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Bob Fosse's career as a Hollywood director looked to be over after just one film when the failure of Sweet Charity at the box office nearly took down Universal Studios in 1969 and ended the era of the big-budget movie musical. He'd always have work on Broadway but his new status as toxic in Hollywood was a blow his ego couldn't accept and he was desperate for a comeback. The abiding fame of numbers like "Hey Big Spender" and "Rich Man's Frug" on Fosse highlight reels and as YouTube clips have lent Sweet Charity posthumous influence that nobody would have...

Bob Fosse was up to his usual tricks when he was asked to do some extra work with Janet Leigh during pre-production on My Sister Eileen, his fourth Hollywood movie role and his first as a choreographer. Leigh was nervous and asked Columbia, her studio, if she could rehearse with him "to get sort of seasoned" and started three weeks of what amounted to a private tutorial with the man who would become the most famous choreographer in American musicals. (Leigh has said she had never made a musical before but that wasn't true: in 1951 she had starred in...

VIDEOIf you have watched musicals made within the past 75 years, then whether you realize it or not you have seen many many Bob Fosse moves. The famous Broadway Barbara breaks down and explains many of the Bob Fosse moves. My personal favorite Bob Fosse move as revealed by Broadway Barbara is Fiddle Faddle from Conagra Foods.

Half-a-century ago this month - April 1969 - Bob Fosse began his career as a Hollywood director with Sweet Charity. It ended barely a decade later, and within the next both Fosse's Broadway bankability and then Fosse himself died too. Yet his name endures: Right now, the FX Network is halfway through a biodrama about him and (which he would have appreciated) with his name in the title - Fosse/Verdon, sharing billing with his missus and muse, Broadway's greatest dancer. Michelle Williams looks eerily like Gwen Verdon, at least from the side on the poster, although Sam Rockwell appears to...

Much is known about the life of Bob Fosse, the legendary choreographer who won an Oscar for his direction of Cabaret. The same cannot be said for Gwen Verdon, his just-as-talented wife and lifelong professional partner. That should be remedied in some ways with the release of the new FX series Fosse/Verdon, which takes a look at the paths of the two artists and makes it clear just how much the two needed one another, and just how little Fosse gave back at times. In the series Fosse is played by Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell, while Verdon is played by four-time...