Musical Numbers

Re-used (all songs heard as background only)

• Quiet Night
• There's a Small Hotel
• Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
• La Princesse Zenobia
• On Your Toes

Plot

Junior Donal, an ex-vaudevillian now teaching music at Knickerbocker University, a WPA exention in New York, enlists to help of patroness Peggy Portefield to persuade Sergei Alexandrovich, the director of the Russian Ballet, to stage a friend's jazzy "Slaugher on Tenth Avenue" ballet. While he may dream of sharing the pleasure of a small hotel with girlfriend Frankie Frayne, Junior becomes involved with the company's prima ballerina, Vera Barnova, and even takes over the male lead in "Slaugher". This so enrages Vera'a lover and regular dancing partner that he hires two thugs to kill Junior while he is performing on stage. To avoid being a target Junior keeps dancing even after the ballet is over, then - once the gunmen have been arrested - falls exhausted to the floor.

Reviews

On Your Toes should, on paper, have been a blockbuster of a musical. It was based on a successful George Abbott stage play. had a Rodgers and Hart score, the great Balanchine was its choreographer, James Wong Howe and Sol Polito photographed it and Orry-Kelly designed the clothes. In the event, however, an awful screenplay by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay sabotaged the venture, and for a film that could so easily have danced its way to glory, it was, apart from the noteworthy "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" sequence, exceptionally dull.

from The Hollywood Musical by Clive Hirschhorn

Discography

On Your Toes original Broadway Revival 1954

Merchandise

Video & DVD
On Your Toes... The Making Of - Choreographer Larry Fuller

Sheet music:
On Your Toes

Cds:
On Your Toes (1983 Broadway Revival Cast)
On Your Toes (1954 Revival Cast)

Go to

Go to:
Original Broadway Production
On Your Toes Revival 1954
Revival 1983