Viola Essen became living proof that stardom in ballet does not
generate equal success on screen. Signed by Republic boss
Herbert J. Yates on the strength of her
dance pantomime in the short-lived Broadway musical 'Hollywood
Pinafore', the diminutive twenty-one year old ballerina was cast in one
of the studio's biggest-ever productions,
Specter of the Rose (1946).
The picture was launched amid an extensive publicity campaign with
ads in most of the major periodicals, including
'Life', 'Cue' and 'Look', and it was written, directed and produced by the prodigious academy award winner Ben Hecht.
Unfortunately, the tale of 'dark terror and strange love' failed to
generate box office in spite of moderate critical plaudits for being
offbeat. The New York Times Review (September 2,1946) more scathingly
urged Hecht "having satisfied his unconventional soul" to return to
"writing the kind of conventional film he dislikes doing but does so
with such resourcefulness that everyone else has a good time".
Viola was the daughter of Bulgarian immigrants Asen Hristov Colchagoff and Maria "Masha" Vasileva Colchagoff. At the age of six, she won a scholarship to the prestigious Mikhail Mordkin ballet school in New York. At the same time, she undertook piano studies at the Birch Wathen Lenox School. Following her debut as a dancer at the Waldorf Astoria in 1934, she worked her way up to principal ballerina at various companies, including the Ballet International and the Monte Carlo Ballet. She returned to the Ballet Theatre after Spectre of the Rose and later appeared on Broadway in
Along Fifth Avenue (1949), starring Jackie Gleason.
By 1956, Viola reportedly ran a dance academy in New York.
She had married actor Gabriel Dell of
'Dead End Kids' fame, sometime in the early 1950's (the last of several short-lived marriages). Professionally, she
was destined never to appear on the big screen again and in her later
life suffered financial hardship. She died in 1970, aged just 44.
