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With round shoulders and pigeon toes,

Bob Fosse used his physical limitations

to create unorthodox, misaligned,

and angular dance moves,

that unleashed a whole new way of movement onto the world.

From his twist-inspired frug

of the psychedelic Sweet Charity,

to the decadent risque routines of Cabaret,

and Fellini-esque set pieces of All That Jazz,

Bob Fosse was a revolutionary dancer,

choreographer and director.

Oh blimey, Bob Fosse's influence contemporary life.

I think he's played a huge part

in the world of dance.

In the dance world,

everyone knows who Bob Fosse is.

Almost like the Picasso of choreographers.

Completely subverted everything.

He was a rebel.

He rebelled by using unorthodox dance moves,

that went completely against the grain,

utilizing twitches, hip pumps,

and articulating hands,

to create a new, highly personal kind of choreography,

captivating his audience,

and placing himself firmly on the map.

So, Bob Fosse was an incredible dancer.

He was a choreographer.

He was a director.

I mean he was just, I would say, everything.

The first thing that springs to my mind

would have to be,

sexy, chic, and stylish.

His dance style was also

incredibly energetic, and athletic.

A beautiful example of this,

is in his 1955 performance of Alley Dance.

Fosse's style is so unique.

He was able to make all his dancers

just have a pose, or just have a look.

That was more powerful

than if they kicked their legs 20 times.

Throwing up the hat, magically,

so it's anti-gravity.

The way they hit the beat, that's all Bob Fosse.

He sort of ripped up the rule book,

and found beauty in ugliness.

Bob Fosse conjures up show biz.

Bob Fosse is show biz,

it's showtime, folks.

Born in Chicago in 1927,

to a Norwegian-American father,

and an Irish-born mother,

who both had failed show biz aspirations.

Robert 'Bob' Louis Fosse

took his first dance class at the age of eight,

and in no time, turned professional,

alongside childhood pal, Charles Grass,

as part of the Riff Brothers duo, at the age of 13.

Fosse's experiences as part of the act,

included working late nights

at seedy burlesque and strip clubs,

before he'd reached puberty.

He spent a childhood

hanging out with strippers, basically,

and that's an aesthetic that seems

to have seeped into his later work.

I didn't know so much about how

exposed Bob Fosse was to life

and the sort of seediness of it.

I think it's so obvious,

when you see how sexualized,

and the use of the dancers' bodies, his work is,

that it couldn't have helped but seep into him.

If I imagined playing out the scenes in Cabaret,

and how risque they were,

and how openly

sex and drugs and,

multi-sexual groups and that was so,

it was so big,

and so just everywhere for everyone to see.

When I think of my 14-year-old

being somewhere like that, it's horrifying.

So, as a 13-year-old boy he must have just experienced

so many different things at such a young age,

which I'm sure really did stick with him,

and some people might say,

for all the wrong reasons, he shouldn't have been there,

but actually, look what it created.

Whilst the clubs may not have been

the most wholesome environments for a young man,

Fosse's home life was also far from perfect.

He even went so far as to compare his father

to Arthur Miller's womanizing Willy Loman.

"My father, always a glad hand,

"always pretending to be up.

"When my mother died, we found out

"he had been seeing another woman for years,

"you know, stockings and all,

"just like Willy Loman."

After high school, the restless Bob Fosse

enlisted in the Navy,

working as part of an entertainment unit

in the Pacific, until his discharge in 1947.

He caught the acting bug

when he joined the American Theater Wing in New York City.

But Bob's focus was always dance,

and he moved to New York with the aspiration

of becoming the new Fred Astaire.

It wasn't long before he came to the attention

of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin,

at the time, the biggest stars in the US,

who invited him to appear on their comedy show,

The Colgate Hour,

alongside his first wife, Mary Ann Niles.

You don't see many clips of Bob Fosse's early work,

but what's really clear,

is what a technically accomplished dancer he was.

When he went to Hollywood,

the movie director, Stanley Donen,

who's most famous for things like,

Singing in the Rain and On the Town,

he thought he was going to be the next Fred Astaire.

It's partly because he arrived in Hollywood,

sort of towards the end of the big musicals era,

that that didn't happen.

It may also have been to do with the fact

that we don't know if he was much of an actor.

Most people sort of compared Bob

to like, Fred Astaire, for example,

who could act, talk,

and then sort of slide into the dance balletically,

and as if there was no difference

between the character who was dancing,

and it was the same character he was playing

in that musical.

Fosse was a bit more balletic than that,

more like Nureyev, for example,

who could perform through the dance.

He had a character while he was doing the dance.

You didn't want to hear Bob Fosse speak.

Shut up and dance.

Bob Fosse got lucky, in that he met people

who said, you can do more than just do a nightclub act.

But he couldn't do it unless he worked,

and took lessons, and learned every,

every aspect of the dance,

and every aspect of filmmaking.

You can't just turn up on set,

and point the camera and suddenly,

hey, you got Sweet Charity.

No, there's a lot of hard work that goes into it,

so I would say luck is 5%,

turning up is 80%, and the rest is talent.

In 1953, Fosse moved into acting,

working for MGM,

but a dance sequence that he choreographed

in the film, Kiss Me Kate,

brought him to the attention of Broadway producers,

and it is here that we first see

a fearless demonstration of his quirky, and angular style.

His move toward choreography was well-timed,

as he was starting to doubt himself as leading man material,

blaming his thinning hair,

and ungainly hands as factors.

Fosse is not a traditionally strapping,

good-looking, handsome man.

There's something very dynamic about him,

and indeed quite sexual about him.

Bob Fosse always said that he put hats

into his choreography to cover up his hair loss.

He was embarrassed about that, as many men are,

but I think what that shows is that you can overcome

any physical deficiencies,

if that indeed is a physical deficiency.

Did that drive him into choreography?

Could you even ask the question,

would we be talking about him today if he wasn't bald?

There's an essay in that.

I don't know where he was in himself,

if he didn't feel he was gonna continue

doing well because he was losing his hair.

So perhaps he did kind of, it did make him think,

well I'll have to give up on that,

and concentrate somewhere else.

I'm quite grateful for his

lack of hair then,

'cause he wouldn't have brought

so much joy to my life.

He may not have been classically good-looking,

but he had no shortage of female admirers.

By now, already on to his second marriage,

to dancer, Joan McCracken.

Fosse credited McCracken

as being the one who encouraged him

to see himself as more than a performer,

and devote himself to choreography.

1954, returning to Broadway,

Fosse wins his first Tony Award for choreography

for the musical, Pajama Game,

and then again, for the stage musical,

Damn Yankees, the following year.

It starred Gwen Verdon,

who also won a Tony for her role

as the vampish leading lady, Lola.

Vernon was to later become Fosse's third and final wife,

and was a formative influence on Fosse,

in terms of his career.

A superb choreographer herself,

she encouraged and mentored him,

working closely as dancer, choreographer, and muse.

When Damn Yankees was adapted for the screen in 1958,

Verdon once again starred, and Bob choreographed.

Dancing together in perfect synergy,

it sealed their reputation

as a mesmerizing and trailblazing couple.

He was very clever,

he got his foot in the door.

He did what was kind of expected to make a show work,

and I think he cleverly maneuvered people's minds,

as in the producers and the directors,

of where the show should be.

I think as time went on,

and Damn Yankees, and then from beyond that,

he started to be brave,

and realized that actually he didn't have to be wafty,

it wasn't all about big arms, big legs,

he could actually just do small, intricate moves,

that were really effective.

Out!

Whilst his career was on the up,

self-doubt and anxiety were never far away.

And he was always looking for an edge

over other choreographers,

a driving force perhaps, as his best work was yet to come.

In the 1960's Broadway was, as it always has been,

the leader of the world's musicals,

and I think Fosse knew that there was a toughness

to working in Broadway,

that it was the great white way.

As much as movies in Hollywood

were attracting people on the Greyhound bus,

Broadway had the pull on the other coast.

And he was one of those that had turned up.

You know, you can't just turn up in New York

and dance on the stage, there are thousands of people,

and it's hard work.

You want fame, well fame costs,

and you have to sweat for it,

and Fosse did all that.

Bob Fosse isn't known as one of the great stage directors

in the history of Broadway.

He's certainly known as a great choreographer,

and I think maybe it was the dance that attracted him more.

He couldn't be bothered with the rehearsing of dialog.

All of that took away from the energy of what he wanted,

which was the dance.

By now, Fosse had forged

what came to be his signature style,

utilizing striking silhouettes,

moving spotlights, and groupings of dancers,

in tight synchronization.

Bob Fosse is an immediately identifiable choreographer.

You see his choreography,

you know in a nanosecond, it's his.

He's got an incredibly individual style,

which resonates through generations.

This included the use of turned in knees,

which Fosse based on his own pigeon-toes,

as well as the famous Fosse amoeba,

sideways shuffling, rolled shoulders,

and of course, jazz hands.

And then he sort of created his own shapes,

that were very, very awkward and tough for dancers to do,

I mean, incredibly, physically, taxing.

Because sometimes the movements of Fosse

are quite simple and quite small,

they think it's not as difficult or as energetic,

but actually it's harder because it's about placing.

You can't just throw your arms and legs wherever

and see where they end up.

But it's not just that, it's drawing attention to it.

Yes, actually showing the audience

how that works in the body.

Like shining a torch on one part of the body a bit.

If you can isolate areas of your body

and bring performance through your physicality,

then that's a really beautiful thing.

Bob Fosse's style is definitely sexy,

definitely has that sexual undertone

in every single movement that he does.

I think he got to the core

of what makes people want to dance,

and he really nailed that.

I don't think anyone else

in the history of Broadway, or film,

worked up to the dance.

Most people work up to the singing.

He worked up to when the emotions were so strong,

you just had to dance.

Keep left.

Okay, so what we've been trying to do,

is try and work on the essence of Fosse,

which was isolation, isn't that right?

So, rather than great big grand dramatic movements

like ballet is, it's saying exactly the same thing

as you're saying, James, but in a tiny way.

So expressing yourself in a tiny, tiny, mini-movement,

that says, just as many volumes

as a giant movement in ballet.

One, two, three.

Very nice, turn in more, Claire.

Soft, it's soft, and it goes through,

it goes through smoke almost.

So one has to try and understand

what's going on in your head,

and you make them want to understand.

That's what you do.

One, two, three.

Seven, eight, a right, a left, a right, together.

Okay, so we're...

egg mayonnaising.

So today, we only had three hours,

and we had two dancers, they've done a lot of Fosse,

and we had two that weren't,

because we thought that would be quite interesting,

that it's just a case of plucking bits,

and amalgamating them, all parts of his work,

and of Fosse's style,

in a rehearsal space, to see the process of how it works,

and the process of putting it together.

That could work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If we get the bones of it,

and then I'll make it make sense.

Imagine you're in silhouette.

So we see the hand?

Imagine wearing white gloves.

I would say that as a choreographer,

you get quite obsessive about getting it exactly right.

I mean, we could move in again,

and then move out again.

And then we could do a side in the back,

because that's very Fosse, isn't it?

The person that's making it,

needs to look at it, again and again.

They might change it, they might bring it back.

And a one, left foot,

five, six, seven, eight.

One and two, one and two, one and two.

Next section, let's go to the next section,

where we had so much fun in.

Your toes might be bleeding,

or your legs are hurting, your muscles are aching,

or you've got a fracture in your foot,

or you've lost a toenail, or whatever.

And you just carry on, you just do it,

because that's your job.

Ee-ee.

Let's go from ee-ee.

Let's go from one, two, three.

One, two and a three,

four, five, six, seven, eight.

Well, as a ballet dancer,

you're always working outward.

Turn out.

Turn out.

So the rotation of the hip socket.

Fosse I think was taught ballet, and tap,

and then developed his own style, a bit like Graham,

from his own body.

His hips were quite tight,

and so he choreographed for parallel,

and some turned in moving.

Standing movement's very rare in dance.

The only other instance of it is in Nijinsky's

And in Patrushka.

And Patrushka, yes.

Something you remember.

Slowly for the audience, there.

Cut!

The first thing that I think about

are the Fosse walks,

like in Chicago, when you walk forward,

and the hand suggests moving behind.

That's a simple move that such a sexy and effective one.

Eggs in the hands, I call it.

Sort of rolling of the wrists,

flapping at the wrists.

Hands up high, as well.

You know, just the tip,

just how you would use the hand.

A rolling of the shoulders.

The weird collapsing, totally awkward,

and angular, and bloody brilliant.

But with Fosse, it's a thought,

so you have to really think

what you're trying to say

about whether you're happy or you're sad

or what you mean,

and that's what you're giving the audience.

He presents you with a very sort of sexy image,

the hips, the shoulders, going,

but actually it's got female agency in it, I think,

and you don't feel that the woman is being exploited.

I love it.

Lots of dancers have a style,

that I'm naturally drawn to,

and I feel like it sits very well on my body.

It's an acquired technique, definitely,

and an acquired style

that takes a lot of practice.

And I don't know, it definitely can be taught,

and you can break down the movements,

but there are some people who I think naturally,

it's in their bones I think,

definitely when I watch some people do it,

it just sits naturally in their body.

He confines the movement very much,

he doesn't use spatial patterns, except in

- Rich Man's Dog. - It's got a lot of

sideways and then forwards and backwards,

but not much diagonal.

Like with ballet, it's all extending,

but the arm isn't with the leg,

and actually with Fosse it's

about leading with a shoulder or a hip,

and keeping it quite internal,

but just completely the opposite

of everything I've been taught for most other things.

The move that we did

with the foot coming in with the hat,

is a move that Ann Reinking does

in All that Jazz,

and I'm absolutely her number one fan,

and her execution of that particular movement

is so stunning.

She's so clean, and she's so inspiring to watch,

that I think that's my favorite move, today.

Rolling hips and shoulders,

and an overall strutting impression,

capped off the cool and modern feel,

as Fosse amassed an enviable amount of original dance moves.

Fame beckoned, when in 1966,

he directed and choreographed Verdon again,

in the smash hit musical, Sweet Charity.

But as the 60's drew to a close,

he was to make his debut in the area

for which Fosse is perhaps best known,

the movies.

Bob Fosse makes his first movie,

as a director, when he's 41 years old.

He comes to movies late.

He'd choreographed other movies,

but he didn't direct until then,

and he absolutely learns on the job,

and he turns himself into a highly skilled filmmaker.

Sweet Charity, a movie that was

unmistakably of the 60's,

was Bob Fosse's directorial debut, in 1969,

starring Shirley MacLaine.

Featuring psychedelic dance routines,

flower power hippies,

and scripted hipster dialog.

She doesn't look familiar.

Who can she be?

What happened to Ursula?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it?

Who is it?

It's me.

Sweet Charity was actually based on

Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria,

which starred Giulietta Masina

as a prostitute in Rome, always hoping for the best.

It had a very jazzy feel to it.

It had the wonderful Sammy Davis, Junior,

playing a preacher in a car park,

singing the Rhythm of Life,

which is one of the great numbers.

It had Big Spender, to start with,

people clicking their fingers.

And it had one of my all-time favorite

solo dance numbers, which is,

If They Could See Me Now, with Shirley MacLaine.

♪ If they could see me now

♪ Alone with Mister V

♪ Who's waitin' on me like he was a maitre d' ♪

♪ I hear my buddies sayin', crazy, what gives ♪

♪ Tonight she's living like the other half lives ♪

He was very much of the 60's.

Sweet Charity is a big, hippy musical,

that was influenced by things like, Hair,

and the sort of cut up, choppy editing of the time,

that Richard Lester was pioneering.

He brought back to dance, to musicals,

and people were used to seeing

the crane shots, big establishing shots.

He changed all of that,

and brought a sinewy, almost documentary flare

to those big dance numbers.

He was very able to amalgamate lots of styles,

and filter them through his own camera.

My favorite number from Sweet Charity is,

There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This.

The three girls, up on the roof, dancing their hearts out.

In some ways, it's a very un-Fosse-like number.

It's got the moves, but it's got

this kind of ebullient joy.

If anyone wants to wants to watch

how to shoot a choreo number

with those three women on the roof,

watch Sweet Charity,

'cause you got to be brave to do that.

No one would do that now.

♪ I've gonna get up, get out

♪ And live

♪ Live it

It was the first time that I've ever danced,

was in a footlights show,

and we did Sweet Charity.

And yeah, I was

in the frog.

It's unbelievable, that dance.

It is unbelievable, the journey it goes on.

The music, the way he uses it.

As a musician, the way he interprets

the percussive element of it.

And the humor, and the darkness,

and the sexiness, and the intrigue.

It's like looking at a painting.

You can just keep on coming back to it, time and time again.

Sweet Charity's music still stands up today.

I mean, Hey Big Spender is used all the time,

the big band brassy jazz of it.

♪ Hey big spender

♪ Spend a little time with me

The funky rhythms of Rhythm of Life,

I think they still work.

♪ And the rhythm of life is a powerful beat ♪

♪ It puts a tingle in your fingers ♪

♪ and a jingle in your feet

♪ Rhythm in your bedroom, rhythm in the street ♪

♪ Yes the rhythm of life is a powerful beat. ♪

What the film looks like though, is totally of its time,

and yet you think, well no one else had done that before,

so it has an avant garde-ness,

even as it harps back to that hippy, 60's, feel.

The 60's was a time of experimentation,

and free love, but Fosse

was already 10 years ahead of the curve,

with numerous addictions, and affairs.

Although having always been a workaholic,

he was now using amphetamines to keep himself going,

and Seconal to get to sleep.

All the while, he worked on his next movie, 1972's Cabaret.

It's really interesting, going back

and looking at movies from the 70's.

The ones that you expect to stand up, don't,

and the ones that you think,

well maybe that was a period piece,

turn out to be fantastically strong.

Cabaret is absolutely in the latter category.

It really works.

I frankly don't think there has ever been an era,

where Cabaret looked like it wasn't speaking to the present.

Cabaret is a touchstone.

I refer to it constantly.

It was a wonderful story by Christopher Isherwood.

But it was made palpable, made real,

by Fosse's toggling between the Kit Kat Club

nightclub scenes,

and the growing Nazi threat from offscreen,

and the innocence of Cliff, played by Michael York,

in the film, coming to this city.

So, it's got everything, this film,

it's got the innocence,

it's got it being tainted by political actions,

it's got hiding it all away,

and it's also got the reflection of art and life,

which is what's really going on in the Kit Kat Club.

And that's what Nazi Germany

stamped down upon,

smashed freedom of expression.

In the clubs like that, even comedy wasn't safe anymore.

It's an extraordinary concoction,

from a man who'd only made his second movie.

He had an expert grasp of what was important

about dance and show biz

within the context of a wider political movement.

Tonight we may lose the battle.

Packed with provocative dance routines,

memorable tunes,

and a gallery of Fellini-esque grotesques,

Cabaret's Kit Kat Club cemented

Fosse's reputation as a major talent.

The Kit Kat Club has it all,

and then you've got Sally Bowles, Fraulein Sally Bowles,

in the middle of it all,

who plays this vulnerable, and yet brassy woman,

played by Liza Minnelli.

So I got to play Sally Bowles in Cabaret,

and anyone that's seen Cabaret

knows that Sally Bowles is a very mixed up, lonely,

kind of sad, but exotic,

I mean she's an incredible character to play,

and I think she is so,

what was in Bob Fosse's mind.

I think there's a part of what maybe Bob Fosse

was going through, Sally Bowles became.

Divine decadence.

I'm Sally Bowles.

I'm Brian Roberts.

Come in, Brian darling.

I think Cabaret, being the most famous song,

that was when she was at her lowest,

and she was completely out of her head,

and she had one chance to go out there

and get through that song.

She was drunk, and had nothing.

She was on the floor, she had nowhere to live.

The Germans had come and were taking over,

the club was gonna shut down.

She was desperate.

I think I played her at a time in my life,

that even though I couldn't relate to her lifestyle,

I could relate to her loneliness,

and just the difficultness of getting through it,

so I think getting to play Sally Bowles

at the time I got to play her was a godsend.

I think everything in life for a reason,

and it was most probably the toughest time

I've ever experienced in my life,

and I got to play a character,

that was completely broken,

yet come out fighting every night.

♪ What could permitting some prophet of doom ♪

♪ To wipe every smile away

♪ Life is a cabaret, old chum

♪ So come to the cabaret

Fosse was famous for his use of props,

and never was this more evident

then in the dance sequence from Mein Herr.

In a way I think Mein Herr is quintessential Fosse.

You get her astride a chair,

around a chair, on a chair.

He's very, very famous for using props.

He shoots it like a audience member,

in the club,

and very kind of hand held.

He throws the camera into the action.

And yet Fosse shoots from between the legs,

under the chair.

He makes the atmosphere of blue filter,

the smokiness.

It's a tangible atmosphere,

that's both sexy and decaying at the same time.

'Cause Mein Herr is just a massive number,

and it's sexy,

and it's cool, and we're all in our suspenders,

and we're running up and down stairs,

and the dancers are doing incredibly

sexy, gorgeous dancing.

Yeah, that piece is very objectifying.

You're wearing like, pretty much nothing,

and you're on a chair,

and you think, oh it's just gonna be,

you're gonna feel so objectified,

but it was just this,

you just go to this like,

like tapping the floor, if like,

this is your hammer and you're banging the floor,

and then you're like,

even you're banging your own body,

and it's like, it just is this grounded,

deep, strong, female sense,

that I had never really tapped into,

and I was like, damn it's nice to be a female, you know.

And just to feel strong and to be like,

yeah this is who I am,

and let's go for it.

Cabaret was a multi-award-winning film,

stacking up eight academy awards,

including, best actress, for leading lady,

Liza Minnelli, as Sally Bowles,

and best actor in a supporting role,

for Joel Gray, as the Kit Kat Klub emcee.

I think if Cabaret has one big theme,

it's that money and power corrupt,

but the show goes on,

and that people will be resilient throughout it.

So you get Sally Bowles and the emcee singing about money,

and having a buck, or a yen,

and a hole in a roof,

but people can dance their way through it.

I think that's very Fosse, that dance is defiant.

Dance is a continuation of life.

Dance goes on, even while outside the world is crumbling.

And people are falling apart,

and the systems are falling apart.

The system of dance can live on.

In 1973, Fosse did what no director

had done before, or since,

winning an Oscar for the movie, Cabaret,

a Tony for musical, Pippin,

and an Emmy for his TV special, Liza With a Z.

That's a really big deal.

I also suspect that it slightly went to his head,

and his workload becomes insane,

which probably leads to health issues,

which are then reflected famously in All That Jazz.

In 1974, his workload was immense,

working concurrently on stage and screen projects.

This only served to make his addictions worse,

as his appetite for drink, drugs, cigarettes, and women,

resulted in the first of three heart attacks.

As a testament to Fosse's drive,

this did not hold him back,

as he pushed through to complete his third film, Lenny,

set in the dingy and desperate comedy clubs

of New York City.

Lenny is the small black and white, indie-style movie,

which Bob Fosse chose to follow up Cabaret with.

Rather than adapt another musical from 42nd Street,

he chose to dive into the old

Greenwich Village comedy clubs of the 50's and 60's

to bring the story of Lenny to the screen.

They needed a big star,

so Dustin Hoffman got to play Jewish comedian, Lenny Bruce.

Would you marry a woman like that?

Oh yeah, you kidding me?

Would you let your wife dress that way?

No, are you kidding?

I'd knock her right on her ass.

Lenny is the story

of the nightclub entertainer, Lenny Bruce.

It captures the nightclub atmosphere

of those Greenwich Village comedy clubs,

and that scene, that folk scene.

But it also throbs with sexuality.

The relationship between Lenny and Honey,

between Dustin Hoffman and Valerie Perrine,

is rather electric, but it's also,

when you look at it now,

a rather poisonous relationship,

because she's exploited by Lenny.

She looks bruised by the experience,

and it's quite a bruising experience of a film.

You could see what attracted Bob Fosse to it,

because it is about perfection,

and it's about artistry, and about

not being able to hold your tongue,

it's very much a sort of coded letter of defiance

from Bob Fosse, to say this is really what I'm about.

Court's adjourned.

Because the information keeps the country strong.

You need the deviants.

Don't shut 'em up.

You need that madman to stand up,

tell you when you're blowing it.

Fosse was particularly hard

on Valerie Perrine, who played Bruce's wife, Honey.

Fosse told Perrine that her boyfriend

had been killed in an airplane crash,

solely to get the expression of shock he wanted.

Perrine won an Oscar nomination for the role.

He was one of those directors

that lived hard, and play hard.

He smoked, he did coke, he drank.

He had fun, I mean there's no denying

that he belonged to that generation

of dictatorial directors.

You have directors that want what they want,

and they'll make you cry,

and I've seen people been called fat elephant,

move to the left, and things like that,

in the most ridiculous circumstances.

Did Fosse work through reign of terror?

Possibly.

I don't think you need to work like that.

But again, I don't think he was

the healthiest of individuals, at all,

and probably not the nicest,

and many great artists aren't.

I can separate the man from the work.

The man was probably very unpleasant,

the work is sensational.

Fosse was described as a tormented genius,

who often worked in a state of irritability

and hyper alertness,

with a dependency on uppers, and drink.

Never was this depicted better,

than in his autobiographical film, All That Jazz,

astounding in its daring and scope,

putting all facets of his life on display.

A return to the musical format after Lenny,

All That Jazz was considered by fans

to have invented modern screen grammar,

and has influenced directors as diverse

as Tarantino and Aronofsky.

The first thing to say about All That Jazz,

is that, it doesn't feature the song, All That Jazz.

That's from Chicago.

But he took that hit number from Chicago,

and used it as a title of his most autobiographical work.

It's the title perhaps that sums up his entire career.

It's the way he worked.

Everything about All That Jazz, is in Bob Fosse.

All That Jazz follows the exploits

of director Joe Gideon,

played by Jaws actor, Roy Scheider,

as a virtual Fosse lookalike,

taking in his rehearsals for a new Broadway show,

the editing of his movie,

and the inevitable round of drugs, booze, and women.

Hey.

I should have called first.

Oh.

When you first see All That Jazz,

you'd think this is made by someone

who despises the business,

this is someone who just found it all dirty,

and too difficult, and hard work.

I mean it's about death.

It's about dance,

and it's about keeping the two alive,

and how they're sort of symbiotic, bedfellows,

they're partners in each other.

Bob Fosse's such an artist,

I think this film was a necessity

for him to continue living, like,

creating is his bread and butter,

that gets him through each day.

So in that sense,

All That Jazz backstage footage,

wasn't like a big reveal,

I think a lot of backstage is like that.

Move down Victoria.

And sing it out, here we go.

Five, six, seven, eight.

♪ And any seat you grab will be first class ♪

Two, three, four,

five, six, seven, eight,

and I don't like it.

When Fosse chose someone to play himself,

he took Roy Scheider,

so he didn't go for like the most handsome

actor you could possibly find.

He chose a flawed individual

with a funny nose

and a slightly hollowed out look.

You see an insight into Bob Fosse's life.

From the outside it's glam,

and he's producing and he's successful,

and winning everything.

But, you can see how much

of a struggle it is on a daily basis.

Bob Fosse used this film to

open up about his life,

behind you, his life behind doors,

and it was quite honest,

and not this god-like figure.

And I think it might have been kind of like

a release for him,

to be like, this is who I am.

Showtime, folks.

I mean how do you do a biopic, biography, whatever,

depict someone who's incredible

in their field?

How do you do that well?

But he managed to do it.

Everything that is him is in that film,

and it's interesting that it's embraced,

because not many people would want to embrace

everything about them, necessarily.

Flaws, warts and all, are in that.

I think we can say Bob Fosse was obsessed with women.

He was brought up by them,

surrounded by them,

and couldn't resist them.

His use of women in every sense,

is actually there in the work,

it's not well, why bring the private life in?

He brought the private life in.

Just don't kid yourself

that you're doing this show for any other reason,

except guilt about me.

Guilt?

What guilt?

For never going one day when you were faithful to me?

Oh, that guilt.

Problematic by today's standards,

was Fosse's behavior toward some of his female dancers.

A 1980 People Magazine article

quoted one of his dancers as saying,

"He's gonna try to make you.

"He tries with every girl, and gets a fair percentage.

"He doesn't give you much respect."

Would Fosse's behavior be accepted nowadays

in the workplace?

I don't know, maybe he would get away

with being such a womanizer,

and I'm sure there's many out there.

I think there would be a lot more women

that would talk up if they were uncomfortable today.

I think the Me Too movement,

I seriously do think that has changed things.

I think that would be different now.

Victoria Porter,

is this your home phone?

All That Jazz is about ego,

it's about rampant ego,

it's about rampant male id.

Roy Scheider, who plays Joe Gideon,

the choreographer, the director, the master puppeteer,

at the center of it all.

Everything he does is grist for his artistic mill.

Every line someone says, he can use it later.

He steals everything, it's all-consuming.

It makes life very difficult

when work is what your life is.

And that's what we see with Roy Scheider,

we see him being consumed

by his commitment to perfection, or his quest to perfection.

♪ They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway ♪

The opening scene, set to George Benson's On Broadway,

is funky, it's alive, it's sexy,

it's got like desperation to it.

And you can hear the sinew of the dancers, straining,

you can hear them desperately trying to reach out,

for fame which is right in front of them.

It's all the leg-warmers that we associate with such a work,

and it's got also,

it sets Roy Scheider's character up

as being this grand dictator.

He's saying yes to people.

He's saying no to others.

He's organizing the troops, left and right.

♪ And I won't quit till I'm a star ♪

♪ On Broadway

It's a sort of hopeless piece,

because you've got George Benson singing On Broadway,

the old standard.

But it's set in this very modern way,

and it doesn't even necessarily work

with what they're dancing to,

so it takes you out of the movie.

It brings something different to the musical form,

an almost documentary-like examination,

almost anthropological examination

of these creatures, these dancers,

who are herded like cattle,

in front of one man to kind of be picked

and thrown apart.

It's a mass of humanity.

And I think that sort of almost sums up the entire

career of Bob Fosse, in just that little five minute bit.

But I think that he does portray that world very clearly.

And also I think, being in a ballet company,

you are in the company,

but to have to audition all the time for different parts

is incredibly hard.

So you know, you look at

the amount of people on the stage,

trying to audition, and they whittle them out,

they whittle them out, they whittle them out.

You wouldn't do it if you didn't love it.

It's hard.

It's really hard work.

Bob Fosse's All That Jazz

won the Palme D'or at Cannes in 1980,

and I think what appealed to that

very cinephile, very French audience,

is its behind the scenes look at the struggle,

the artist tortured in the middle of it.

I think that's what appealed to the jury at Cannes in 1980,

that this is a dirty business,

but it's one really worth fighting for.

I think that it's just typical of Bob Fosse,

the whole backstage stuff,

'cause I think he liked to shog,

and I think that was kind of maybe

the darker side of Bob Fosse letting people know

really what goes on,

snorting cocaine off of their dressing room tables,

and making out.

The manicness of what happens

before you go in his stage.

So I think that was most probably

the darker side of Bob Fosse

letting us all know, it's not all what it appears.

It's not all twinkle lights and smiles.

1983 saw Bob Fosse's final movie, Star 80.

Once again, focusing in on the dark side

of the entertainment industry,

but minus the dance routines and humor,

that had lifted his previous films.

Star 80 is probably the least known work by Bob Fosse,

mainly because it doesn't really feature dancing,

it doesn't feature jazz hands,

and it doesn't feature big choreographed moments.

Except when you look at it, it's all there.

It's a story of a Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratton,

who was taken from small town Canada,

where she was discovered by a pimp,

played by Eric Roberts,

who sends off naked Polaroids of her to Hugh Hefner,

and suddenly she becomes a star in Playboy Magazine.

But he doesn't stop there, he wants more.

And he tries to push her to become a movie star, an actress,

and it's a real-life story,

that Bob Fosse saw in a Village Voice article,

and decided to take that to the big screen.

And it became an infamous case, that of Dorothy Stratton,

who was, there are spoilers here I'm afraid,

but murdered by her husband.

But this is a real timepiece movie, it's 1983.

It has jazz funk on the soundtrack,

played by Chuck Mangione.

It has Bob Fosse choreographed moments,

sort of roller disco and pajama party scene,

which was at the Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion.

All of that's there,

and what really is Bob Fosse about,

this is this desperation, this underbelly,

the power of show business,

and power the seedier side of show business,

desperation to succeed,

the desperation to make it big,

the desperation to become, like the title says,

a star of the 80's.

So it's about all the mechanisms

that are involved in becoming a star.

So the star themselves, played by Mariel Hemingway,

as Dorothy Stratton.

It's about the boyfriend, played by Eric Roberts,

who wants her money, who kind of powers her

at all costs to the love relationship, jealousy.

It's also about the impresario,

Cliff Robertson playing Hugh Hefner,

who can make her star, and the hangers-on.

And that's all show biz.

So while Bob Fosse clearly was in love with show biz,

he also hated it,

and that comes out in Star 80.

I have this terrific idea.

I'm your manager, right?

Well, as your manager,

I think you should go to New York

and become a big movie star.

I'll stay here and work on the Dorothy Stratton poster.

It's gonna make us a fortune.

Good idea?

Star 80 is a huge disappointment.

I think it's a sad end to Fosse's directing career.

And it's largely because, again,

we have a lack of perspective from Fosse, on his material.

He's made up his mind,

about how innocent the girl was,

and how terrible the murderer was.

Now whilst both those facts are true,

a better script would have made those characters stronger.

It's actually quite a hard watch,

because you know what the director thinks at every point.

There isn't room for the audience to make its mind up.

Eric Roberts works really hard in Star 80,

and delivers a good performance.

It's not his fault that the material is so unyielding.

It's also not his fault

that Fosse puts terrible, doomy music on the soundtrack.

So his character is kind of squashed

by the music that's added,

which is a real sign of a director

being over-controlling in all the wrong ways.

Look, if you've had an affair,

that's okay with me, I understand,

but that doesn't mean that we should

throw the whole marriage down the toilet.

Please, Dorothy,

at least tell me where I stand.

I have to have more freedom.

Although Star 80 was to be

the final movie Fosse directed,

this was not intentional.

Despite its box office failure,

he was still in demand,

and considered directing many more movies

during his final years.

Amongst these was Chicago,

with Madonna, Michele Pfeiffer, and Jack Nicholson attached.

However, the project never materialized,

and Chicag the movie,

was eventually directed by Rob Marshall.

Chicago eventually hit the screen in 2002,

in Rob Marshall's film that went on to win six Oscars.

But, virtually everybody in Hollywood,

and in the UK, had done a version of the script.

There were dozens flying around

in the whole development period,

which went on for literally decades,

before Marshall's film.

One of them was Fosse, he wanted Madonna,

and all sorts of people in it.

Who knows what that would have been like?

But I do think there's a case for saying

that Chicago is the quintessential Bob Fosse work.

The stage version, which was written,

and directed, and choreographed by Fosse, is his monument.

Bob Fosse's distinctive choreography

is still recognizable in Rob Marshall's Chicago,

with a thanks to Fosse in the closing credits.

♪ All I care about is love

One of the great pities, I think,

is that Bob Fosse never got to do

his own movie version of Chicago.

He did it on Broadway,

and that's the play we're still seeing revived

now on the London stage and the Broadway stage

in '96 and 2009, all over the world they're doing Chicago.

But he never got to commit that to film.

It was left to Rob Marshall to do it with

Renee Zellweger, Richard Gere, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

It still was a big success for Miramax in 2002,

but I got a feeling that Fosse would have done it better.

What would Chicago have been like

if it was Bob Fosse, not Rob Marshall?

I don't think it would have been as shiny.

I think it would have been more enclosed,

more of a sense of being closed,

that Fosse would get, the intoxicating,

the slightly claustrophobic,

but also like really putting the audience member into it.

It probably would have been too cool for Hollywood.

Fosse would have brought it right back.

Rob Marshall, because he was,

I don't know, he embraced the theatricality of it,

and the bigness of what you get in theater,

and took that onto the screen.

There was a story that originally Jack Nicholson

was gonna be Billy Flynn,

for Bob Fosse, and Madonna was gonna be in it,

and Michelle Pfeiffer.

So maybe that would have turned out different,

but what I think Fosse would have done

is shot the dances better than Rob Marshall did.

Rob Marshall, you couldn't really admire the dance,

you couldn't quite see what the dancers were up to.

And I think Fosse would have given it that distance,

and that pull between the public and private

that Chicago's about, that would have had that toggle,

that Cabaret had between the Kit Kat Klub and the outside.

Chicago would have had that with the jail,

and the outside world,

with the show business that Billy Flynn was obsessed with,

the mask behind it,

or Fosse would have gone underneath

that mask I think a bit more,

so it's one of the enduring shames

that we never got to see his production of Chicago.

In Bob's own words,

dance expresses joy better than anything else.

And nothing could be truer for a man who lived his life

almost like a performance.

Although his final act was played out

in Gwen Verdon's arms,

as he succumbed to a heart attack in 1987,

a complex man, and a true artist.

If you want to know what Bob Fosse was all about,

watch Liza With a Z.

It's a TV special he made with Minnelli,

and in it, there's a number, Bye Bye Blackbird,

and it has every element of Fosse's choreography,

and it's actually much simpler and less elaborate

than many of his numbers,

and it doesn't have the self-indulgence.

Because it's a TV special, it's very simple,

and it's there to showcase her talent,

and that of the dancers with her.

It's got finger-clicking, it's got teacup hands.

It's got the amoeba-like move across the stage.

The dancers are in white gloves,

and it just works.

It's a completely delightful number,

and Minnelli is leading the number,

and looks supremely confident,

and supremely happy.

It's a really tiny moment, but a great one.

♪ Make my bed and light the light ♪

♪ I'll be home late tonight

♪ Leave your perch and take the sky ♪

♪ Too-Da-Loo, bye bye

♪ Blackbird

♪ Go take a fly little blackbird bye ♪

It is very interesting hearing of people

who are really lauded and applauded,

to think that they would have their own insecurities.

They might be perfectionists,

or they never think that they're doing it well enough,

or they beat themselves up.

As a fan, and as an onlooker,

is like how?

How could you think that?

But I think for lots of people that's what drives them,

'cause they're constantly looking for affection.

I know I have huge anxiety if something's not right.

It takes over my life.

I will lose sleep and it will really panic me,

so I think there's such a fine line,

which maybe is what makes people like Fosse,

and anybody else in this industry so passionate

about what they do.

There's such a fine line,

because you put so much pressure on yourself.

And then when it doesn't work out,

and you beat yourself up terribly,

and it can really affect your mood,

and bring the whole company down.

Fosse had his personal battles

with addiction, anxiety.

I think Fosse was on a path to self-destruction,

smoking, drinking, everything.

Sex, womanizing, the whole thing, overworking.

I don't know, some people just wouldn't go any other way.

I don't know if he knew any other way, actually.

That's how he operated.

Would he have ever had a sort of epiphany moment?

Been like, I think I might take up Buddhism.

I don't think so.

His lifestyle to his work, were linked,

intrinsically.

Fosse became an icon,

an archetype of the driven director hoofer,

achieving cultural impact long after his demise.

If living on after death is possible,

Fosse's legacy could be proof of this,

as his influence has filtered through

to many areas of popular culture today.

We see Fosse's influence now

across all genres of performance,

so, pop music, theater, film,

styling, fashion.

He's kind of seeped into the everyday life,

probably without 99% of people

knowing who Bob Fosse is.

He died when most of the youngsters coming up today,

he died long before they were born,

so they haven't got that sort of background.

For the new generation of dancers coming in,

I think, you're just saying how important it is

to find their voice and to be individual,

and obviously Bob Fosse would be such a good

person for them to research, and learn about,

because he was the quintessential person who

stayed strong to who he was,

and brought a unique style,

that made him so unique and different.

Yeah, Fosse can be cliche.

It's about how it's done,

and how it's respected,

and whatever is being taken from his work at any stage.

Fosse's legacy lives on.

You can see it literally in the work of Ann Reinking,

remaking Chicago, in his image.

But it also lives on in the sense that

his style is so clear,

and so obvious,

and referenced by other people.

I can give you an examples actually.

I mean you see it in pop.

The Single Ladies, Beyonce video.

Her video was based on Bob Fosse.

I don't know if she name-checked him or not,

but I hope she did.

So it's rife throughout pop.

The Little Prince,

where Bob Fosse is dancing with the little prince.

It is so Michael Jackson.

I mean there is no way that Michael Jackson

did not watch that video and be inspired.

I mean down to the shoes, to the trousers,

to the leg flicks,

to the hands, to the typical Michael Jackson hip hop.

It's all there, right?

You could replace them sometimes.

From the back, they're kind of identical.

They're quite the same.

I mean Michael Jackson is the ultimate dancing pop star,

ultimate.

No one approaches.

And where did he get,

his most essential move from?

Bob Fosse.

So, I guess that shows the reach of the man.

Yeah, Fosse's completely influenced my stage shows.

And I say that unabashedly.

If fact, I say it proudly.

I want people to see the references,

'cause everyone's referencing people.

I want people, it's like, he used a cool reference.

I hope he'd like it.

I thing he would.

First of all, I think Bob Fosse

is getting stronger and stronger, again.

I think the remake of everything,

I feel that he's becoming more and more well-known.

I think the more it's talked about,

the more people think about the likes of Michael Jackson,

or Beyonce, and people that still really see music,

and putting on west end shows today,

Chicago's currently out there.

Cabaret's just been on.

And jazz hands, that's Bob Fosse,

he invented jazz hands,

and now that's vernacular,

that's something that people say in the street.

That's very unusual for a choreographer

and a filmmaker to have invented a thing

that people talk about.

When I think of Fosse ultimately,

I think of someone who

is anti-establishment,

and working within the establishment.

And those are the most powerful people.

He just lives on, and I think

it's kind of like he just keeps on giving.

I think the Fosse legacy will just carry on and on.

Yeah, and I would say the part that makes him so unique,

is the spirit behind Bob Fosse.