Friday, November 22, 2013

Marc Breaux, RIP

The man who helped Dick Van Dyke dance atop chimneys and beside cartoon penguins, has moved on.

Marc Breaux, the choreographer who with his wife Dee Dee Wood created Dick Van Dyke's famous chimney sweep number in Mary Poppins and other spectacular dances for film and television, has died. He was 89.

After director Robert Wise saw Van Dyke's lithe performance in 1964's Mary Poppins, he immediately hired Breaux and Wood for another Julie Andrews classic, The Sound of Music, released a year later. Van Dyke also took the pair to work with him on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

Breaux and Wood, proteges of famed choreographer Michael Wood, also designed dances for Norman Jewison's 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette, and The Happiest Millionaire (1967), with Fred MacMurray and Greer Garson.

The duo served as the choreographers on the 1960s ABC variety show The Hollywood Palace and created dances for many other variety shows in the '70s. ...

I never knew that Dick Van Dyke suggest Breaux and his wife as choreographers to Walt Disney. Glad it worked out.

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