Onna White

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Onna White (born March 24, 1922 in Inverness , Nova Scotia , † April 8, 2005 in West Hollywood ) was a Canadian choreographer . In 1969 she received an honorary Oscar for her choreographic work in the production of the film Oliver . She has also been nominated eight times for a Tony Award .

Live and act

Onna White grew up in a musical family and learned to play the piano at an early age. As a child she was often ill and gained her first dance experiences through the prescribed physiotherapy. When she was 12 she started taking dance lessons. She went to San Francisco where she joined the ensemble of the San Francisco Opera Ballet at the age of 16 . There she worked as a classical ballet dancer for seven years, mostly as a solo dancer.

White began her Broadway career in 1947 as a dancer in the original performance of the musical Finian's Rainbow . She got to know the choreographer Michael Kidd , who supported her in her further career. He convinced her to try her hand at choreography after pregnancy became too heavy for lifting figures . White assisted him on pieces such as Silk Stocking and Guys and Dolls , as well as on the London debuts of Finian's Rainbow and Guys and Dolls . In 1955 she was the choreographer in charge of a revival of Finian's Rainbow .

In 1957, White achieved her first major Broadway success as a choreographer with the musical The Music Man . For this work she was nominated for a Tony Award the following year . With the filming of the material in 1962, her career as a film choreographer began a little later. Numerous other Broadway choreographies and seven Tony Award nominations in the Best Choreography category followed - for Whoop-Up (1959), Take Me Along (1960), Irma la Douce (1961), Half a Sixpence (1965), Mame ( 1966), Illya Darling (1968) and I Love My Wife (1977). As one of the few choreographers to ever win an Oscar, she was awarded an honorary Oscar for Oliver in 1969 .

White was married to actor Larry Douglas (1914-1996) from 1948 to 1959 . They had two children, Stuart and Jeannie Douglas.

White died at her home in West Hollywood , California, aged 83 .

Theater choreographies

  • 1956: Fanny (in London)
  • 1956: Carmen Jones
  • 1957: The Music Man
  • 1958: Whoop-Up
  • 1959: Take Me Along
  • 1960: Irma La Douce
  • 1961: Let It Ride
  • 1964: I Had a Ball
  • 1965: Half a Sixpence
  • 1966: Mame
  • 1967: Illya Darling
  • 1969: 1776
  • 1970: Gantry
  • 1971: 70, Girls, 70
  • 1973: Gigi
  • 1974: Billy
  • 1975: Goodtime Charley
  • 1978: Working
  • 1979: I Love My Wife

Filmography

  • 1962: Music Man
  • 1963: Bye Bye Birdie
  • 1968: Oliver
  • 1972: The Great Waltz ( The Great Waltz )
  • 1972: 1776 - Rebellion and Love ( 1776 )
  • 1974: Mame
  • 1977: Elliot, the Smirking Monster ( Pete's Dragon )
  • 1994: Hard but warm: On the trail of the perpetrator ( Hart to Hart: Crimes of the Hart )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b obituary playbill.com, accessed January 5, 2013.
  2. a b c d Myrna Oliver: Onna White, 83; Much-Honored Stage, Film Choreographer In: Los Angeles Times , April 11, 2005, accessed January 5, 2013.