What Dancing Has Done for Viola Dana (1918) 🇺🇸

Almost before she could walk, Viola tried to dance. She was born a dancer, and she has danced her way to screen success both figuratively and literally. This star of scores of motion pictures is the very quintessence of grace, and this charm she has attained through her training in “rhythmic motion,” which we democratic folk call “the dance.”

by Rutgers Neilson

Viola’s mother believed that girls should be graceful as well as strong, so she sent her to dancing school almost as soon as she could walk.

Her teacher was the celebrated Mme. Bonfanti, and before Viola was five years old she was an accomplished toe dancer. It was as a solo dancer that this Metro star made her first public appearance, soon after her fifth birthday. As a tiny girl she was in constant demand as a dancer, and appeared in fancy and toe dancing on several notable occasions.

From dancing to acting was a natural step and when Viola’s sister, Edna, took her to the Edison studio one day when a little girl was needed in some scenes, the youngster made good. From then on, little Miss Dana’s time was divided between the stage and pictures. She played her first part on the speaking stage in Joseph Jefferson’s great success, Rip Van Winkle. In the role of little Heinrich — a dancing, prancing boy — she appeared with Thomas Jefferson for three seasons. Mr. Jefferson took a great personal interest in Miss Dana, and gave her much encouragement in her artistic endeavors. Next she played in The Girls from Newport, with Pete Dailey, and following this she supported Dorothy Donnelly in Henrik Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken. In The Littlest Rebel, with Dustin Farnum, she attained fame, and followed this with an appearance in The Model, by Augustus Thomas.

All this time Viola was progressing in her work before the motion picture camera. Her first important work in screen plays was in “Molly, the Drummer Boy,” an Edison production. She was given the part as an experiment, but it proved such a tremendous success that she was induced to sign a long-term contract. Under the Edison banner her rise was rapid, due to her talent and graceful presence. She still continued her dancing lessons and often found this accomplishment most useful in many screen productions. In earlier pictures her dancing was as a fairy sprite, or a little street arab stepping to the tune of a hurdy-gurdy. Mentioning this hand-organ, recalls the the most recent and greatest success of Miss Dana on the stage, in Eleanor Gates’ play, The Poor Little Rich Girl, for she danced to the music of a hurdy-gurdy in this legitimate attraction both on Broadway and on the road. As Gwendolyn, she invited the organ grinder into the house when her nurse was out of sight. Under her jolly leadership, a plumber, the butler, and everybody within hearing of the music danced with enthusiasm. It is interesting to note that Frank Currier, who played the organ grinder, is and has been for some time a player for Metro, under which company Miss Dana has climbed to her greatest heights as an actress.

After filling her Edison contract, following her success in The Poor Little Rich Girl, Miss Dana joined the Metro forces and made her debut in The Flower of No Man's Land (1916). With Miss Dana came John H. Collins, who has directed the majority of pictures in which she has appeared.

When Miss Dana recently returned to the New York studio after spending six months at Metro’s Western studio, according to her contract, which divides her year between the east and west coasts, a large ball-room setting was being shot, and scores of couples were dancing to the music of a native Hawaiian sextette. A hula-hula dancer was featured in the action, and on the side-lines I observed Miss Dana gleefully mimicing her motions.

“This reminds me of my ‘conventionalized fandango’,” she exclaimed, when I applauded her efforts. That is the way she described a dance she executed just before she left the Hollywood, California, studio. As Nita, in “The Only Road,” the tiny star flings her toes about in thorough abandon atop a rough table in a Western saloon.

“Why do you call your dance a ‘conventionalized fandango’?” I asked, in the belief that she was “kidding” me.

“That is because it is a sort of rhythmic potpourri,” she retorted convincingly. “It is part fandango, part tarantella, part cobra de capello and part Hawaiian hula.”

In other words, Miss Dana does not do all of the dance with her feet.

Having started talking about her hobby, Miss Dana enthusiastically continued the subject.

“I studied dancing for six years under Mme. Bonfanti,” she informed me, “and the training has been invaluable to me, especially during the time I have been in motion pictures, for I am glad to say that many of my roles have called for dancing.”

“Do you believe that any dance can be effectively registered for motion pictures?” I asked.

In a tone which showed that she knew what she was talking about, Miss Dana went into detail on this phase of dancing.

“Yes, in general, I firmly believe that virtually any dance may be successfully presented on the screen,” she said. “To be very exact and specific, however, I believe that the old-fashioned waltz and other dances of slow tempo are best adapted for motion picture presentation.

“You see, the camera lens catches deliberate, or moderately slow, movements more sharply than hasty motions. A rapidly executed dance will not register in natural movements, but as jumpy actions, or gyrations, which appear so hurried that to call them graceful dance evolutions would indeed be a misconception.

“In dancing before the motion picture camera, I realize that I am executing a performance for the registration of motions on photographic film, which presents limitations not encountered in appearing before an audience in person. To begin with, I dance about one-half as rapidly as I do under ordinary conditions, so that each evolution is registered with adequate definition. I have found from experience that the dance must be performed up and down stage, or at right angles to the camera, for the registration of movements is natural semblance, and not from right to left or vice versa.

“Of course, these ideas can be applied to all screen dancing, but they are especially applicable in respect to presenting a solo dance. For solo dancing, I use a phonograph on most occasions, as musical accompaniment is very necessary if good results are to be obtained and an orchestra is not always available. In staging big ball room scenes, an orchestra is necessary to put over the scenes with realism.”

Replying to my question as to whether the characterization of a role can be advanced through the dance as well as by straight action, Miss Dana said:

“I contend that the same emotions can be expressed in dance action as in regular portrayal. Every movement of hand, arm, foot, head, and body can be made to have special meaning — tell a story — express an emotion. The whole body must feel the emotions and reveal feeling and personality in the dance as the player does in usual delineation. Sorrow, despair, joy and other emotions have an excellent vehicle of expression in the dance.”

Director John H. Collins joined us at this stage of our conversation and Miss Dana asked him to tell me his ideas on photographing dance scenes, especially in reference to the placing of the camera. Mr. Collins said that in most cases he used the camera at the usual height. For special effects, however, he changes the elevation. In “The Cossack Whip,” for example, the camera was placed on a ten-foot platform and tilted, shooting down on Miss Dana, who danced on a mirror. Thus the camera caught her head and the reflections of her figure in a classic

dance. The novel effect obtained was a success. For the incidental dance scene in “Blue Jeans,” which Metro picturized from Joseph Arthur’s famous melodrama, Collins had his cameraman, John Arnold, set his tripod at the usual height. As “June,” in this classic of the stage and screen, Miss Dana does a quaint country dance, which is mimiced by her grandparents, an aged couple, not too old to trip a few steps even with rheumatism acting as a check rein.

It is not only the grace, but the versatility of Miss Dana that places her on a pinnacle as a dancer. In “The Innocence of Ruth,” one of her first big starring vehicles for Edison, she offered an eccentric dance in a grotesque and bizarre costume, while in “God’s Law and Man’s,” one of her best Metro pictures, she executed a native East Indian dance, both in a Moorish palace and in the jungle. Of all her pictures to date, the Edison release, “Children of Eve,” called for the greatest diversity of dancing, as is evidenced by the following quotation from an announcement about the picture:

“— and they won first prize at ‘The Bucket of Blood,’ did ‘Fifty-Fifty Mamie’ and her good old pal, ‘Bennie, the Gyp.’ They could do the ‘Kitchen Sink’ in the dreamiest possible way — and the ‘Bunny Hug’ — and the ‘Mowie.’ There wasn’t anything in the dance line that ‘Fifty-Fifty Mamie’ couldn’t do, when seen in the charming person of Viola Dana.”

In but one picture has Miss Dana’s stellar role been that of a dancer from the irising in of the title to the final fade-out. This happens in a recent release, “The Winding Trail.” The dancing Metro star plays “Audrey Graham,” a dancer known to the world’s great art centers, who goes to Hell’s Paradise, a far western mining camp, as “Audrey La Salle,” to be an entertainer in the “Golden Moon” dance hall. Her purpose is to hunt down the man who has caused her sister’s disgrace and death.

At the close of the solo Spanish dance, which serves as her introduction to the patrons of the “Golden Moon,” she threw the rose in her hair to Dan Steel, the man she has crossed the desert to find. Her cards were all on the table and the game was played out to its tragic finish. This picture is an excellent illustration of how character portrayal may be advanced through the medium of the dance.

Miss Dana’s two dances in The Winding Trail are studies in contrast. The little star first does an exquisite toe dance in the fluffy tarlatan skirts of a premier danseuse, and later in the picture, in a beautiful Spanish costume, she puts over one of the cleverest and snappiest Spanish dances ever enacted before the camera by a screen star.

Spanish dances as a rule have a certain amount of sameness, but Miss Dana’s exhibition in this screen drama is unique. In the course of the action, the official announcer in the “Golden Moon” dance hall says, “Gents, it pleasures me to interduce to you ‘Miss Audrey La Salle.’ We understand she tosses a mean hoof.” Whereupon “Miss La Salle,” in the person of Viola Dana, proceeds to toss not only one hoof, but two of them.

As the dignified premier danseuse in the opening scenes of the photoplay, her training as a toe dancer stood her in good stead. Miss Dana considers toe dancing most exacting, and she constantly practices it to keep in trim for just such occasional scenes as in The Winding Trail.

In specializing on dancing to develop grace, Viola Dana has hit the straight trail toward screen success.

Pretty, dainty gowns, Miss Dana admits, are an important part of the dancer’s equipment.

Grace of posture, as well as motion, have come to Miss Dana through much dancing.

Here’s one pose of Miss Dana’s strange and original dance, composed of elements of the fandango, tarantella, cobra de capello and Hawaiian hula.

Collection: Photoplay Magazine, December 1918