Pearl Argyle


Pearl Argyle was a South African ballet dancer and actress. Remembered today primarily for her extraordinary beauty, she appeared in leading roles with English ballet companies in the 1930s and later performed in stage musicals and in films.

Early life and training

Argyle was born in Johannesburg, the daughter of Ernest James Wellman and Mary Wellman.
She first enters dance history in the mid-1920s, when she appeared in London and enrolled in ballet classes at the schools of Nikolai Legat, in Colet Gardens, and Dame Marie Rambert, in Notting Hill Gate. There she was known as Pearl Argyle by other students and members of Rambert's Ballet Club, the performing group from which Ballet Rambert was to evolve. Among other club members at the time was the emerging choreographer Frederick Ashton, who would play a significant role in her career on the ballet stage.

Ballet

At the time that Argyle studied at the Rambert Ballet School, Ashton was the principal dancer of its performing group as well as a budding choreographer. He recalled that she was a shy young woman, subject to blushing when addressed, but was a charming person and a graceful dancer. Like most people, he was immediately struck by her good looks. He likened her to movie actress Greta Garbo and called her "the most beautiful woman of her generation." She soon became his muse, inspiring him to create roles for her in a number of his early ballets.
Argyle was an important member of Rambert's group of student performers in the late 1920s and of the subsequent Ballet Club and the Camargo Society, from 1930 to 1935. Subsequently, she was a principal dancer with the Vic-Wells Ballet from 1936 to 1938. Among the leading roles she danced during these years were the following.
Argyle had left London in 1933 to go to Paris, where she danced with George Balanchine's short-lived company Les Ballets 1933, led by Tamara Toumanova and Tilly Losch. Back in London in 1934, she rejoined the Ballet Club and created the role of the barmaid in Ninette de Valois's Bar aux Folies-Bergère, inspired by the famous painting by Édouard Manet. As the Fille du Bar, Argyle shared the stage with Alicia Markova as the can-can dancer La Goulue and Frederick Ashton as her partner Valentin le désossé. Argyle also created the title role in Andrée Howard's The Mermaid, based on Hans Christian Andersen's story "The Little Mermaid," which was her last new role for the Ballet Club. She also appeared in other ballets in the company's repertory, notably Les Sylphides and The Sleeping Beauty. In the latter, she is said to have been the first British ballerina to perform Marius Petipa's choreography for the grand pas de deux' in act 3.
In 1935, Argyle left Rambert's company to join the Vic-Wells Ballet as a principal dancer.) In this troupe, organized by Lillian Baylis and de Valois to perform at both the Old Vic Theatre and the Sadler's Wells Theatre, she created two more important roles. Ashton's version of Le Baiser de la Fée was also based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, "The Ice Maiden." In the title role of The Fairy, it was said that Argyle's "cold classicism was magically used by Ashton." Soon after, she danced in another de Valois ballet inspired by a painting, a fête gallante of Antoine Watteau, the eighteenth-century French master of bucolic and idyllic scenes. In The Gods Go a-Begging, Argyle created the important role of the Serving Maid. She then left the Vic-Wells company but returned in 1938 to create a role in yet another ballet inspired by a story by Hans Christian Andersen, "The Emperor's New Clothes." Dancing the role of the Empress in de Valois's Le Roi Nu'', she once again won applause from delighted audiences.

Stage and screen

In 1932, it is a matter of record that Argyle appeared in Ballyhoo, a revue at London's Comedy Theatre starring Hermione Baddeley and George Sanders, with dances and ensembles by Buddy Bradley and ballets by Frederick Ashton. She danced in four numbers: By Candlelight, with Walter Crisham, John Byron, and The Girls; Mediterranean Madness, with Walter Gore as The Matelot; Far beyond the Crowd, with Walter Crisham and others; and Ballet for Four Pianos and Orchestra, with Walter Gore, John Byron, and The Girls. Beyond that, almost nothing is known of her appearances in musical theater. In 1938, she married a filmmaker and moved to the United States, eventually settling in California. There, she appeared in Charlot's Revuette, staged by André Charlot at El Capitan Theater in Hollywood and starring Rita Hayworth. Some online biographical articles say that Argyle then danced in "several Broadway musicals, including One Touch of Venus." Since no corroborative evidence of such assertions is readily available, they can only be regarded with some doubt.
More is known, however, about Argyle's appearances on film, thanks to information available at the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, California. This library, a reference and research collection devoted to the history and development of the motion picture, holds records showing that Argyle was among the cast members of at least five films.
In 1938, Argyle married German film director Curtis Bernhardt, known as Kurt, after their son Steven was born in February 1937. When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the family fled Nazi Germany for the safety of America, eventually settling in Los Angeles. At age 36, Argyle died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage while visiting her husband in New York. She is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, under her married name, Pearl Bernhardt.