Submitted by
Neal Lofthouse
Moira was given Ballet-hoo
"Shearer's the best thing Britain's ever sent us," said Sam Goldwyn
From the Picturegoer January 12, 1952
Donovan Pedelty reporting from Hollywood
Ballyhoo met Moira Shearer like the breath of a furnace. The welcome laid
on for her was a sizzler.
Moira came to play la bella ballerina in Sam Goldwyn's version of 'Hans
Christian Andersen', also starring Danny Kay, as her hopeless admirer, and
Farley Grange, as her happy husband. Her arrrival was spectacular. Nobody
knew that she would be having a baby and withdrawing from the film.
So, naturally, in one small dressing-room on her arrival there were producer
Goldwyn, "husband" Farley, British Consul-General Robert Henry Hadow, four
wee lassies in full Highland rig (members of the Los Angeles Chapter of
the Ancient Order of Scottish Clans), their not-so-wee mammas, five big
bouquets, seven Press photographers, one illustrator, four newsreel cameramen,
one TV camera, Frank Mitchell of British Information Services, and this
correspondent in person.
And, of course, ballet-dancer Moira Shearer, who stood out like a flame
in a film bin.
She propped her slender frame, sheathed in shotgreen velvet, against the
edge of a desk.
Her brilliantly blue eyes gleamed. Her tomato mass of hair flamed. She looked
what she is - Britain's red-white-and-blue gift to Technicolor.
"Best thing Britain ever sent us," yammered producer Goldwyn, having combination
camera- and mike-fright for the occasion. "Here's Farley, your screen lover".
Up came the wee Highlanders to present bouquets. Every last lass of them
was born in Los Angeles. Their Scottish accents, picked up from Hamilton
parents, are as thick as porridge.
Moira, born in Dunfermaline, thanked them in the thinest Oxford English.
"I couldn't have imagined so much fuss," she told me. "We don't do it in
Britain. Not over ballet, anyway".
