Vernon and Irene Castle
Since it's Valentine's Day, it's the perfect occasion to highlight a couple, and well, what better couple is there to consider than Irene and Vernon Castle -- one of the most famous couples of the early twentieth century?
Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers and teachers during the 1910s. The couple toured the stage from Broadway to London and Paris, popularizing many dance styles such as the foxtrot.
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Vernon was born William Vernon Blyth on May 2, 1887, in Norwich, England. Originally setting his hopes to be a civil engineer, he rose to fame after Lew Fields gave him his start on the vaudeville stage. In vaudeville, he was known for his drunk gentlemen portrayals. Although still relatively unknown at the time, Vernon established himself as a comic actor, singer, dancer, and conjuror during the 1900s.
Irene Castle was born Irene Foote on April 7, 1893, in New Rochelle, New York. She studied dancing from an early age and performed in many amateur theatricals before meeting Vernon. The two met at a lakeside retreat in the summer of 1910, when Irene was 17 years old at the time.
"Like every young girl, I was tremendously interested in the theatre and everyone connected with it. I had always wanted to go on the stage, and my few amateur performances confirmed me in my desire. Vernon was the first actor I had met, and I think at the time I was vastly more interested in him than he in me. Unlike most parents, my parents had no objection to my going on the stage. He thought both my sister and I ought to learn something by which we could earn our own living. I asked Vernon to help me get on the stage. He was very nice about it, but, as I remember, he showed no particular enthusiam. At the time I did not understand how much and how thoroughly the amateur can bore the professional, especially when he wants to help. Always considerate, as I came to know so well later on, he promised me that he would talk to Lew Fields about me. Sometime later on he told me Lew Fields would listen to me, and I was given a trial. My agitation was, of course, very great. I had come in from New Rochelle with a pianist, who feebly accompanied me in the huge dark theatre. I danced with the castanets a sort of Spanish tarantella. Later in the Fields production of 'The Summer Widowers' in Brooklyn I appeared for the first time under the name Irene Foote." -- Irene Castle on meeting Vernon and getting her start.
The following Christmas Eve they were engaged, and on May 28, 1911, the two were married in New Rochelle -- Irene's hometown. Shortly after they were married, Irene joined Vernon in The Hen-Pecks, in which they were featured players. When the production closed for the summer, the couple traveled to England so Irene could meet Vernon's family.
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| Vernon and Irene, ca. 1915. |
Next, the couple traveled to Paris with hopes of finding success. It turned out that the audiences there weren't interested in their vaudeville act but their dancing impressed them. An agent saw their performance and suggested they take a job at the Café de Paris, which they did. In Paris, they received more recognition than ever and brought the latest American ragtime dances to France. By the Spring of 1912, they were the sensation of Paris. Men and women began to copy everything about them from their dancing to their hairstyles.
At the time, The Castles were the ultimate source of information about ballroom dance. They invented new step patterns and movement characteristics that remain to this day. Some of the best-renowned dances they popularized were the glide, the castle polka, the castle walk, the hesitation waltz, the tango, the bunny hug, the turkey trot, and more. In 1914, they opened their own dancing school in New York called the "Castle House" as well as a nightclub and restaurant. The pair also appeared in numerous silent films, which they used as a vehicle to promote their latest dances. Without a doubt, they were the most popular and influential dancing pair back then.
"That these two determined the course dancing should take is incontestable. They were decisive characters, for they understood, absorbed, and transformed everything known of dancing up to that time and out of it made something beautiful and new. Vernon Castle, if it is possible, was the better dancer of the two. But if he were the greater, his finest creation was Irene. No one else has ever given exactly that sense of being freely perfect, of moving without effort and without will, in more than accord, in absolutely identity with the music. There was always something unimpassioned, cool not cold, in her abandon; it was certainly the least sensual dancing in the world; the whole appeal was visual. It was as if the eye following her graceful motion across a stage was gratified by its own orbit, and found a sensuous pleasure in the ease of her line, in the disembodied lightness of her footfall, in the careless slope of her lovely shoulders. There was only dancing, and it was all that one ever dreamed of flight, with wings poised, and swooping gently down to rest." -- Gilbert Seldes, 1924.
