Bryant, Marie, 1917-1978

Marie Bryant (November 6, 1917 – May 23, 1978) was a versatile and vivacious African American dancer and singer, who worked with such jazz luminaries as Duke Ellington and Lester Young. She also became a force behind-the-scenes in Hollywood as a dance teacher and movement coach, as well as a choreographer and dance director for a wide variety of entertainers working in nightclubs, film, and television.

Bryant was born in Meridian, Mississippi, but moved with her family as a child to New Orleans after a racist incident threatened their safety. By the late 1920s, she was living with her mother in Chicago and studying dance with well-known local teacher, Mary Bruce, who had a studio in the Bronzeville section of the city. Bryant participated in Bruce’s annual school recitals, which were elaborate events presented at the downtown Eighth Street Theatre. In later years, Bryant would cite Bruce as her earliest dance mentor, as well as Katherine Dunham’s influence in helping her to “finish” her performing style and technique. By the time she was a teenager (possibly as early as 1931), Bryant was working professionally in Chicago nightclubs, and, by 1934, had become a regular performer in the floorshow at the popular Grand Terrace Café, with Earl Hines and his band.

By 1936, Bryant had established herself in Los Angeles, which, with the exception of a few extended stints in New York (1945-1947) and abroad (1952-1955), would remain her home base when she was not on tour. For the next several years, she would work at a variety of venues, including predominantly Black-run clubs in South Central Los Angeles, as well as ones catering primarily to white audiences in downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood. During this early period, Bryant appeared frequently at the Paradise Club in Los Angeles, including an engagement with Lionel Hampton in 1936. She also tried to break into films as a performer. Bryant was reported to have been one of the “sepia extras” used in the elaborate Harlem sequence featuring Louis Armstrong, “Public Melody Number One,” in the film, Artists and Models (1937). Her first official screen credit was as a specialty dancer in The Duke is Tops (1938). Released by the short-lived Million Dollar Production Company, the film starred Ralph Cooper and Lena Horne (also in her film debut); footage from Bryant’s dance number would be reused in the studio’s Gang War (1940).

In early 1939, Bryant returned to Chicago for several months, appearing at a number of clubs. By the fall, she had returned to Los Angeles, where she performed with Count Basie at a Paramount Theatre stage show. By 1940, she had begun her association with Duke Ellington. Touring with Ellington, Bryant was touted as one of the Duke’s California “discoveries,” when she made her official New York debut with the band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in June. She continued to play dates with Ellington, as well as take on other touring assignments, eventually returning to Los Angeles. On July 10, 1941, Bryant opened in the eagerly anticipated premiere of Ellington’s musical revue, Jump For Joy, at the Mayan Theater. Her performance of the number, “Bli-Blip,” with dance partner, Paul White, was documented in the Soundie of the same title released the following year. Although Bryant and the show received good notices, the production did not make it to Broadway as hoped, closing in Los Angeles after only nine weeks.

Bryant remained in Los Angeles, performing in nightclubs, including the Club Alabam, as well as other stage productions, such as Africana (1942) and Sweet ‘N Hot (1944). She also continued to appear in small, uncredited roles in films. In 1944, she was a dancer in the “Brazilian Boogie” number with Lena Horne in Broadway Rhythm; danced with Lennie Bluett in the Big Jim’s nightclub scene in When Strangers Marry; and danced with Harold Nicholas in the “Mr. Beebe” number in Carolina Blues. That same year, Bryant was highlighted in the more arty short film, Jammin' the Blues, directed by photographer Gjon Mili. Attempting to capture the mood of an authentic jazz session, the film showcased Bryant singing the standard, “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” accompanied by Lester Young, Barney Kessel, and other jazz icons; she also danced fleetingly with Archie Savage to the improvisatory “Jammin’ the Blues.” Additionally, Bryant had a brief bit in the “Love” segment of Ziegfeld Follies (filmed in 1945, but not released until 1946) with Lena Horne.

On November 10, 1945, Bryant made her Broadway debut in the musical, Are You With It? and took on a prominent role the following year in Beggar's Holiday (1946), a pioneering reworking of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera with an interracial cast, with new music by Duke Ellington and lyrics by John La Touche. While living in New York, Bryant became a member of the faculty of the Katherine Dunham School, where she taught tap and boogie. More of a critical than popular success, Beggar's Holiday closed at the end of March 1947; plans for a touring and London production never came to fruition. Bryant was back in Los Angeles by the summer of 1947. She continued to perform regularly over the next few years, but began to shift increasingly to teaching and choreography. Nicholas Ray (who had directed her in Beggar’s Holiday) put Bryant into a small role in his first film, They Live By Night (filmed in 1947, but not released until 1948), again, as a nightclub performer, singing “Your Red Wagon.”

While onscreen parts remained few and far between, Bryant did find work at many of the major film studios. She frequently was approached by white male dance directors or choreographers, such as Nick Castle and Gene Kelly, to assist in staging certain numbers in their films, as well as to coach the dancers or actors who were to perform in them. It was reportedly Kelly who first got Bryant into this line of work when he was choreographing a new version of “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” for the Rodgers and Hart biopic, Words and Music (1948). Bryant coached the experienced dancer Vera-Ellen in the jazzier elements of style that Kelly was seeking and would make a brief appearance as well the following year in another Kelly film, On the Town (1949), leading a chorus line in the “Club Dixieland” segment that is part of the nightclub sequence. She also was hired by dance director Billy Daniels to assist on several films, including Fancy Pants (1950) with Bob Hope, and Wabash Avenue (1950), in which she worked closely with Betty Grable. Bryant never received a screen credit for her work on the dances in any of these films, although she obviously contributed significantly to creating the final product. In addition, she was in demand to coach actresses in certain dances or movement that were required in their dramatic roles. For example, Paulette Goddard sought out Bryant to teach her the shimmy for Anna Lucasta (1949), and Bryant prepared Ava Gardner for a nightclub sequence in East Side, West Side (1949). Having developed a dance technique she termed “controlled release,” which many actors found liberating, Bryant received numerous requests from stars to help them to limber up for their acting performances.

Bryant’s other teaching and coaching assignments were varied. In early 1949, she was working at the former Florentine Gardens in Hollywood, which had reopened under new management as the Cotton Club, with a policy of booking African American headliners, such as Pearl Bailey. Bryant received praise for her “exotic dancing” with the Calypso Boys as part of the revue, but the club closed within a few months. Following this closure, she was approached by the management of the Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles, which was then operating as a burlesque house, to work with their chorus line, devising new routines. Bryant began teaching some of the dancers Afro-Cuban and “blues” dance techniques, in addition to their striptease work. In 1950, Bryant joined Eugene Loring’s American School of Dance for the fall term as a guest instructor in jive and Afro-Cuban techniques. Returning to its original name, the Florentine Gardens reopened again in 1950, with Bryant now responsible for staging routines for the chorus, which began being billed as the Marie Bryant Dancers.

In the fall of 1951, Bryant and her troupe of dancers toured with the barnstorming extravaganza, The Biggest Show of 1951, which brought together Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, and Sarah Vaughan, along with a roster of talented supporting acts, to auditoriums and arenas in cities across the East Coast and the South. Following this lengthy domestic tour, Bryant signed onto an ambitious overseas venture being organized by promoter Manhattan Paul. A company of 26 performers was set to travel from New York (via England and India) and arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in time to participate in the festivities around the opening of the Colombo Plan Exhibition in February 1952, which was supposed to be attended by (then) Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh as part of their Commonwealth Tour. Following their Colombo stay, the organizers hoped to arrange additional bookings in India and Australia. During this tour, Bryant met and married the company’s business manager, John Rajkumar, and traveled through his native India on their honeymoon.

By the spring of 1953, Bryant and her husband were back in England, where she joined the cast of the revue, High Spirits, which opened at the London Hippodrome on May 13, 1953. Although Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill were the ostensible stars of the show, Bryant received a great deal of attention for her performance of the satirical anti-apartheid calypso song, “The Plea,” which generated controversy during the visit of South African Prime Minister D. F. Malan to attend the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. During this period, she made several UK radio and television appearances, including a BBC program, Club Ebony. Bryant also had small parts in two British films, Cross-Up (1954) and The Gilded Cage (1955). In the fall of 1954, Bryant and Rajkumar went to Australia, where she performed at the Palladium in Sydney.

Bryant had returned to Los Angeles with her husband by the spring of 1955; they would reside there together for the next several years until Rajkumar, who suffered from ill health, died in 1965. During the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Bryant resumed staging or polishing acts for various performers, such as Kay Thompson, for club dates in California and Las Vegas, as well as for the dance team Marge and Gower Champion (she also was on the faculty of their school). Additionally, Bryant worked as the choreographer on Nat King Cole’s highly-regarded television series. She collaborated frequently with Pearl Bailey, and would return to Broadway with Bailey when she took over the lead in Hello, Dolly! in 1967. Bryant was Bailey’s standby in the role of Dolly Gallagher Levi and played Mrs. Rose, both in New York and on tour. In the 1970s, she ran the Marie Bryant Dance Studios and continued to work as a choreographer in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

At the age of 59, Marie Bryant passed away after a long struggle with cancer in 1978 at the County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles.