the stages in the world reads like a fairy tale. It was most interesting that one of the stages she danced on in a Balanchine production was at Central High School for Needle Trades in Manhattan in 1946. The public school system at the time had numerous vocational high schools scattered cross the city and their auditoriums could seat several hundred.

The sixth column brings Ms. Moylan's life toward its near end, or at least her dancing life, when it slams into the statement that in 1955, after starring in a production at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, she married a "longtime suitor Robert Stanley Bailes, whom she had met when both were in 'Song of Norway', he as an understudy. She then retired from the stage. They moved to Costa Mesa, Calif. where they bought a hamburger stand." Yup, that's what it said.

BALLET to BURGERS

Costa Mesa is adjacent to Newport Beach, so the retirement surroundings can be imagined to be bucolic. But a hamburger stand? If only they could have found a photo of that. Professional dancers of all types tend to remain thin and lithe later in life, so it must have been something to see this diva serving them up. Talk about being a "hash-slinger at Child's." Ballerina does a ballet behind the counter serving burgers. The Costa Mesa paper must have run a story.

Since she left the stage in 1955, and she was born in 1925, she was only 30 at the time. A lot of living afterward had her married twice more after Robert died in 1962. After her third marriage was annulled she moved back to New York in Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County teaching ballet at Bennett College in Millbrook.

From there she moved back to California, then to Washington State. Despite keeping in touch with Balanchine and her dancing contemporaries, living to 95 meant she outlived them all. It's little wonder that the dance world did not know of her passing on April 28, 2020 until her daughter-in-law, Carol Bailes, got the word out through social media.

In the past I've skipped, or skimmed the obituaries of ballet dancers. No more. You never know what those twirling types might get up to after taking off those shoes.

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