World War II Sailors Chase Victory—and Lots of Women—in 1944 New York

Fancy Free
New York City Ballet
Lincoln Center
New York, NY

Choreographer Jerome Robbins took long walks through New York City in the autumn of 1943 and, unsurprisingly, the city was full of sailors: sailors on shore leave; sailors in training; sailors passing through; or sailors working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There were thousands of them, decked out in their sharp white uniforms, white hats and wide smiles.

Why not a ballet about the sailors as they raised a little hell during the New York night in search of true love? (After all, they already have matching clothes!) Robbins went to his friend Leonard Bernstein, then a boyish composer of twenty-five, and asked him if he could write music for a ballet built around popular American music and dance, including the soft shoe shuffle, the boogie woogie, and the lindy hop. Bernstein smiled widely and handed Robbins a song he had written at the Russian Tea Room that very afternoon. The choreographer loved it. The pair went to work.

What the duo produced was Fancy Free, a unique 30-minute ballet that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in April 1944 and won rave reviews (“ten degrees north of terrific,” wrote the New York Times critic). It sold out the Met for its entire run. The ballet was soon expanded into a two-hour musical play, On the Town, with Robbins and Bernstein joined by book writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Sitting in the audience on its opening night was actor Gene Kelly. He called a Hollywood producer after the show ended and convinced him to buy the rights for a film version of the show (with Kelly in the starring role, of course). Five years later, the musical debuted on the silver screen. The movie, featuring Bernstein’s” New York, New York” song (ironically, he wrote the famous city song while riding a train across Nebraska), became one of the most beloved musicals of all time.

Every few years, the New York City ballet revives Fancy Free and hauls out all the old beautiful World War II naval uniforms (why doesn’t the Navy use the white uniforms for day-to-day wear anymore?) for its dancers.

The ballet, now playing once again at Lincoln Center, is as wonderful as it was in the spring of 1944. It opens with a splash of white as three sailors explode on to the stage outside of a bar to thumping Bernstein music. The three are looking for a good time and they soon find it in the form of two young women. In the bar, the men dance with the women, with each other and then for the women, staging a World War II American Idol competition to see who is the best dancer. There is a wonderful moment in this scene when one of the sailors leans back against the bar and explains to the woman that he mans an anti-aircraft gun on his ship, showing her how he handles the big gun with his quivering arms and shaking back. She’s impressed.

The trio of sailors tries repeatedly to hook up with the two ladies, but without success. They moan their fate as the girls leave. The men are stumped but then, sliding towards the bar out of the dark night, is a third woman, just as lovely as the first two. She dances down the street and off the stage and the men, excited, dance after her, into the night and into ballet history.

There is no indication that the nation is at war anytime in the ballet except for the anti-aircraft gunner’s conversation (which, to be fair, is much more plausible in New York City than in, say, London). The sailors are smart, funny and jovial—just three guys on leave and out on the big town. That feeling of mirth is carried throughout the ballet and replicates the feelings of sailors “on the town” in the spring of 1944. One complaint: the ballet should have somehow, someway, even with just a sign, shown the presence of the USO clubs in New York and around the country. The USO (United Service Organizations) had, at its height, more than 3,000 clubs, and many in New York City. Servicemen went there for refreshments and dances with young women volunteers. Many of the clubs hosted their own entertainment shows and the USO sponsored the huge touring shows that featured Bob Hope and others.

Fancy Free, 68 years young, is still fresh, still impressive and still brings long roars of approvals after the curtain comes down. History buffs, World War II fans, and theater and dance people alike should see it.

Bernstein’s music is bold and bombastic, and as original and thrilling now as it was in ’44. Robbins’s choreography smothers the stage. His sailors leap and soar their way through and around the women and up to and back from the bar, beer mug held high in the air. The ballet has a zest to it that you rarely find anymore.

The three sailors—Robert  Fairchild, Adam Henrickson, and Sean Suozzi—are mercurial dancers. The women—Stephanie Chrosniak, Sterling Hyltin and Georgina Pazcoguin—are just as good. David Prottas is the low-key bartender.

Once you see the ballet, you’ll get a better understanding of how On the Town was written and produced so quickly and painlessly. The ballet, and later the play and movie, are so good because Robbins and Bernstein spent the winter watching sailors cavorting through New York, chasing women, dodging taxis, and drinking copiously. It was one of the first ballets set in New York that had a firm foot in reality.

When they wrote the film and movie, Comden and Green expanded and changed the storyline to put the focus on the women as much as the men. The play had a feel to it, something no one could quite describe. That magic, in addition to the sailors swirling all around the theater in the streets every night of the week, made the show a hit. It ran for eighteen months.

 Bernstein’s Jeremiah symphony debuted around the same time, the maestro appeared on numerous entertainment shows on radio and his fame grew.

Frank Sinatra joined Gene Kelly in the movie cast of On the Town and they insisted that most of the scenes in the film be shot in New York to give it an air of authenticity, something that had rarely been done in a musical before. The New York setting helped to make the film a hit.

All did not go well for Bernstein, though. The movie producers felt that only his New York, New York was a song they could turn into a single record and scuttled most of his music. Then they hired Roger Edens, an arranger for the music of many films, and used six songs he wrote for the film. Just a handful of Bernstein’s songs remained. Bernstein biographer Humphrey Burton said that the maestro was always bitter about that.

But, regardless of the movie disputes, Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town went on to become a beloved film classic. Here, at Lincoln Center, theater and film lovers can enjoy the well done Fancy Free ballet that became the foundation for that legendary success (the ballet will be presented again several times in the spring).
PRODUCTION: Scenery: Oliver Smith, Costumes: Kermit Love, Lighting: Ronald Bates. Andrews Sill was the conductor