Word: londoners
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...packed to the fire-limit (for an alltime record ballet box-office gross of $256,000). In four weeks, Margot Fonteyn and Sadler's Wells had restored as much glitter to Britain's tarnished tiara as any mission the English had sent abroad since the war. In London, cartoonists put Prime Minister Clement Attlee, Ernie Bevin and Sir Stafford Cripps* into tutus, hinted that they might do well to make their next visit to the U.S. on tiptoe...
Child with a Future. Margaret Hookham studied in London until she was eight. Her life was little different from that of most well-brought-up, middle-class English girls, except that she was allowed to spend as much time dancing as she liked, and had a governess to tutor her in her other lessons. In 1927, when the family lived briefly in Louisville while Papa Hookham studied American cigarette-making machinery, Margaret could find no ballet teachers, took tap-dancing lessons instead...
When Margaret (having changed her first name to Margot) made her London debut at 14 as one of the 32 snowflakes in The Nutcracker, more experienced Sadler's Wellsians laughed at the serious little girl who spent half an hour in the wings, warming up for a five-minute role. But Margot was a perfectionist, then as now: she still rehearses the entire third act duet with Partner Helpmann just before each performance of Sleeping Beauty...
...ankle. With her leg in a cast, she could not dance again for three months, though she was scheduled to open soon in Ashton's Cinderella, which she had rehearsed for six months. It was the first time anyone had even seen her crushed. Unable to endure London without dancing, she went to Paris. Moira Shearer danced Cinderella in her place...
When she made her next appearance of the 1948-49 season, in Cinderella, London saw the change. The Daily Express reported as soberly as it could: "At the end of the lovely pas de deux ... so tense was the audience that one could hear the trickle of the tiny stage fountain above the closing notes of the clarinet." Last April, after a gala performance for Queen Elizabeth, the Evening Standard described the new Fonteyn: "Discarding the steely glitter that has sometimes divorced her from our deepest affections, she danced with simplicity, great feeling and unrivaled grace...