LeRoy Prinz

LeRoy Jerome Prinz (July 14, 1895 – September 15, 1983) was an American choreographer, director and producer, who was involved in the production of dozens of motion pictures, mainly for Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers, from 1929 through 1958, and choreographed Broadway musicals. He was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Dance Direction in the 1930s, and won the Golden Globe in 1958.

Among the films whose dances he staged were Show Boat (1936), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Rhapsody in Blue (1945), and South Pacific (1958).

Early life and military service Leroy Jerome Prinz was born July 14, 1895, in St. Joseph, Missouri to Edward "Egid" Albert and Anna Prinz. His father owned Prinz's Dancing Academy in St. Joseph, Missouri. His father taught more than three generations how to dance and was teaching until his death at 80 years old.

According to one account, Leroy was sent to reform school after chasing his stepmother with a carving knife. He also represented a rubber company in St. Louis and Kansas City. He was with the 94th from November 1917 to June 1918, when he switched to the 27th Aero Squadron, where he stayed until November 1918.

Career According to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Prinz returned to the U.S. in 1919 and studied theater at Northwestern University. After graduation from Northwestern, the newspaper reported, Prinz returned to France and worked as a choreographer for the Folies Bergère in Paris.

A November 1919 report in St. Louis Post-Dispatch states that Prinz was employed in the aeronautical portion of an American Legion show, also featuring actor William S. Hart, that was touring the area. The newspaper gives Prinz's rank as captain and states that he was a flight partner of Quentin Roosevelt. A Wisconsin newspaper reported in 1921 that Prinz, which it said had "danced with Al Jolson," was teaching dance at a vacation camp for wounded veterans. The newspaper wrote that Prinz had "fallen 3000 feet" but had recovered.

In various newspaper profiles, Prinz claimed that he worked as a dancer at a bordello in Omaha, as an aviation instructor for the Mexican government, and that he ferried ammunition for the Nicaraguan rebel leader, Augusto César Sandino. Prinz clashed with Agnes de Mille while staging dances for her uncle's film Cleopatra (1934). His first employment in films was in 1931 by director Cecil B. DeMille, who employed him as dance director. While filming Cleopatra (1934), Prinz clashed with DeMille's niece Agnes de Mille, who was brought in to choreograph dance sequences. According to Agnes de Mille's biographer, her uncle always deferred to the "reliable but pedestrian" Prinz, even after agreeing to his niece's flamboyant dances in advance. Agnes de Mille left the film.

Prinz directed dance sequences for dozens of Paramount Pictures movies between 1933 and 1941, when he became dance director of Warner Brothers,

Prinz was a "notorious self-promoter",

Awards Prinz was nominated in the long-defunct category of Best Dance Direction during the 1937 Academy Awards for Waikiki Wedding, and was twice nominated in this category for the 1935 films All the King's Horses and The Big Broadcast of 1936. He was awarded the Golden Globe for best film choreography in 1958.

Though known mainly for his work as a dance director on big-budget musicals, he directed a number of mainly short films, one of which, A Boy and His Dog (1946), won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. In a 1952 profile, Associated Press Hollywood columnist James Bacon stated that Prinz differed from what he described as "sissified" choreographers, that he was "a rough, tough guy, as some little giants of 5 foot 5 are. His language is colorful."

In his 1983 study of wartime Hollywood musicals, Allen L. Woll says that with the camera angles not being employed effectively, as they were by Berkeley, "the pedestrian quality of Prinz's dance numbers is painfully revealed. No matter the picture, no matter the director, Prinz's dances are invariably the same, static and stage-bound."

Personal life Prinz was married three times, to Mary E. Thompson in 1919, Agnes Suzanne Thorstadt (1926-1934), and actress Betty Bryson. Prinz eloped to Yuma, Arizona with Bryson on June 21, 1936, and remained married to her until his death in 1983 Bryson was the niece by marriage of actor Warner Baxter. She was put under contract to Fox and had a part in her uncle's film, Grand Canary.

He had a daughter, Dolores Lee Prinz and had a son, LeRoy Prinz, Jr.

Selected credits Bolero (1934) Cleopatra (1934) The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935) Anything Goes (1936) Show Boat (1936) The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936) Artists & Models (1937) St. Louis Blues (1939) Road to Singapore (1940) Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) Too Many Girls (1940) Fiesta (1941) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) Mission to Moscow (1943) This is the Army (1943) Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) Hollywood Canteen (1944) Rhapsody in Blue (1945) Night and Day (1946) Escape Me Never (1947) The West Point Story (1950) The Ten Commandments (1956) Sayonara (1957) South Pacific (1958)