See also Biography Index (L) :: Filmography Index (L) :: Discography Index (L)

A brief but beautiful little wave in the MGM musical pool during the mid-40s was lovely, classy, red-headed Lucille Bremer. Her natural talent, aristocratic manner and stately carriage dazzled filmgoers briefly, like a shooting star, and then was gone. She was groomed by the studio for big things after Eleanor Powell retired and Lucille seemed more than ready to ascend the MGM pedestal. One major musical misfire, not to mention typical studio politics, left her career floundering after only three years. The name of Lucille Bremer, as a result, became a distant recollection.

She was born in Amsterdam, New York on February 21, 1917 (many reference books incorrectly list the year as 1923), but the family moved to Philadelphia while she was still quite young. She began taking ballet lessons at age 7 and before she was even a teenager, the promising dancer was accepted into the Philadelphia Opera Company. At age 16 she became a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in New York and toured with the girls throughout Europe. She took her first Broadway curtain call as a "Pony Girl" chorine (along with two other up-and-coming hopefuls Vera-Ellen and June Allyson) in the Broadway musical "Panama Hattie" in 1940. She also served as an understudy. Shortly after she earned a featured part in the musical "Dancing in the Streets" but the show closed during out-of-town tryouts. The following year she nabbed the ingénue role in the Gertrude Lawrence musical "Lady in the Dark".

It was MGM producer Arthur Freed who happened to discover the high-kicking Lucille dancing at a Versailles Restaurant`s floor show. He had her screen-tested and no less than Louis B. Mayer himself was taken by her, predicting a star-making career for her. Lucille, with no training at all, had an innate dramatic flair. After she and Cyd Charisse danced in the Stan Kenton musical short This Love of Mine (1944), Lucille was given the featured role of Rose, the eldest Smith daughter, who yearns to become part of the snobby elite in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). While the movie obviously focused on younger sister Judy Garland, the camera still showed an appreciation for Lucille and MGM wasted no time in finding a proper star vehicle for her dancing talents.

This came in the form of the exotic and lavish Technicolor musical fantasy Yolanda and the Thief (1945), directed by Vincente Minnelli, in which she co-starred with Fred Astaire. Astaire plays a conman with designs on the lovely Lucille, a naive, convent-bred heiress who takes him for a "guardian angel" of sorts. While this was an "A" vehicle for Lucille, and the highly interpretive dance styles of Bremer and Astaire, particularly in "Will You Dance With Me?" and the "Coffee Time" finale, meshed beautifully together, the storyline had problems. Far too heady, adult and Freudian in nature to please weary, war-time audiences seeking escapism, the movie was deemed an expensive box-office failure. Astaire was already a star and was able to rise above the ashes; Lucille, whose chilly beauty and demeanor was at times a negative, was not as lucky. She was never given another starring role in a musical film.

Her MGM highlight actually came later with Astaire by her side once again in two dancing segments of Ziegfeld Follies (1946). The duo danced to the lovely ballet number "This Heart of Mine" and the scene-stealing "Limehouse Blues" sequence. She would also be among the illustrious roster of MGM musical talents in Ti