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Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire
Armed with an eighth-grade education, an inexhaustible imagination, and an innate talent for dancing, Hermes Pan (1909-1990) was a boy from Tennessee who became the most prolific, popular, and memorable choreographer of the glory days of the Hollywood musical. While he may be most well-known for the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals which he choreographed at RKO film studios, he also created dances at Twentieth Century-Fox, M-G-M, Paramount, and later for television, winning both the Oscar and the Emmy for best choreography.
In Hermes The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire , Pan emerges as a man in full, an artist inseparable from his works. He was a choreographer deeply interested in his dancers' personalities, and his dances became his way of embracing and understanding the outside world. Though his time in a Trappist monastery proved to him that he was more suited to choreography than to life as a monk, Pan remained a deeply devout Roman Catholic throughout his creative life, a person firmly convinced of the powers of prayer. While he was rarely to be seen without several beautiful women at his side, it was no secret that Pan was homosexual and even had a life partner. As Pan worked at the nexus of the cinema industry's creative circles during the golden age of the film musical, this book traces not only Pan's personal life but also the history of the Hollywood musical itself. It is a study of Pan, who emerges here as a benevolent perfectionist, and equally of the stars, composers, and directors with
whom he worked, from Astaire and Rogers to Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Bob Fosse, George Gershwin, Samuel Goldwyn, and countless other luminaries of American popular entertainment.
Author John Franceschina bases his telling of Pan's life on extensive first-hand research into Pan's unpublished correspondence and his own interviews. Pan enjoyed one of the most illustrious careers of any Hollywood dance director, and because his work also spanned across Broadway and television, this book will appeal to readers interested in musical theater history, dance history, and film.
In Hermes The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire , Pan emerges as a man in full, an artist inseparable from his works. He was a choreographer deeply interested in his dancers' personalities, and his dances became his way of embracing and understanding the outside world. Though his time in a Trappist monastery proved to him that he was more suited to choreography than to life as a monk, Pan remained a deeply devout Roman Catholic throughout his creative life, a person firmly convinced of the powers of prayer. While he was rarely to be seen without several beautiful women at his side, it was no secret that Pan was homosexual and even had a life partner. As Pan worked at the nexus of the cinema industry's creative circles during the golden age of the film musical, this book traces not only Pan's personal life but also the history of the Hollywood musical itself. It is a study of Pan, who emerges here as a benevolent perfectionist, and equally of the stars, composers, and directors with
whom he worked, from Astaire and Rogers to Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Bob Fosse, George Gershwin, Samuel Goldwyn, and countless other luminaries of American popular entertainment.
Author John Franceschina bases his telling of Pan's life on extensive first-hand research into Pan's unpublished correspondence and his own interviews. Pan enjoyed one of the most illustrious careers of any Hollywood dance director, and because his work also spanned across Broadway and television, this book will appeal to readers interested in musical theater history, dance history, and film.
- GenresBiographyFilmNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
First published May 10, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 17, 2019
Hermes Pan choreographed some of the most famous musical films of all time (not to mention his work on stage and television), starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller, Betty Grable, Juliet Prowse, Rita Hayworth and many others, yet as a person was extremely quiet, self-effacing, good-humored, devoted to his friends and relations and a devout Catholic rather than a Hollywood schmoozer. It's a life full of contradictions but one depicted with great understanding by John Charles Franceschina. Anyone with any interest in dancing, film history and musicals will find this a fascinating read. - BH.
March 28, 2014
I've recently become fascinated by Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and those associated with their fabulous musicals of the 1930s. So I mostly enjoyed reading this book about one of their closest collaborators. At times though the book became more of a recitation of his various jobs and paychecks than a story about Hermes Pan as a person. The book could also have been shortened considerably by more concise plot descriptions of a large number of these productions.
Also there are some curious omissions. Hermes was rather friendly with the family of the shah of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. So how was Hermes impacted by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and its impact on his friends? Not a word is said. Perhaps the author has no evidence one way or another about this, but if so, he could at least mention that this is a big mystery.
Also, the fall of the Hollywood studio musical system in the late 1950s goes virtually unmentioned. Reading this book, you see Hermes goes from working in movies constantly for decades to suddenly working on stage productions and in Italy quite a bit. Not a word mentioned about what must have been a tremendous upheaval in his industry.
Also there are some curious omissions. Hermes was rather friendly with the family of the shah of Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. So how was Hermes impacted by the Iranian revolution in 1979 and its impact on his friends? Not a word is said. Perhaps the author has no evidence one way or another about this, but if so, he could at least mention that this is a big mystery.
Also, the fall of the Hollywood studio musical system in the late 1950s goes virtually unmentioned. Reading this book, you see Hermes goes from working in movies constantly for decades to suddenly working on stage productions and in Italy quite a bit. Not a word mentioned about what must have been a tremendous upheaval in his industry.
September 8, 2021
I took my time reading this, not just because a survey of such a long and productive career deserves the time, but because I love sitting in front of youtube as I read descriptions of musical numbers. The descriptions are rather brief and to the point in Franceschina's book - he doesn't rhapsodize or interpret, as some Astaire volumes do - but he's pretty completist, which I like, and he does occasionally manage to add an anecdote or two. He's also good at pointing out useful comparisons (the shadow dancing in Astaire's Bojangles of Harlem number and the shadow dancing in Betty Grable's "I Heard the Birdies Sing" (boxing number) from Footlight Serenade, for instance).
As one of the many who associated Pan with Astaire and only with Astaire, I was taken aback by the huge number of other projects he was associated with. In addition to being the preferred choreographer for Grable's films, he also had multiple opportunities to work with other singing/dancing ladies within the studio system. After that system collapsed, his scope of work broadened to television, foreign film (chiefly in Italy), and nightclub acts. He was the choreographer responsible for the spectacle preceding Cleopatra's stunning entrance into Rome. He worked on the most famous of Sonja Henie's films, Sun Valley Serenade, although only on the dancing parts, not the skating. He did work on the underwater swimming choreography for Esther Williams in Jupiter's Darling, which also included dry-land dancing by Marge & Gower Champion. Shirley Maclaine and Juliet Prowse? Check out the "Garden of Eden Ballet" in Can-Can (1960), which, according to this book, he entirely rechoreographed from the original, more scandalous, Broadway version by Michael Kidd. He did the dance numbers for Lost Horizon (1972), with its vastly eclectic cast including Bobby Van, who danced, and John Gielgud, who didn't. He choreographed for Julie Andrews in Darling Lili (she records her awe about working with him in her own autobiography).
Most of all, though, he had a life-long working relationship with Astaire, starting with Flying Down to Rio, and lasting all the way through to Astaire's TV specials and an unsatisfactory stint on Finian's Rainbow (he was fired by Francis Ford Coppola). Even Astaire's films without a Hermes Pan credit sometimes had some Pan input: for instance, he was bound by other contracts during the filming of Royal Wedding, but he claimed in a later interview to have discussed the idea of the hat-rack dance with Astaire.
I was intrigued by the fact that Pan was very early on influenced by African American music and dance - he had an African-American "mammy" - but he also seems to have been a sponge soaking up just about any cultural or folk traditions to incorporate into his work. He doesn't have a clearly-defined "style" as, say, Bob Fosse does, but instead his style is to make the dance work within the context of the film (he worked on many social-dancing scenes within non-musical movies too). Nonetheless, as youtube enabled me to broaden my acquaintance with his non-Astaire films, I was amused to see some motifs being cheerfully re-used. The one that jumps to mind is the sweeping over-the-hip dress-flaring jumps at the end of Pan's own (rare) on-screen duet with Betty Grable in "The Kindergarten Conga"(Moon Over Miami); they are irresistibly reminiscent of "The Yam" in Carefree, though without the leg up on the table. (Apparently Pan also performed this move endlessly and memorably with Lana Turner at a highly-alcoholic private party in Acapulco).
Pan was gay, but extremely private about it. He made it through his long career apparently with zero scandal, and beloved by gossip columnists rather than their target. He does appear to have had a long-term relationship with a man named Gino Malerba, who became his right-hand-man on the set and was not necessarily popular with everyone. The other aspect of his private life that was a bit unusual was his strong friendship with the reigning Pahlavi family of Iran, whom he frequently visited.
This book goes on my Hollywood reference shelves. Like Gielgud, he is infintely cross-referencable!
As one of the many who associated Pan with Astaire and only with Astaire, I was taken aback by the huge number of other projects he was associated with. In addition to being the preferred choreographer for Grable's films, he also had multiple opportunities to work with other singing/dancing ladies within the studio system. After that system collapsed, his scope of work broadened to television, foreign film (chiefly in Italy), and nightclub acts. He was the choreographer responsible for the spectacle preceding Cleopatra's stunning entrance into Rome. He worked on the most famous of Sonja Henie's films, Sun Valley Serenade, although only on the dancing parts, not the skating. He did work on the underwater swimming choreography for Esther Williams in Jupiter's Darling, which also included dry-land dancing by Marge & Gower Champion. Shirley Maclaine and Juliet Prowse? Check out the "Garden of Eden Ballet" in Can-Can (1960), which, according to this book, he entirely rechoreographed from the original, more scandalous, Broadway version by Michael Kidd. He did the dance numbers for Lost Horizon (1972), with its vastly eclectic cast including Bobby Van, who danced, and John Gielgud, who didn't. He choreographed for Julie Andrews in Darling Lili (she records her awe about working with him in her own autobiography).
Most of all, though, he had a life-long working relationship with Astaire, starting with Flying Down to Rio, and lasting all the way through to Astaire's TV specials and an unsatisfactory stint on Finian's Rainbow (he was fired by Francis Ford Coppola). Even Astaire's films without a Hermes Pan credit sometimes had some Pan input: for instance, he was bound by other contracts during the filming of Royal Wedding, but he claimed in a later interview to have discussed the idea of the hat-rack dance with Astaire.
I was intrigued by the fact that Pan was very early on influenced by African American music and dance - he had an African-American "mammy" - but he also seems to have been a sponge soaking up just about any cultural or folk traditions to incorporate into his work. He doesn't have a clearly-defined "style" as, say, Bob Fosse does, but instead his style is to make the dance work within the context of the film (he worked on many social-dancing scenes within non-musical movies too). Nonetheless, as youtube enabled me to broaden my acquaintance with his non-Astaire films, I was amused to see some motifs being cheerfully re-used. The one that jumps to mind is the sweeping over-the-hip dress-flaring jumps at the end of Pan's own (rare) on-screen duet with Betty Grable in "The Kindergarten Conga"(Moon Over Miami); they are irresistibly reminiscent of "The Yam" in Carefree, though without the leg up on the table. (Apparently Pan also performed this move endlessly and memorably with Lana Turner at a highly-alcoholic private party in Acapulco).
Pan was gay, but extremely private about it. He made it through his long career apparently with zero scandal, and beloved by gossip columnists rather than their target. He does appear to have had a long-term relationship with a man named Gino Malerba, who became his right-hand-man on the set and was not necessarily popular with everyone. The other aspect of his private life that was a bit unusual was his strong friendship with the reigning Pahlavi family of Iran, whom he frequently visited.
This book goes on my Hollywood reference shelves. Like Gielgud, he is infintely cross-referencable!
April 20, 2013
An excellent biography of one of the most important choreographers for the movies. Born in Nashville, raised between there and New York, he stumbled into dance, then into choreographing for Fred and Ginger, then for the major studios in Hollywood, especially Fox and MGM.
I had little idea how important he actually was, and no sense of his style, before I read this book. There is much to admire.
I had little idea how important he actually was, and no sense of his style, before I read this book. There is much to admire.
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January 7, 2017I enjoyed reading this book, however it gave too much detail about each dance. I had to read it for a while and then take a break. I expected more information about his experiences and less technical .
April 22, 2015
While I enjoyed this book it left me wanting more. This was a very private man and much remains a mystery.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews