Update June, 2011: The French film that inspired the Margaret O'Brien film discussed in this blog, Ballerina aka La Mort du Cygne (1937) is being shown on TCM on June 27th, 2011 at 6am EDT and The Unfinished Dance (1947) will follow at 7:30 Am EDT.
The Unfinished Dance (1947) is now on DVD for the first time.
The remastered film is prepared on demand with few frills, but it is good to know that this intense little backstage gem is finally available. This movie was directed by Henry Koster (It Started With Eve, Harvey, The Robe), and features Cyd Charisse, Karin Booth and Danny Thomas (in his film debut). This MGM film, which was set in the world of the ballet, was produced a year before The Red Shoes (1948), but it captures one of the sharpest portrayals by child actress Margaret O'Brien in a film that teeters between campiness and real honesty about the power of childhood emotions. Please click here to see more details about this movie at the Warner Archive.
While putting this notice about The Unfinished Dance together, I remembered reading how the theme of loyalty and jealousy in the film played out in real life on a smaller, less dramatic scale on the set of this movie during production. Actress Marlo Thomas wrote a book, The Right Word at the Right Time, some years ago compiling various times when another person's wise words had made a difference to an individual's life at a crucial time. Thomas included her own experience when her father, the comic actor, philanthropist and pioneering television producer Danny Thomas had said something that made a difference in her life. Danny Thomas' sympathetic performance as the rather timid guardian of Margaret O'Brien in this movie may not have set the world on fire with the critics or the studio, but his particular talent soon found better musical expression in other films, such as Big City (1948) and I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), prior to his becoming a television pioneer. However, as Marlo Thomas recalled, making The Unfinished Dance was an important event in her life as well as that of her father:
"Once my father made a movie with Margaret O'Brien and he often took me to the set. I would cue his lines as we drove to the MGM studios with the windows open and the heady mix of Old Spice and a Cuban cigar swirling about us as we carried on a kind of rehearsal in transit. On the set I played jacks with Margaret between takes, and when the bell rang, I would join the crew in silence as the cameras rolled and the boom mike moved into position to recored the dialogue I knew by heart.
I was in awe of my father and sinfully envious of Margaret O'Brien. I wore pigtails. I wanted freckles. I wanted to be Margaret O'Brien."
I was in awe of my father and sinfully envious of Margaret O'Brien. I wore pigtails. I wanted freckles. I wanted to be Margaret O'Brien."
Later Marlo Thomas admitted that her father "said I was every bit as good as Margaret O'Brien. When we got to the studio, I secretly prayed she would drop dead so I could play her part."
While Thomas and O'Brien remained friendly, with Margaret telling interviewer Allen Ellenberger that the two girls studied for their "First Communion and Confirmation together, so we knew each other as we grew up. But Danny was great with kids—he was fun."
For Marlo, admitting the feeling of jealousy she had felt may have helped later, when she became an actress. Ten years after The Unfinished Dance, when a 17 year old Marlo Thomas began to make forays into acting in a professional production of Gigi at a local theater, she discovered that all the interviews and reviews "focused on my father. Would I be as good as my father? Was I as gifted, as funny?...I was devastated. I loved my father; my problem was Danny Thomas.
"Daddy," I began, "please don't be hurt when I tell you this. I want to change my name. I love you but I don't want to be a Thomas anymore."
Aftera long silence, "he said, 'I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd but they don't listen. They just run their own race. That's what you have to do. Don't listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race."
The next night as the crowd filed into the theater, the stage manager knocked on my dressing room and handed me a white box with a red ribbon. I opened it up and inside was a pair of old horse blinders with a little note that read, "Run your own race, Baby."
"Daddy," I began, "please don't be hurt when I tell you this. I want to change my name. I love you but I don't want to be a Thomas anymore."
Aftera long silence, "he said, 'I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd but they don't listen. They just run their own race. That's what you have to do. Don't listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race."
The next night as the crowd filed into the theater, the stage manager knocked on my dressing room and handed me a white box with a red ribbon. I opened it up and inside was a pair of old horse blinders with a little note that read, "Run your own race, Baby."
Sources:
Ellenberger, Allen, Margaret O'Brien: The MGM Years Part III, Hollywoodland, Jan.19th, 2011.
O'Connell, Ellen, Marlo Thomas' Funny Life, Beverly Hills Patch, October 7, 2010.
Thomas, Marlo, The Right Words at the Right Time, Simon and Schuster, 2004.
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