Onna White
Onna White ( born March 24, 1922 in Inverness, Nova Scotia, † April 8, 2005 in West Hollywood ) was a Canadian choreographer. For her choreographic work in the production of the film Oliver, she received an honorary Oscar in 1969. She was also nominated eight times for a Tony Award.
Life and work
Onna White grew up in a musical family and learned early to play the piano. She was often sick as a child and came over the prescribed physiotherapy to first dance experience. At age 12, she began to take dance lessons. She went to San Francisco, where she joined the ensemble of the San Francisco Opera Ballet at the age of 16. There she worked for seven years as a classical ballet dancer, mainly as a solo dancer.
Your Broadway career began in 1947 as a White dancer in the original performance of the musical Finian's Rainbow. Here she met the choreographer Michael Kidd know who they supported in their further career. He convinced her to be a choreographer to try, after it was too heavy for lifting figures through a pregnancy. White assisted him in pieces like Silk Stocking and Guys and Dolls, as well as at the London debut of Finian 's Rainbow and Guys and Dolls. In 1955 she was the choreographer responsible for a revival of Finian's Rainbow.
1957 White scored her first big Broadway success as a choreographer with the musical The Music Man. For this work she was nominated the following year for a Tony Award. With the filming of the substance in 1962 began a little later her career as Filmchoreografin. This was followed by numerous other Broadway choreographies and seven Tony Award nominations for Best Choreography - for Whoop - Up ( 1959), Take Me Along (1960), Irma la Douce (1961 ), Half a Sixpence (1965 ), Mame ( 1966), Illya Darling (1968) and I Love My Wife (1977). As one of the few choreographers who each won an Oscar, she was awarded an honorary Oscar for Oliver 1969.
White was married from 1948 to 1959 with actor Larry Douglas ( 1914-1996 ). They had two children, Stuart and Jeannie Douglas.
White died aged 83 in her apartment in West Hollywood, California.