... harsh realities of of hoofing for a buck..." so mused Jack Cole on p. 121 of Glenn Loney's 1984 biography, Unsung Genius: The Passion of Dancer-Choreographer Jack Cole.
For a while I thought I'd found the reference to this book in Puttin' on the Ritz, a biography of Fred Astaire that I'd read recently, but there are only a couple of references to Astaire and nothing about the two dancers meeting. Loney mentions that Astaire's dancing style was not Cole's and that Cole did not care for Hermes Pan's choreography. Persistence retracing my path to the book paid off and I found the link -- a 1957 motion picture starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall vehicle called Designing Woman, an alternately amusing and irritating representative of the battle-of-the-sexes genre. It's redeeming features, imo, were Ms. Bacall's wardrobe and a high voltage appearance by Jack Cole in one of his few acting gigs. His memorable performance sent me in search of biographical information online and then to Glenn Loney's biography.
There's an interesting Los Angeles Times article about Jack Cole's professional relationship with Marilyn Monroe with a bit of Cole biography and other career highlights: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-marilyn-monroe9-2009aug09,0,5569636.story?page=2
I also found a photo of Jack Cole here: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(van+5a51836)) One of these days I will figure out how to add illustrations to these entries. For the moment simply getting them written and published will have to suffice.
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