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Sammy Lee [biography]
Dates: 1890-1968
Birth Date: May 26, 1890
Death Date: Mar 30, 1968
Place of Birth: New York, New York
Place of Death: Woodland Hills, California
Sammy Lee, the Academy Award-nominated dance director whose Broadway shows and films were among the most popular and influential during the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, was born Samuel Levy in New York City. At the age of four he first discovered how interesting moving feet could be, and taught himself to dance, earning money on street corners. His professional career began as a member of Gus Edwards Children's Revues. He then teamed with Ruby Norton as Norton and Lee for six years on the vaudeville circuit, and on Broadway in The Firefly (1912). Back on Broadway in Yip, Yip Yahank (1918), he helped develop The Gingham Girl into a full-clown musical and began his dance direction career. "This was the turning point in my life," Lee wrote in The Dance in 1929: "I had the chance to show what I could do. Numbers and changes of costumes had supplanted imagination and personalities: twenty, thirty or forty girls, lost in mass formations. I wanted something very different from this, girls with distinct personalities who did things that could really interest an audience with every conceivable kind of dance step, and then such acrobatic stunts as only a circus athlete could do -- splits, cartwheels, flip flops. They were hits, and their hit was my hit . . . I was no longer a hoofer."
Lee was involved in the creation of many legendary stage musicals including Lady Be Good (1924), Tip-Toes (1925), Oh, Kay! (1925), and Show Boat (1926), in collaboration with George Gershwin,Jerome Kern and Fred and Adele Astaire. He also directed Sweet Little Devil (1924) and Tell Me More (1925), and produced Cross My Heart (1928) on the New York stage. Success took him to Hollywood where he was signed by MGM and in January 1936 and named head of their dance department and school. He was later contracted by Fox and Paramount studios.
(Source: Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Stage Directors: an Illustrated Biographic Encyclopedia, 1893-1995 (1995)]