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Joan Hume McCracken (December 31, 1917 – November 1, 1961) was an American dancer and actress who became famous for her role as Sylvie ("The Girl Who Falls Down") in the original 1943 production of Oklahoma! She also was noted for her performances in the Broadway shows Bloomer Girl (1944), Billion Dollar Baby (1945) and Dance Me a Song (1950), and the films Hollywood Canteen (1945) and Good News (1947). McCracken was a trendsetter in musical comedy dance. In her Oklahoma! role, she became an instant sensation for a carefully choreographed pratfall during the "Many a New Day" dance number. She was considered an innovator in combining dance with comedy, and branched into dramatic roles on Broadway and early television. However her career was cut short, ending several years before her death at age 43, as she suffered complications from diabetes. McCracken was generous in promoting the careers of other dancers, including Shirley MacLaine, and was a strong influence on her second husband, Bob Fosse, encouraging him to become a choreographer. She was noted for unconventional behavior and was one of a number of real-life counterparts to inspire the character of Holly Golightly in her friend Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's. Early life Joan Hume McCracken was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 31, 1917, the daughter of Mary Humes and Franklin T. McCracken, a prominent sportswriter at the Philadelphia Public Ledger who was an authority on golf and boxing. By age 11, she was awarded a scholarship for acrobatic work at a Philadelphia gymnasium, and later studied dance with Catherine Littlefield. She dropped out of West Philadelphia High School in the tenth grade to study dance in New York with choreographer George Balanchine at the opening of the School of American Ballet in 1934. Career Early career In 1935, McCracken returned to Philadelphia to join Littlefield's new ballet company, the Littlefield Ballet (later known as the Philadelphia Ballet). When the company made its official debut in November 1935, McCracken was one of its principal soloists. In 1937, she went on a European tour with the company, in what was the first tour of an American ballet company in Europe. This put a strain on her health. McCracken had been recently diagnosed with type I diabetes (then known as "juvenile diabetes"), which was difficult to treat with the medical technology at the time, and the European tour made it even harder for her to stay in compliance with her treatment regimen. McCracken kept her diabetes a secret throughout her life to prevent damage to her career. The disease made her prone to fainting spells, sometimes during performances, and led to medical complications later in her life. In 1940, McCracken and her new husband Jack Dunphy, also a dancer, moved to New York City. At first, neither failed to obtain employment, and McCracken danced in Radio City Music Hall's ballet company. The next year, she danced with the ballet company at Jacob's Pillow in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, and later that same year joined the Dance Players, formed by choreographer Eugene Loring, with Michael Kidd as Loring's assistant and leading male dancer. Oklahoma! and Hollywood In 1942, McCracken and Dunphy both successfully auditioned for roles in the dance ensemble of the new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Away We Go. Agnes de Mille, who had just staged Aaron Copland's Rodeo for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, was staging the production. The show went into rehearsals in early 1943. Like her husband, McCracken was cast in an anonymous dance role in the chorus. Early in out-of-town tryouts, she began to distinguish herself, and her dancing was noticed by reviewers. By the time of the Broadway opening of the show, now named Oklahoma!, she had developed her comic performance in the role of Sylvie, with McCracken taking a comic pratfall in the "Many a New Day" dance number. She became known as "The Girl Who Fell Down". Sources differ as to whether the role's distinctive fall was devised by McCracken or de Mille. McCracken has said the idea was hers, while de Mille and others recall it as being the choreographer's. Celeste Holm, a member of the original cast, attributed the idea to composer Richard Rodgers. McCracken's performance in Oklahoma! led to a contract with Warner Brothers. The studio cast her in Hollywood Canteen (1944), an all-star extravaganza in which Warner contract players portrayed themselves. McCracken appeared in a specialty dance routine called "Ballet in Jive". The dance number received favorable critical attention. McCracken was initially enthusiastic about working in films, but she was discouraged by her experiences working on Hollywood Canteen. Her husband and brother were both serving in the military, and she disliked the film's patronizing tone, which treated servicemen as naive bumpkins who are starstruck by the movie stars they encounter. McCracken also was dismayed by the unprofessionalism she witnessed at Warner Brothers, and the lack of guidance she received from the choreographer, LeRoy Prinz. McCracken broke her Warner Brothers contract and went back to Broadway to appear in the musical Bloomer Girl (1944), set during the U.S. Civil War, which is widely considered to be the first Broadway musical about feminism. She received rave reviews for her performance, which combined comedy acting with dance. While not the highest-billed star in that show, her performance, especially of the satiric striptease "T'morra, T'morra," enhanced her reputation as a comic performer. Broadway and television She subsequently starred in Billion Dollar Baby, which opened on Broadway in December 1945, winning positive reviews for her performance. Her starring role in the play failed to further her career, for the show received only lukewarm reviews. After Billion Dollar Baby, she was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to appear in the 1947 college musical Good News, starring June Allyson and Peter Lawford. She received good reviews playing the vivacious Babe Doolittle. Her song-and-dance number, "Pass That Peace Pipe", was a standout, but MGM did not renew her contract and her movie career never took off. Reviewing Good News for The Nation, critic and novelist James Agee wrote that McCracken "makes me think of a libidinous peanut." In her study of the Hollywood studios' star-making process, The Star Machine, film historian Jeanine Basinger compared Debbie Reynolds with McCracken. Basinger noted a contrast between the two actresses, noting that unlike Reynolds, who was groomed for stardom by MGM and was a show business novice, McCracken was "faux-fresh", a Broadway veteran who lacked "close-up appeal" and delivered her lines in the hard-edged, Broadway style, "reaching for that little old lady in the balcony." McCracken had limited range as a singer, which prevented her from getting some Broadway parts. Shirley MacLaine described her as a "small, yet pow.... Discover the Sylvie Mccracken popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sylvie Mccracken books.