Robert Alton
Robert Alton (28 January 1902 – 12 June 1957) was an American 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 collaborations with Fred Astaire, and for choreographic sequences he designed for Hollywood musicals such as The Harvey Girls (1946), Show Boat (1951), and White Christmas (1954).
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, formerly of the Bolshoi Ballet and Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. His Broadway stage dancing début 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.
Alton, Robert Filmography
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2007, role: actor , character name: Himself
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1955, role: producer
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1955, role: miscellaneous crew
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1955, role: miscellaneous crew
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1953, role: miscellaneous crew
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1951, role: miscellaneous crew
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1950, role: miscellaneous crew
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1950, role: director
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1948, role: miscellaneous crew
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1948, role: miscellaneous crew
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1947, role: miscellaneous crew
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1947, role: director
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1945, role: miscellaneous crew
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1944, role: miscellaneous crew
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1944, role: miscellaneous crew
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1941, role: miscellaneous crew
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1941, role: miscellaneous crew
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1941, role: actor , character name: Cecil
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1936, role: miscellaneous crew
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1933, role: miscellaneous crew
