Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (Hardcover)

by Deborah Jowitt (Author) "I stand before a mirror..." (more)
Key Phrases: interview with the author, choreographic material, associate artistic director, New York, Ballet Theatre, Jerome Robbins (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Jerome Robbins's story is as distinctively American as his choreography. Born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Robbins (1918–1998) became a Broadway chorus boy in 1938 before joining Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, ultimately dancing lead roles. Robbins also became one of the 20th century's most highly regarded choreographers, including for the 1957 Broadway hit West Side Story. Other Broadway successes include On the Town, The King and I and Peter Pan, and significant ballets such as Fancy Free, The Cage and Dances at a Gathering. With precision, lucidity and insight, Village Voice dance critic Jowitt (Time and the Dancing Image) chronicles Robbins's extensive career, as well as his struggles with bisexuality, ambivalence about his Jewish heritage, and his decision to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950s. Given unrestricted access to Robbins's personal and professional papers, Jowitt adds a new vulnerability and humanity to the legend: Robbins was infamous for his perfectionism, insecurity and temper. "I... still have terrible pangs of terror when I feel my career, work, veneer of accomplishments would be taken away," wrote the man who worked alongside Bernstein and Balanchine, "that I panicked & crumbled & returned to that primitive state of terror—the facade of Jerry Robbins would be cracked open, and everyone would finally see Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz." Both critically sophisticated and compulsively readable, this is a must for theater and dance devotees.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
While Jerome Robbins, who is best known for his conception, direction and choreography of "West Side Story," was widely and bitterly disliked, Deborah Jowitt gives only the slightest indication in this new full-length biography that he was not universally loved. There is nothing in this book that could possibly be said to do any fresh damage to Robbins's reputation or to the memory of his artistic achievements. He was undoubtedly one of the great American choreographers, even on the basis of his ballets alone ("Fancy Free," "The Cage," "The Concert," "Moves," "Dances at a Gathering," "The Goldberg Variations," "Two & Three Part Inventions" and many more). He was also a deeply conflicted, self-doubting Jewish homosexual known for his inventive use of profanity during rehearsals and his often inconsiderate, rude behavior.

Jowitt was sought out by the executors of the Robbins estate and given access to the Jerome Robbins Papers, which were bequeathed to the New York Public Library but require the estate's permission for perusal. Certainly an uncensored publication of Robbins's journals and notebooks would be of great interest to dance and theater enthusiasts and scholars. This no-nonsense biography, which includes many snippets from Robbins's unpublished writings, seems not meant for a general reader so much as for scholars and academics seeking factual information about Robbins the artist. Most people look to a biography to give a full picture of the person; this book gives a flattering, too-simple picture of a complex man. Robbins was in psychoanalysis more than once, but he is not psychoanalyzed here at all, nor is there anything of substance about his experience on the couch.

Crammed with rather mundane descriptions of Robbins's often superb choreography and the justly esteemed Broadway shows he was involved in creating (including "Peter Pan," "Gypsy," "Fiddler on the Roof" and "The King and I"), the book offers only a minimal suggestion of how his work and his life might be related. It is essentially a report on what Robbins did in his professional life to earn his place in the dance hall of fame, with brief forays into the most glaring and well-known mistakes he made along the way, such as his naming of Lettie Stever, Lloyd Gough, Madeleine Lee, Elliot Sullivan, Jerome and Edward Chodorov, Edna Ocko and Lionel Berman as people associated with communism to the House Un-American Activities Committee on May 5, 1953. Jerome Robbins was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz in 1918 in New York City. His father started out poor, became the owner of a delicatessen and then owned the Comfort Corset Company in New Jersey. Before the Depression, the Rabinowitzes lived well; after the Crash, they lived on less, but they always managed to give their two children good educations and access to cultural and artistic events, lessons, recordings and the freedom to pursue their interests. Robbins's father did not much like that his only son was a gay choreographer, but he got used to it eventually, especially when the choreographer became rich and successful. Shortly after Robbins directed and choreographed "Fiddler on the Roof," which was a huge hit on Broadway in 1964, Mr. Rabinowitz proudly introduced his famous son to a roomful of retired card players in Florida, who greeted him as "Mr. Fiddler."

Robbins's success came quickly. "Fancy Free," one of his most popular works, had its premiere in 1944 when he was just 25 years old. "On the Town," for which he supplied the choreography, opened on Broadway the same year. "West Side Story" opened in 1957, and Robbins continued to work as a well-paid and lauded choreographer and director of musicals and ballet until very close to the time of his death in 1998. All of this, and much more, is recounted here in great detail, in chronological order.

But there are numerous gaps and omissions. On page 435, we're told (in parentheses) that Robbins and his sister "finally made peace with each other after a long period of animosity." But all we had heard of this animosity was that she and her husband were "outraged and appalled" at his naming of names to HUAC more than 20 years earlier. In describing Robbins's life as a teenager, Jowitt tells us that he "earned money delivering eggs, selling magazines, painting screens for a New York photographer, selling tax bills (whatever this meant, it garnered a high school senior 75¢)." Anyone interested enough in Robbins to buy and read his biography would probably like to know a bit more about the screens he painted for a photographer, if not those mysterious tax bills.

Regarding Robbins's approach to performing the role of Petrouchka (his "obsession") with Ballet Theatre in 1942, Jowitt mentions a dream he'd had in high school "that he equated with the sad but dauntless puppet -- something about being trapped in a rubbish-strewn lot behind a tall schoolyard fence." Is that the best she can do? Is there no document or surviving confidant to tell us more about this dream? It seems important, a dream that a major 20th-century choreographer "equated" with Petrouchka, one of the best-known male dance roles, one the young Robbins performed many times. But this biography tells us nothing more about it.

When Jowitt describes Robbins's first homoerotic experience with an older fellow dancer, she omits his name. Does she not know who it was, or has she just chosen not to tell us? In fact, many (but not all) of the names of Robbins's paramours and boyfriends are omitted. Why?

Critics faulted a previous biography of Robbins, Greg Lawrence's 2001 Dance With Demons, for containing too much gossip. Jowitt's book contains too little. There is a point -- and not just a trivial or prurient one -- to knowing what people have to say about an important artist they once knew. The aim is to illuminate the personality in order to better understand the work. There's no virtue in a biographer shielding her subject from criticism or scandal, just as there's no shame in being imperfect.

Reviewed by Rick Whitaker
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (August 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684869853
• ISBN-13: 978-0684869858
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #911,547 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love Letter to Tanaquil Le Clercq, December 31, 2005

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

All in all, I'm touched by Deborah Jowitt's well meaning and comprehensive biography of Jerry Robbins. She digs under the surface of his ballet and Broadway work and finds a whole lot more than I had ever imagined. Again and again she returns to the paradox of the name, how "Jerry Robbins" was a fake, all-American and showbizzy place name for the real, suffering, inward, outcast Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz, and how Robbins could never be happy knowing this. He loathed himself from the inside out and the outside in: no wonder he treated others so terribly. Deborah Jowitt's years of research into the Robbins papers, those revealing scrapbooks and journals, have really paid off, for although I think in general Greg Lawrence's biography better in most ways, Jowitt's contains innumerable examples of revelation right from the horse's mouth, scraps of diaristic strip-tease that really pay off in almost every case. We can see how, in Gypsy, there had to be a strip-tease number in which three women explain, "You Gotta Have a Gimmick," because Robbins realized early on that was the path to artistic greatness--not the gimmick per se, but the emotional and psychological undressing.

Along the way Jowitt sketches in many portraits, some of them ravishingly done. Leonard Bernstein has never seemed so much himself before. John Kriza, the gadabout dancer from Ballet Theater days, seems as "Fancy Free" as the roles he created in Robbins' early work. Jowitt's greatest "creation" as it were is Tanaquil Le Clercq, the tragic, French-born ballerina who came down with polio while Balanchine's fourth wife. Le Clercq is the real heroine of the book: everything we think about, oh, say, Audrey Hepburn was really Tanaquil Le Clercq gone commercial: gorgeous, radiant, utterly chic, loveable, wildly talented in many different areas. I had just barely heard of her before and now I want me my Tanaquil Le Clercq! I'm going to have to go down to the Robbins Foundation and watch some primitive kinescopes of her. Jowitt actually saw her dance and has apparently never gotten over it. Her next book should be all about "Tanny"!

I did think that Jowitt is a bit sklmpy in her treatment of the HUAC thing. Growing up, I got the sense that Robbins' naming names made hum utterly despised. Even I, as a child of five, knew what he had done made him scum. And yet you never get a sense of what it was like for Robbins living, if not with guilt, then with the simple fact that thousands of people abhorred him. Likewise I think Jowitt isn't exactly the right person to write about Robbins' sex life, and when AIDS enters the picture, she seems bound and determined to avoid the glum subject once and for all. Finally, her lack of editorializing is all very well, but I for one do not believe that the later, experimental work is on a par with INTERPLAY, THE GUESTS, THE CAGE, AFTERNOON OF A FAUN or THE CONCERT. Why not? We don't get an explanation. It was the sixties, pretty much, and Robbins started taking the drugs and stopped wearing suits. But there must have been more to it. WATERMILL is no picnic.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PRIMER OF GENIUS, April 12, 2005

By	Scott Fuchs (Hudson River Valley, New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Any valid bio of Robbins would have to result in a narrative of the development of dance and musical theatre in America, since the 1940s. While Jowitt gives us the, often sad, milestones in this man's life, her major thrust throughout this long and always exciting book is on his work. She delves into virtually every creation of his, including his generally poorly received occasional forays into non-musical theatre. Detailed attention is given to both concept, creation and execution of his prolific endeavors. Her in depth analysis of each of his works, often quite technical, VIVIDLY recall many great performances of these masterpieces.
While not necessarily for those with a casual interest in dance, the facts of his life, as well as the cavalcade of his shows and ballets, makes for a read that is always more than just factual. Interestingly, Jowitt seems never to editorialize on Robbins' work. But then again, why attempt to laud a universally acclaimed genius ?

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deborah Jowitt's Life and Times of Jerome Robbins, November 29, 2004

By	William Dunas "William Dunas, Choreographer" (NYC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Jerome Robbins was a hard act to follow. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should be placed upon every public library shelf, alphabetically, before William Shakespeare, for only he could. Robbins is to 20th Century American Modern Dance Theater what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan Stage, an author of infinite variety, a man for all ages.

Ms. Jowitt gives us a scholarly blueprint for amateur, musical theater lover, and balletomane; one that should be made available to all engaged in the academic pursuits of the Arts, Letters, and Sciences. Jerome Robbins, legendary theatrical genius, is brilliantly extolled in exacting detail and rendered with the loving care of a biographer dedicated to communicating this great artist's "message." He was the least difficult of men. All he wanted was boundless love.

Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins is written in a trenchant prose style, a cross between WCBS TV celebrity correspondent Walter Cronkite's You Are There, and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Her tone is one of a high-powered sports newscaster delivering to her audience a polished blow-by-blow description of celebrity "plays." These are not professional precision ball passing reports; they are larger than life descriptive interactions of 20th Century Show Business's great personalities Robbins knew and loved.

Jowitt presents us with an eyeful. It were as though she uses a high definition, technicolor, movie screen attached to a time machine to fly us, like a motion picture director's crane, throughout multiple three dimensional scenes Jerome Robbins choreographs, before our eyes. In Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance, Deborah Jowitt has delivered a state-of-the art biography that goes beyond the intricate prose of great fiction.

Jowitt instantaneously captures "the moment," and translates into words that in effect rolls a continuous major motion picture before us, without skipping a beat. One can almost hear the music that Robbins brilliantly illustrates. Jowitt delineates visions of Robbins forging The Great White Way for talented choreographers to follow: Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Twyla Tharp.

Jowitt's dance training and choreographic practice is revealed in her ability to poetically describe Robbins at work. "...he excelled at the artificed use of the apparently accidental. When a moment in a Robbins ballet looks contrived, it can be because one is not simply moved by it but aware of how the choreographer calculated its effect...."

A culmination of five years of writing, and an historical perspective of thirty-five years of looking at the dance, Deborah Jowitt has emerged as America's Dean of 21st Century Dance; following in the tradition of a great poet's translation of classical ephemera, the work of Edwin Denby, a chronicler of The New York City Ballet. Her Jerome Robbins is a masterpiece. Deborah Jowitt's Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance should remain on the public library shelf beside William Shakespeare's The Complete Works for all time.