Chase became an overnight sensation after dancing with Fred Astaire on his 1958 Emmy Award–winning TV special. She was twenty-four; he was fifty-nine. Now in her early seventies, she lives in the beach community of Venice, California.
“Hello,” I called from behind a locked gate on the side of her house.
“Yes, Rose, I’ll let you in. Let me find the key.” Moments later Barrie appeared—a tall, slim woman with the look of a former showgirl. I followed her into a two-story, modernized beach house with countertops of black marble, cut flowers in streamlined vases, ultramodern fixtures, and contoured furniture.
“Since it’s such a beautiful day, Barrie, perhaps I could photograph you dancing on the beach.”
“Yes, we can do that. Why don’t I go and change.” She returned a few minutes later carrying a couple of beach towels.
After we parked our things on the sand, I asked Barrie to use the shore as her stage.
“Hmmm, what can I do?” she asked herself.
Soon she was in motion: a Jack Cole run, a Fosse-style passé, a chaîne turn, a grand battement. I planted myself in the sand, waiting to catch the top of her kick, the spiral of her back, the pause in her balance pose. I marveled at how easily the dancer within revealed itself.
“Ooh, this feels good,” she said slightly out of breath. “Am I giving you what you need?”
“Oh, yes, this is perfect. I think I have some great shots.”
“Good. Let’s go back and have a drink.”
“Great idea.”
Back at the house, while I retrieved my notes and tape recorder from my bag, Barrie poured us some wine, and set out a round of cheese and a bowl of peanuts.
“When did you have the first inclination to dance?”
“I don’t remember when I didn’t have the inclination to dance. It goes back as far as I can remember. Music has always been my impetus for dance. My mother was a concert pianist. As a child I would sit under the piano for hours listening to her play. She loved both classical and popular music, so I was exposed to all kinds of music.”
“When did you begin formal dance lessons?”
“I was three when my mother took me to study with the ballet mistress for the New York City Opera. I studied with her in Great Neck until I was six and a half, and then we moved to California. My father insisted that I study with a serious teacher, so I was enrolled in classes with the former Ballet Russes dancer, Adolph Bolm. I studied with him from the age of nine to fifteen. After he died in 1951, I began taking classes with Maria Bekefi, a Kirov-trained Russian ballerina. I became devoted to her and never studied with anyone else after that.”
“You didn’t want to learn jazz or tap?”
“No. I dreamed of becoming a ballerina and performing with the New York City Ballet.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, my parents had a very ugly divorce when I was fifteen. My father was very powerful in the movie industry and managed to pretty much shaft my mother financially. This happened around the time that I was planning to go to New York to audition for George Balanchine. My mother was in such a bad psychological state, I just couldn’t leave her.”
“And your ballet dream?”
“Well, I remained committed to my dream and even more serious about my training. My mother allowed me to drop out of school and take ballet class every day, all day, except for Sundays. Later, when I wanted to move to New York to pursue my ballet career, she refused to leave Los Angeles. And I couldn’t get myself to go without her. Meanwhile, money was getting tight and I had to find a job.”
“That’s when you broke into the movies?”
“Yes, at that time what you did was join the Screen Extras’ Guild. Central casting would call you for an audition or a job. Usually that meant you’d get called to be in the background of a movie. I hated it. I wanted to be dancing. Finally I said to my mother, ‘If they don’t give me a dance call, then they can expel me from the union. I don’t care. I’m a dancer, not an extra.’ It just so happened that our neighbor was the union liaison for Columbia Studios. My mother asked him to intervene and suddenly I started getting small dance parts in the chorus of feature films.”
“What happened next?”
“One of Jack Cole’s dancers saw me dance and arranged for an audition with Jack at MGM. He liked me and gave me a job in the chorus of the film Kismet. Eventually I became one of his five regular dancers—four boys and me. I danced in Designing Woman, Delores Grey, and Les Girls.”
“Is it true that Jack Cole was tough on everyone?”
“Yes. Jack Cole was sadistic. He’d start rehearsals at 9:00 A.M. and not break for hours. He worked you until you collapsed. I’d be so exhausted I couldn’t get up off the floor. I’d be lying there heaving, gasping for air. He’d tell you what he wanted, but make you figure out how to do it yourself. And he insisted that we rehearse wearing close to nothing. If it were legal to be naked, we would’ve been naked. He wanted to be able to see the lines of the body. We couldn’t even wear a T-shirt. I usually wore a simple bandanna tied around my top and short shorts.”
“Would you say that in working with him you made a big shift from classical ballet to jazz?”
“I didn’t really think of it in terms of making a shift. Jack Cole gave me a movement vocabulary to express how the music made me feel. I had it in me—in my gut—to move that way. You either have a feeling for jazz or you don’t. No amount of technique class will give it to you. You have to be able to groove inherently.”
“When did you meet Fred Astaire?”
“Fred Astaire was working on the film Silk Stockings with Cyd Charisse in an adjacent soundstage at MGM. We were rehearsing some number and Fred kept sticking his head in, no doubt attracted by the sound of the drums. Jack liked to rehearse with a drummer as well as a pianist. Then one day I saw Fred talking to Jack. Later Jack came over to me and said, ‘Fred wants you to do a number in Silk Stockings. What do you say?’ ‘Sure,’ I told him. So Jack loaned me out for a solo in the film, and less than a year later Fred invited me to dance on his first TV special.”
“What was it like working with two of the greatest dance artists of that era?”
“Jack, Fred, and I became very close friends. We used to go out drinking together at this little joint near central casting. But Jack always drank too much. It would be his undoing. He was a terribly frustrated man because for all his brilliance, his work never showed up on the screen like it was in rehearsal—never. The cameraman didn’t shoot it right or the editor didn’t cut it right, and it ate Jack up inside. Instead of fighting with the producer, director, or editor, he would just drink.”
“How did you end up dancing on Fred Astaire’s TV special?”
“One night when we were out for drinks, Fred asked me if I was serious about dance. I thought, what a hilarious question. Here I was killing myself with Jack Cole, enduring his physical torture. I’d have to be crazy if I weren’t serious
