Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins (born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz; October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on stage, film, and television.
Jerome Robbins
October 11, 1918
July 29, 1998 (aged 79)
- Dancer
- choreographer
- film director
- theatre director
- theatre producer
1937–1998
Among his numerous stage productions were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King and I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof. Robbins was a five-time Tony Award-winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story and a special Academy Honorary Award for his choreographic achievements on film.
A documentary about Robbins's life and work, Something to Dance About, featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage, and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered on PBS in 2009 and won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award the same year.[1][2]
Early life[edit]
Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz in the Jewish Maternity Hospital at 270 East Broadway on Manhattan's Lower East Side – a neighborhood populated by many immigrants.[3] He was the son of Lena Robbins (née Rips) and Harry Rabinowitz (1887-1977).[4] He had an older sister, Sonia (1912-2004).[5][6][7]
The Rabinowitz family lived in a large apartment house at 51 East 97th Street at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue. Known as "Jerry" to those close to him, Robbins was given the middle name Wilson reflecting his parents' patriotic enthusiasm for the then-president, Woodrow Wilson.
In the early 1920s, the Rabinowitz family moved to Weehawken, New Jersey. His father and uncle opened the Comfort Corset Company in nearby Union City. He graduated in 1935 from Woodrow Wilson High School (since renamed as Weehawken High School).[3] The family had many show business connections, including vaudeville performers and theater owners. In the 1940s, their name was legally changed to Robbins.
Robbins began studying modern dance in high school with Alys [CK] Bentley, who encouraged her pupils to improvise steps to music. Said Robbins later: "What [she] gave me immediately was the absolute freedom to make up my own dances without inhibition or doubts." After graduation he went to study chemistry at New York University (NYU) but dropped out after a year for financial reasons, and to pursue dance full-time. He joined the company of Senya Gluck Sandor, a leading exponent of expressionistic modern dance; it was Sandor who recommended that he change his name to Robbins. Sandor also encouraged him to take ballet, which he did with Ella Daganova; in addition he studied Spanish dancing with Helen Veola; Asian dance with Yeichi Nimura; and dance composition with Bessie Schonberg. While a member of Sandor's company Robbins made his stage debut with the Yiddish Art Theater, in a small role in The Brothers Ashkenazi.
Personal life[edit]
Robbins had romantic relationships with a number of people, including Montgomery Clift, Nora Kaye, Buzz Miller, and Jess Gerstein. As a former Communist Party member, he named 10 communists in his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although he gave this testimony only after years of pressure, and threats to make public his sexual orientation, his naming names caused resentment among some of his artistic colleagues, including blacklisted actors Jack Gilford[17] and Zero Mostel, who, while working on Fiddler on the Roof "openly disdained Robbins".[18] Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents worked with him on West Side Story only a few years after they had been blacklisted.[19]