Vera Zorina, 86; Ballerina Was Briefly a Star in Movie Musicals

Vera Zorina, a ballerina who starred in memorable musical motion pictures of the late 1930s and early 1940s, including “On Your Toes” and “Louisiana Purchase” opposite Bob Hope, has died at the age of 86.

Zorina died Wednesday at her home in Santa Fe, N.M., after a cerebral hemorrhage on April 7, said her husband, harpsichordist Paul Wolfe.

Since 1990, the couple had lived in Santa Fe, where Zorina had directed Santa Fe Opera productions.

Her eclectic career as a dancer, actress, narrator of musical works and opera director began in Berlin where she was born Eva Brigitta Hartwig on Jan. 2, 1917, to a German father and Norwegian mother.

She received her first pair of ballet slippers on her sixth birthday and began dancing professionally the following year.

Known as Brigitta to friends until her death, she was forced to change her name when she joined the Ballet Russe in 1933, but never liked “Vera Zorina” despite the fame it brought.

With the internationally respected Russian company, the ballerina danced at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House in 1934 and at London’s Covent Garden in 1935 and 1936 and performed such classical works as “Aurora’s Wedding” and “The Sleeping Beauty.”

She veered into musical comedy in London’s West End as the character Vera Baranova in “On Your Toes” in 1937.

It was there that Samuel Goldwyn saw her and gave her a Hollywood contract.

Zorina made her film debut in “The Goldwyn Follies” in 1938, and her Broadway debut the same year in “I Married an Angel.”

Her dances in each were choreographed by George Balanchine, who later founded the New York City Ballet, and to whom Zorina was married from 1938 to 1946.

The dancer and comedic actress made only seven films -- “Follies,” “On Your Toes” in 1939, “I Was an Adventuress” in 1940, “Louisiana Purchase” in 1941, “Star-Spangled Rhythm” in 1942, “Follow the Boys” in 1944 and “Lover Come Back” in 1946.

Balanchine choreographed her dances in four, and in 1988 New York’s Metropolitan Museum presented a screening of those, titled “Zorina and Balanchine: The Movie Years.”

Although many producers, including Goldwyn, believed that she had a certain flair for comedy and acting, The Film Encyclopedia by Ephraim Katz evaluates: “Zorina’s brief film career, which was highlighted by some fine dance sequences but was unmemorable for acting, fizzled in the late ‘40s.... “

Among Zorina’s Broadway shows were Irving Berlin’s “Louisiana Purchase,” “Dream With Music” and a 1954 revival of “On Your Toes,” in which she danced the famed Balanchine ballet “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.”

Although Zorina told a Times columnist in 1946 that she had “established a beachhead” as an actress, after that she largely confined her career to narrations of concert works by such modern composers as Arthur Honegger and William Walton.

One of her earliest concert ventures was Honegger’s oratorio “Joan of Arc at the Stake,” which was presented at the Hollywood Bowl in 1949 with Zorina as Joan and actor John Lund reading the part of the supportive Franciscan monk, Brother Dominique.

A Times reviewer, although dubbing the oral-choral-musical production “curious entertainment,” wrote that Zorina “read her lines with clarity and fervor.”

Zorina also narrated “A Parable of Death” by Lukas Foss in 1953 at the Ojai Festival and worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra on such works as Igor Stravinsky’s “Persephone.”

She later performed “Persephone” at the Santa Fe Opera in 1961.

“Narration,” Zorina once told The Times, “is a tremendous challenge requiring complete concentration.

“It is unlike making a movie or performing in a stage play,” she said. “It is 50 minutes of complete acting and implied dancing.”

Married to Columbia Records producer Goddard Lieberson from 1946 until his death in 1977, Zorina served briefly as a music consultant and album producer for his company, concentrating on recordings of dance music.

In the 1970s, Zorina was appointed director of the Norwegian Opera in Oslo.

In Santa Fe, she directed such productions as Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” and Richard Strauss’ “Daphne.”

At her death, she remained an honorary director of the Santa Fe company.

In 1986, Zorina published her autobiography, “Zorina.”

In addition to Wolfe, she is survived by one of two sons from her marriage to Lieberson, composer Peter Lieberson, and three grandchildren. Another son, Jonathan Lieberson, a philosophy professor and writer, died in 1989.