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This unique couple complimented one another in the expression of music through dance. Rasch, a ballet-trained dancer and choreographer, studied at the Royal Opera Ballet School in Vienna and debuted at thirteen. She made her NYC debut at the Hippodrome in 1911 after which she choreographed and danced in many Broadway plays. She formed her own troupe The Albertina Rasch Girls and the Rasch Ballet, appeared in many Ziegfield shows, performed at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, danced with Josephine Baker, opened her own dance studio in NYC and toured with Sarah Bernhardt. Her film credits include The Great Waltz, The Merry Widow, and The Girl of the Golden West.
Albertina Rasch staged many musicals for Hollywood films, through which she met and married film score composer Dmitri Tiomkin. Together, they often did the music and the dance; for example, she choreographed the dance segments for Our Blushing Brides, starring Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery, while her husband provided the musical score.
Tiomkin—who started his music career as a child piano prodigy in Russia—performed throughout Europe as a young man. After moving to the United States in the mid-1920s, he scored over 250 films for some of the most successful films ever produced, including the Academy Award-winning theme songs for High Noon, The High and the Mighty, and Old Man and the Sea, as well as scores for films such as It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, and such notable musical film pieces as Friendly Persuasion, "The Legend of the Navarone" from the film Guns of Navarone, The Corsican Brothers, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Giant, The Alamo, and The Sundowners. Tiomkin also earned an Academy Award Nomination for Best Musical Score for the film Green Leaves of Summer.
He helped to popularize American music throughout the world. In 1928, the French Government gave Tiomkin special permission to perform at the famed L'Opera de Paris. At one performance there, he gave the French premiere of George Gershwin's Concerto in F. |
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